[LEAPSECS] What's the point?

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <6D097A07-04EC-4ACE-AD99-4C647AB22F76 at noao.edu>, Rob Seaman writes:


>In context my statement was:

>

>	"By comparison, a leap second is introduced by a central

>authority [...]


What "authority" would that be, and what powers would it have ?

Remember: it's called "a recommendation" for a good reason.

I don't need to remind you, that nobody would be surprised if the
vote fails in ITU-R and USA then throw the toys out of the pram
and declares that they will discontinue leap-seconds anyway.

Heck, we had casually mentioned to Fox News, at the right time in
the "patriotic fever" after 2001, that leap-seconds were "french"
they would have been gone for 9 years now already, unless somebody
at NIST were quick enough to rename them "freedom seconds"

Yeah, it wouldn't be pretty, but neither are engineering drawings
in two units of measurements.

Poul-Henning

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