[LEAPSECS] An example

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <3290398649bcc00c9c5e57792582bc1e.squirrel at mx.pipe.nl>, "Nero Imhard
" writes:

>Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:



>But the ITU proposal is not only about getting rid of leap seconds. It

>tries to do this in a way that punishes proper engineering attempts of

>those who have been making serious effort to do things right by trusting

>(and hence relying on) defining properties of UTC.


If the world in general, or ITU in particular, strived for competence
instead of giving in to baser desires, you would have a valid
complaint.

It and they doesn't.

ITU's charter is to make things work in telecoms, by whatever means
and methods they can argree on.  Their work spans from proper insect-
proofing of telephone poles in tropical climates to automatic
conversion of voice to telex, although that last one probably still
is "For Further Study", 26 years after then wrote it down.

I probably don't need to remind anybody here that ITU is the people
who came up with the OSI network stack, dumped an unknown amount
of money into it, and was beaten by the IETFs hodge-podge TCP/IP
stack, which was built under the credo of "Rough concensus and
running code".

Competence is not a criteria in it self for ITU.

You can see this most directly in the awards they hand out: They
are for skilfully running a study group, not for inventing a faster
modulation.

Poul-Henning

-- 
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