[LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 72, Issue 3

[Kevin.Birth at qc.cuny.edu]

I view this incident with some relief.  A mistake was noticed and 
addressed relatively quickly. 

In a classic experiment by Rotter, people continued to believe the time 
given by a clock when it was running at only 25% its normal rate. 

Rotter, George.  1969.  "Clock-Speed as an Independent Variable in 
Psychological Research."  The Journal of General Psychology 81:45-52.

So this incident makes me wonder how large a mistake could be and still 
escape notice or at least be tolerated.  The redundancy created by getting 
time from multiple sources protects against this, but not everyone follows 
this practice, and even among those who do, if one source is viewed as 
more authoritative than others, the error could be still be accepted by 
some. 

I also hope that something gets published about this 
incident--particularly about how the problem was first discovered, the 
response and the fixes. 


Kevin K. Birth, Professor
Department of Anthropology
Queens College, City University of New York
65-30 Kissena Boulevard
Flushing, NY 11367
telephone: 718/997-5518

"We may live longer but we may be subject to peculiar contagion and 
spiritual torpor or illiteracies of the imagination"  --Wilson Harris

"Tempus est mundi instabilis motus, rerumque labentium cursus." --Hrabanus 
Maurus




"Matsakis, Demetrios" <demetrios.matsakis at usno.navy.mil> 
Sent by: <leapsecs-bounces at leapsecond.com>
11/25/12 03:33 PM
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Re: [LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 72, Issue 3






Rumors that the USNO tried to insert a leap decade as an experiment are 
not exactly correct.  See the message in 
http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ntp.html.  One of the 50-odd emails we got 
indicated that it would take working all night to undo the damage.  A few 
responded that it was a good lesson for them - they would now configure 
their NTP to get time from multiple sources for error-checking.

I'm not sure if there is a moral for this listserve.    We all know that 
equipment can break, and humans can make mistakes.

Those who are against leap seconds will say that this is yet another 
example showing that even so-called experts can make mistakes, so we 
should KISS-away all potential programming hazards.

Those who support keeping leap seconds will say that if the world can 
survive a 12-year rollback, how could one measly second make a difference?

And I suppose many on this list will have even more to say.


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Subject: LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 72, Issue 3

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Today's Topics:

   1. yesterday USNO said it was year 2000 (Steve Allen)
   2. Re: yesterday USNO said it was year 2000 (David Malone)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 09:46:48 -0800
From: Steve Allen <sla at ucolick.org>
Subject: [LEAPSECS] yesterday USNO said it was year 2000
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>
Message-ID: <20121120174647.GB4098 at ucolick.org>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

Various messages in admin support forums are indicating fallout
from the event recorded here
http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2012-November/053449.html
wherein the USNO's NTP servers tick and tock briefly jumped 12 years
into the past.

--
Steve Allen                 <sla at ucolick.org>                WGS-84 (GPS)
UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB   Natural Sciences II, Room 165    Lat +36.99855
1156 High Street            Voice: +1 831 459 3046           Lng 
-122.06015
Santa Cruz, CA 95064        http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/     Hgt +250 m


------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2012 11:20:27 +0000
From: David Malone <dwmalone at maths.tcd.ie>
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] yesterday USNO said it was year 2000
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>
Message-ID: <20121121112028.571FA7304D at walton.maths.tcd.ie>


> Various messages in admin support forums are indicating fallout

> from the event recorded here

> http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2012-November/053449.html

> wherein the USNO's NTP servers tick and tock briefly jumped 12 years

> into the past.


Not just that, but Android 4.2 doesn't know about December:

        http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412287,00.asp

David.


------------------------------

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