[LEAPSECS] What's the point?

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <4D51B444.1010801 at yahoo.com>, Michael Deckers writes:


>    In 1884, an international conference decided:

>

>       That the Conference proposes [...]



>    [...] I am wondering whether

>    the ITU-R people may still be aware of the importance of their

>    decision: they are going to revise the agreement of 1884.



If you read the minutes of the conference, you will find that at
best it amounts to a joint proposal on "terms of reference" for
geographical coordinates, and that serveral questions of timekeeping
specifically a declared "out of scope" along the way.

Since then the longitude and latitude has moved into the care
of whoever it is that defines things lige WGS84 and the second
has moved into BIPM's basement.

So substance wise, there is as far as I can tell nothing left
of the 1884 conference, apart from the heartfelt thanks to
the US president for calling and hosting the conference.

Further evidence of this is that UN registers all internation
treaties its member states have entered into, in accordance with
the UN charters article 102, and you can see all of these treaties
at http://treaties.un.org

The 1884 Longitude conference does not seem to make an appearance
and therefore you will not be able to pull any country in front
of The Hague for violating whatever it might say.

Poul-Henning

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