[LEAPSECS] Olson tz "right" zoneinfo files

[Gerard Ashton]

The nature of Google's business seems to allow it to keep time in its own
way, within a second of civil time. The vast majority of other individuals
and organizations are free to set up their own time scale, within a few
seconds of correct civil time. Human interaction can't distinguish time on
that scale. A kid isn't going to get suspended for being 0.7 s late for
school. Private systems, like EBay, that can and do reject submissions a
fraction of a second after a deadline handle this by making those who deal
with it sign a contract to use whatever time is kept on the private system's
computer.

This will become a problem if TAI or another scale that does not incorporate
leap seconds is used in computers, but civil time continues to include leap
seconds (or some similar mechanism). Writing code to keep TAI on the
computer clock but display earth-rotation based civil time whenever civil
time is legally required will be as big a mess as we currently have.

Gerard Ashton

-----Original Message-----
From: leapsecs-bounces at leapsecond.com
[mailto:leapsecs-bounces at leapsecond.com] On Behalf Of Steve Allen
Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 6:46 PM
To: Leap Second Discussion List
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] Olson tz "right" zoneinfo files

...On the other hand, I take Google's leap smear as basically an admission
that (if the organization is big enough to handle the costs of a management
nightmare of non-standard practices) violating common practices was easier,
cheaper, and safer than re-tooling all the heterogeneous systems to properly
handle leap seconds.

That is, Google is big enough to set up its own worldwide distribution
scheme for its own private time scale.