[LEAPSECS] presentations from AAS Future of Time sessions

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <52D5C90C.6050208 at cox.net>, Greg Hennessy writes:


>> To everybody else but the scientists who tickled the atomic clocks,

>> leap seconds was an academic detail of no consequence.

>

>Maybe you think the defining feature of UTC is the Coordinated

>part, others think the defining feature is the presence of leap seconds.


And you're welcome to that opinion, as long as you don't claim that
it is particularly wide spread, without some solid documentation
to back it up.

The very fact that most programmers can't get leap-seconds right
if their salary depends on it, will make it quite hard for you
to carry that argument.


>The people who wrote computer software considered the

>plusses and minuses of doing a proper job verses doing

>a half assed job, and decided to implement part of the job.


Nope.

It's not like Ken & Dennis looked at leap-seconds and went "Naah,
who cares", or even "braindead!  We'll skip that."

They simply did not consider leap-seconds *at all*, because they
were lost in the noise of realistisc computer timekeeping at the
time.

Later, when the noise were brought down and leapseconds became
relevant, it was too late, too much code had been written for
anybody to have the glands to fix it.


>And people argue that since computers don't match reality,

>we should change reality.


Well, if that's what the proposal is, why are you wasting your time
?   I'd lean back, and enjoying, pop-corn in hand, the sight of
people hurtling down freeways at 88mph in vintage cars, trying to
change reality.

What *has* been proposed, where I have seen it, is to remove
leap-seconds, and leave the "keep civil time in sync with the sun"
up to local governments who can mess with their timezones as they
see fit.

Also, what Warner and I have proposed is that it *might* be
possible to make leap-seconds less damaging by announcing
them 10 years in advance, rather than a fraction of a year
ahead of time.

But the changing-reality-thingie ?

Nope, havn't seen that.

-- 
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