[LEAPSECS] leap smear

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <2F64EE94-7FAB-47CC-9B0D-90CF381B964A at ucolick.org>, Steve Allen writ
es:



>Handling leap seconds, and testing them, become trivial if their

>representation is changed.


Yes provided all the software bugs are subsequently found and fixed.

Appearantly that was too much to contemplate already back in the
POSIX days and as recently as five years ago for pentagon.


>Fixing the standards can be done without breaking the connection

>between clock and calendar [...]


There are no technical problems for which we don't have plenty of
proposed solutions, each of which on a technical level would fix
the problems conclusively.

The *real* question about leap-seconds are economical ones:
	How much will the solution cost
	How many people will the solution kill
and
	Who foots the bill for the solution

Common sense and experince says that discontinuing leap-seconds
by far will be cheaper than anything else.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
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FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.