[LEAPSECS] Metrologia on time

[Ian Batten]

On 4 Aug 2011, at 06:27, Tom Van Baak wrote:

> 

> The internet is faster, more reliable, and far more global than

> LF or short-wave timecodes ever were. Further, you now get

> 4 or 5 digits of precision instead of just 1, as well as history

> and predictions tens or hundreds of days in advance. All with

> one line of code and a URL.


OK, so in that case (at risk of appearing like the village idiot asking why it gets dark in the evenings), why is |DUT1|>1s an issue?  If there are widely used dissemination formats that rely on it being <1, then it's a problem to make it larger: existing equipment won't understand and may be broken.  But if all consumers are taking a higher-precison value from a website, unless they have coded if (abs (dut1) > 1) { panic ("bad dut1") }, which is possible but seems needlessly paranoid, why do they care?