[LEAPSECS] Look Before You Leap – The Coming Leap Second and AWS | Hacker News

Richard Clark rclark at noao.edu
Tue May 19 15:02:05 EDT 2015


Several years ago (2000ish) I came across a website arguing why the US
is right to not adopt the metric system. (I suspect the author had never
heard the term "SI") One of its examples of how the "metric system" is
bad was its confusing use of two units, the newton and the kilogram, to
measure weight. The US system is so much simpler and sensible with just
one unit, the pound.

It was around the late 1600's that it started becomming possible (and
necessary) to decouple weight and mass. Yet there is still confusion and
sloppines in the general public (and operators of Mars bound spacecraft)
dealing with the two.

It's less than a century that it started becomming possible/necessary to
decouple the Earth's rotation from time.

So, am I optimistic about the chances for a quick resolution to the
"leap second" problem?

Richard Clark

On Tue, 19 May 2015, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

> ...
>
> Speaking of "flawed"...
>
> Reported to me from the hall-way-track at the last WP7A meeting:
>
> 	"The main drive to ditch leap-seconds comes from the only
> 	country ever to flunk Metric-101"
>
> <rimshot/>
>
> -- 
> Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
> phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
> FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
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