[LEAPSECS] A leap second proposal to consider -- LSEM

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <7EBBBA3729A346D5B0AEB73D6D73B001 at pc52>, "Tom Van Baak" writes:


>What would happen if instead of getting rid of leap seconds

>we had *more* of them?


It really depends on only one thing:  How long time in advance do
you announce which way the leapsecond goes for a given month ?

If we get 10 years firm notice, we can stick a table in the operating
system and the majority of the worlds programmers will not have to
think about it.

If we still get 6 only months notice, your proposal will cost so
much money that it will probably never be seriously considered.

The only intrinsic benefit of your proposal, is that it will become
possible to actually test the leap-second handling code in a
regular project life-cycle.

Either way:  There's no getting around that just dropping leap
seconds is a no-cost option for computers.

Poul-Henning

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.