[LEAPSECS] Do lawyers care (know) about leap seconds?

[Steffen Nurpmeso]

Hal Murray <hmurray at megapathdsl.net> wrote:
 |> (Nonetheless i repeat that having TAI plus the current LEAPDRIFT at hand
 |> would ease date and time calculation algorithms, and also that i don't
 |> understand why the existing information is thrown away instead of being
 |> delivered along with the UTC information over NTP.) 
 |
 |The leap offset data doesn't change very often.  Why should \
 |it be distributed 
 |via NTP rather than with the time-zone database or something similar?

The Olson now IANA database is where i get the leapseconds from.
But if it came with, say, NTP and made available via
a standardized system call (as via CLOCK_LEAPDRIFT) then user
space programs would be able to differentiate in between their
normal POSIX time, the TAI and the leap-second caused offset to
TAI.  All this self-synchronizing and in "realtime", an active
internet connection presupposed.
None of these is true for the timezone database.

--steffen