[LEAPSECS] Focus in the debate, alternative proposal

[Magnus Danielson]

On 01/07/2011 03:37 PM, Rob Seaman wrote:

> On Jan 7, 2011, at 6:08 AM, Zefram wrote:

>

>> Currently, a June leap second can occur while far-east markets are open.

>

> There is nothing magic about the end of the month scheduling.  It has some advantages, that's all.

>

> DST adjustments on the other hand are (usually? always? some places? everywhere?) scheduled for Sundays at local 2am.

>

> As discussed, we can't apply leap seconds using local scheduling - BUT nothing stops us from requiring that they be applied only on Sundays.  I haven't had my coffee yet, but I believe this would result in their happening at midday in Greenwich - but it would be midday on a Sunday.  Would have to think about the issues with the international date line, etc and so forth.


Quite a bit of financial transactions occurs midday on Sunday in Europe, 
Africa, Middle east and Asia. The stock markets may be closed, but 
people will still be shopping, paying bills etc. Quite a bit of small 
buissnesses is open then.

One could choose a different UTC offset to find a time-zone which is 
empty of such transactions, but considering that each "open" zone may be 
affected for at least 8 hours (which is not true, 12 hours is more to 
the point) we end up with no possible time-zone for this "sneak it in" 
operation.

This is not leading anywhere useful. Today will such sneaking not work 
for a global/universal time scale, while local time-scales may have it. 
Trade is global now and the electronic systems for it needs to work all 
over.

Cheers,
Magnus