[LEAPSECS] Back to Basics

[Steve Allen]

On Wed 2010-11-03T13:46:02 -0400, ashtongj hath writ:

> But I could write a contract specifying UTC and I strongly suspect

> it would be enforced.


In that case all POSIX systems are illegal and would be
subject to confiscation or shutdown.

Just yesterday we showed that there is no single, consistent
interpretation of POSIX.  A useful specification, an enforceable one,
should not require judge and jury to interpret whether an
implementation is conforming.

The US law is not much more useful given that it spreads the
responsibility of defining UTC among 3 different agencies.

I see this as the unremediable failure of the current definition of
UTC and the specifications which reference it.  I would rather see the
ITU-R release the name UTC to be specified by a single agency (the
IERS) and define a new name for a broadcast time scale without leaps.

--
Steve Allen                 <sla at ucolick.org>                WGS-84 (GPS)
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