[LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 3
Finkleman, Dave
dfinkleman at agi.com
Thu Sep 2 16:04:31 EDT 2010
I believe that no one is advocating UT1 for civil time scales.
I have discovered that UTC is the statutory time scale for the United
States but without qualification. In other words, if UTC changes and is
still called UTC, the new definition would be the statutory requirement.
Every process and system developed for the previous definition would be
illegal. Conversely, it UTC were changed but given a different name,
the statutes would be of no effect. We would either need a new law or
there would be no legally established civil time scale.
The law does state that the change has to be agreed to by the Department
of Commerce and the USNO. Even if the ITU changes UTC, it is still
possible that designated US authorities could choose to remain with the
old UTC.
This is a very complex legal, sociological, and religious matter.
Perhaps a technical matter as well, but the other aspects may be more
important.
Dave Finkleman
Senior Scientist
Center for Space Standards and Innovation
Analytical Graphics, Inc.
7150 Campus Drive
Colorado Springs, CO 80920
Phone: 719-510-8282 or 719-321-4780
Fax: 719-573-9079
Discover CSSI data downloads, technical webinars, publications, and
outreach events at www.CenterForSpace.com.
-----Original Message-----
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1 (M. Warner Losh)
2. Re: LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1 (Richard Langley)
3. Re: LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1 (Poul-Henning Kamp)
4. Re: LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1 (Rob Seaman)
5. Re: LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1 (Poul-Henning Kamp)
6. Re: LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1 (Rob Seaman)
7. Re: LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1 (Ian Batten)
8. Re: LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1 (Poul-Henning Kamp)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:49:24 -0600 (MDT)
From: "M. Warner Losh" <imp at bsdimp.com>
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1
To: leapsecs at leapsecond.com, sla at ucolick.org
Message-ID: <20100902.124924.244264502706473427.imp at bsdimp.com>
Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii
In message: <20100902183636.GB13786 at ucolick.org>
Steve Allen <sla at ucolick.org> writes:
: On Thu 2010-09-02T19:26:03 +0100, Ian Batten hath writ:
: > It would be interesting to produce a list of countries where legal
: > time is not UTC, to see what the divide would look like. Wikipedia
: > claims Belgium, Canada and Eire: for extra fun, I bet most consumers
: > of time signals in Belgium use DCF77 or TDF, which are clearly in
UTC
: > land, rather than MSF.
:
: IANL, but based on a few documents I've seen
:
: Canadian standard time is provincial, not federal.
: Quebec adopted UTC on 2007-01-01, and the others have not.
:
: Venezuela standard time is based on the Greenwich meridian,
: whatever that means ...
:
: If that issue were pressed to the courts it would be very interesting
: to see the results of the cases in each country especially in the
: light of the shifts of the longitude origin during the last 60 years,
: the first 3 of which are here
: http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/BIHAR1968.JPG
I'd wager that UTC, whatever its realization, would likely trump any
locally written laws. After all, UTC has been a widely accepted
approximation of the local laws that's attained the force of law
through repetitive use (how many real-time realizations of UT1 are
propagated, in comparison to UTC). So underlying technical changes to
UTC may not change that. It would take a long, and complicated, legal
argument to show that UT1 is what should be used (even though nobody
knows what it is, day to day). Given the current miss-mash of legal
rulings around software, I'd guess that this wouldn't be a "clear cut"
ruling that people in this group have suggested.
Warner
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 15:42:31 -0300
From: Richard Langley <lang at UNB.ca>
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>
Message-ID: <C5CF7EAE-4213-4498-833C-895A0A73EB65 at unb.ca>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes
Can't speak for the other Canadian provinces and territories, but the
official time for New Brunswick is based on "GMT":
<http://www.gnb.ca/0062/acts/acts/t-06.htm
>. Of course, they might actually mean UTC but that is not what the
act says.
-- Richard Langley
On 2-Sep-10, at 3:26 PM, Ian Batten wrote:
>
> On 2 Sep 2010, at 18:37, Rob Seaman wrote:
>>
>> For just one instance, the proposal is not only to cease leap
>> seconds, but to cease the reporting of DUT1
>
> Could you clarify that? DUT1 is surely produced by IERS, who aren't
> accountable to the ITU, and propagated by (as examples) WWVB and
> MSF, which are accountable via NIST to the US government and via NPL
> to the UK government. I assume the other nationally operated time
> sources have similar governance. I'm not sure how the ITU could
> stop MSF from reporting DUT1.
>
> But if you drop leap seconds in UTC, DUT1 relative to "new UTC"
> will rapidly exceed 0.9s, which breaks everything that consumes
> those signals and, for example, breaks astro-navigation unless
> somehow the format is fixed to allow for |DUT1|>0.9. It would
> also make the issue of precisely what UK time is a live issue again,
> because rather than the difference between de jure GMT and de facto
> UTC being "classic DUT1" which is for legal purposes negligible, it
> would start to get distinctly noticeable as "new DUT1" grew larger
> (assuming a means to propagate it).
>
> Why would the UK government accede to this just because the ITU say
> so, and not just align UTC(NPL) to "UTC classic" and declare leap
> seconds itself (based on DUT1 predictions, as today)?
>
> It would be interesting to produce a list of countries where legal
> time is not UTC, to see what the divide would look like. Wikipedia
> claims Belgium, Canada and Eire: for extra fun, I bet most consumers
> of time signals in Belgium use DCF77 or TDF, which are clearly in
> UTC land, rather than MSF.
>
> ian
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> LEAPSECS mailing list
> LEAPSECS at leapsecond.com
> http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:12:23 +0000
From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk>
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>
Message-ID: <84263.1283454743 at critter.freebsd.dk>
In message <3B33E89C51D2DE44BE2F0C757C656C880943780F at mail02.stk.com>,
"Finklema
n, Dave" writes:
>I believe that China, Brazil, Germany, and the UK
>support keeping the leap second.
Denmark is not going to return the questionaire at all, I talked to the
guy
who's table it landed on after I asked what they wanted to do to it, and
the answer is "file it".
It is anybodys guess what Denmark might vote once/if it hits the
pleanary
assembly, it seems to be left to the jugdment of "whoever holds the
paddle"
in questions where the Danish Government does not have a position (Ie:
pretty much anything other than frequency allocations).
--
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.
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 12:21:14 -0700
From: Rob Seaman <seaman at noao.edu>
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>
Message-ID: <54965361-F9A3-4C52-8581-49366C9D61FE at noao.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
On Sep 2, 2010, at 11:26 AM, Ian Batten wrote:
> Could you clarify that? DUT1 is surely produced by IERS, who aren't
accountable to the ITU, and propagated by (as examples) WWVB and MSF,
which are accountable via NIST to the US government and via NPL to the
UK government. I assume the other nationally operated time sources have
similar governance. I'm not sure how the ITU could stop MSF from
reporting DUT1.
Could anybody clarify this alphabet soup? :-)
The current "definition of UTC" in ITU-R TF.460 (blah blah blah)
includes both a description of leap seconds and a mechanism for DUT1.
The proposed redefinition does not.
A coherent engineering plan for a system with worldwide implications
would be much more complete and formalized and would represent a
consensus vision worked out in advance. The result of such a vote
should be evident and noncontroversial to all before the vote is taken.
> But if you drop leap seconds in UTC, DUT1 relative to "new UTC" will
rapidly exceed 0.9s, which breaks everything that consumes those signals
and, for example, breaks astro-navigation unless somehow the format is
fixed to allow for |DUT1|>0.9.
Indeed. And one suspects that the "non-opinions" of the International
Astronomical Union and the American Astronomical Society that are being
used to prop up this process will rapidly change when the resulting
remediation expense becomes evident to the broader astronomical
community.
Due diligence has not been satisfied.
Rob
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:22:25 +0000
From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk>
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>
Message-ID: <84360.1283455345 at critter.freebsd.dk>
In message <20100902.124924.244264502706473427.imp at bsdimp.com>, "M.
Warner Losh
" writes:
>I'd wager that UTC, whatever its realization, would likely trump any
>locally written laws. After all, UTC has been a widely accepted
>approximation of the local laws that's attained the force of law
>through repetitive use [...]
Don't disregard ITU totally here. ITU-T has UTC written into the
standards for cross-TelCo billing interfaces/protocols.
--
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.
------------------------------
Message: 6
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 12:24:08 -0700
From: Rob Seaman <seaman at noao.edu>
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>
Message-ID: <CF5FDBC5-0165-4F5A-8C49-65A7FDDEE9D1 at noao.edu>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> ITU-T has UTC written into the standards for cross-TelCo billing
interfaces/protocols.
So it's literally true:
Money makes the world go round
------------------------------
Message: 7
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2010 20:24:07 +0100
From: Ian Batten <igb at batten.eu.org>
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>
Message-ID: <722F0D89-CBFA-423A-9C9E-6D919DED9C4D at batten.eu.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes
>
> I'd wager that UTC, whatever its realization, would likely trump any
> locally written laws.
It'll be interesting in the UK
* There's no doubt that UK legal time is GMT, Interpretation Act 1978,
S.9
* There's no doubt that whatever GMT is, it's solar, and there's no
doubt that whatever UTC is, it isn't solar and would be even less
solar without leap seconds,
* There's no doubt that proposed legislation to change UK legal time
to UTC failed to be passed in 1997, and an extensive history of the
issue got read into Hansard.
You'd have a hell of a job showing UK time was UTC in the face of that.
> After all, UTC has been a widely accepted
> approximation of the local laws that's attained the force of law
> through repetitive use
That's right, but |DUT1|<1 means that for the purposes of integer
arithmetic it's barely more than a rounding error. There's clear,
modern legislation to the contrary.
> (how many real-time realizations of UT1 are
> propagated, in comparison to UTC). So underlying technical changes to
> UTC may not change that. It would take a long, and complicated, legal
> argument to show that UT1 is what should be used
Not in the UK, see above.
> (even though nobody
> knows what it is, day to day).
That's the paradox, isn't it!
ian
------------------------------
Message: 8
Date: Thu, 02 Sep 2010 19:29:18 +0000
From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk>
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 45, Issue 1
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>
Message-ID: <84419.1283455758 at critter.freebsd.dk>
In message <CF5FDBC5-0165-4F5A-8C49-65A7FDDEE9D1 at noao.edu>, Rob Seaman
writes:
>Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
>
>> ITU-T has UTC written into the standards for cross-TelCo billing
interfaces/protocols.
>
>So it's literally true:
>
> Money makes the world go round
Ohh, you bet. Don't remember that railroads was what got us timezones
in the first place, and to the right people they were fantastically
profitable.
If you want to keep leapseconds, all you have to do is come up with
the business case. And vice versa.
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.
------------------------------
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