[LEAPSECS] Java: ThreeTen/JSR-310

[Michael Sokolov]

Stephen Colebourne <scolebourne at joda.org> wrote:


> Viewed from afar, leap seconds appear to be a really stupid idea. A

> gross complication in the passage of time, that so few people care

> about, yet can cause such nasty effects such as time going backwards.

>

> [...]

>

> The Earth does not rotate at 86400 SI seconds per day. Once I

> internalised that fact properly, my requirements were clear. For the

> main API days must have 86400 "seconds" (not necessarily SI) and days

> were more important than seconds.

>

> [...]

>

> Given that, I needed a way for time to always move forwards, and to

> resolve UTC to 86400. Solution UTC-SLS.

>

> Thus my conversion is based around the primary importance of the day,

> and its subdivisions of hour, minute and second making a fixed 86400

> pattern.


For the record, I agree with Stephen 100%.  I choose to live my life on
a rubber timescale similar to UTC-SLS, and I am prepared to use deadly
firepower to defend my right to live my life on this timescale.  If PHK
or Warner Losh or their armed minions (aka local sheriffs enforcing laws
made to follow ITU which is ideologically controlled by the likes of PHK
and WL) come knocking on my door demanding that I give up my rubber
seconds and switch to their "leapless UTC" or whatever, I will respond
with gunfire.  They'll probably kill me, but if I manage to kill at
least one ITU UTC enforcement sheriff before I go down, my life will not
have been lived in vain.

IOW: the only way you will take my non-SI rubber seconds from me is from
my cold dead hands.

MS