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

[Warner Losh]

On Sep 30, 2014, at 5:05 PM, Rob Seaman <seaman at noao.edu> wrote:

> On Sep 30, 2014, at 3:46 PM, Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
> 
>> But the basic point still remains: If you have to sugar coat the actual standard
>> with a fake standard to paper-over people’s inability to deal with the actual
>> standard, this suggests that you have the wrong actual standard.
> 
> No, the basic point is about sugar coating physical reality with a fake reality.

No. The basic point is that people are ignoring the standard because it is hard to implement.

UTC isn’t reality.

UTC is one conventional way to label seconds. It happens to be the standard way to do so.

UTC with leap second smearing is a different, also arbitrary, way to label seconds. It is not the standard way to do so, but does match traditional ways.

The specific point I made was that one should not be “sugar coating” the standard to give to end users. If the standard is a good standard, it wouldn’t need the sugar coating. This has nothing at all with our old argument.

> Atomic time and mean solar time are two different things.  Diurnal cadences are governed by the synodic day.  Countdown timers by the SI-second (or rather, by a frequency standard).  Various options have been suggested over the many many years of this discussion.  Only one non-physical non-option has ever been considered by the ITU.  It is the ITU who are being tedious.

True, but not really the point I’m arguing.

Warner

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