[LEAPSECS] Crunching Bulletin B numbers (POSIX time)

[Tim Shepard]

> Lets take a show of hands: 

> 

> Would abolishing leap seconds make timekeeping less or more complex ?



More complicated, because today if you want know what time it is, UTC
is good enough because it is within 0.9 seconds of the correct time.

If you stop maintaining UTC with leap seconds, then the difference
between UTC and what time it is will grow (slowly) without bound.

(If you need to know what time it is with precision and accuracy better
 than +/- 1 second, then it is already surprisingly complicated.)


			-Tim Shepard
			 shep at alum.mit.edu