Dude, I'm not representing your position at all. Assertions are
made. I respond. The "current system" for instance, is simply the
mechanics of the solar system. It will remain the underlying system
whatever the ITU decides. What is your position on the solar system?
I don't know. (Personally, I'm all for it.)
On the other hand, you've spent the last few messages taking offense
at insults I've never uttered and misrepresenting PHK's jocular
comment as my own.
Leap seconds principally take time and money because people have
selected UTC for some purpose requiring an interval timescale. The
advice seems pretty obvious - don't use UTC. There is no "one size
fits all" timescale. Attempts to create one will fail.
If you think it is a silly discussion, why keep returning to it? On
the other hand, my observatory has just undergone a round of
downsizing due to the poor economy. If the ITU succeeds in their (far
more silly) exercise of removing leap seconds from UTC, it will cost
the astronomical community millions of dollars worldwide - perhaps
many millions of dollars. (When you mention remote untended systems,
few are more so than space-based telescopes.) Those millions of
dollars will inevitably result in many more layoffs since not once has
any suggestion been made of compensating astronomers for the cost of
such a change to the standard. Thus I continue my part in what seems
rather more a threatening, than a silly, discussion.
Rob
---
On Dec 20, 2008, at 11:55 AM, M. Warner Losh wrote:
In message: <490a82a4-a8b3-485e-8ded-f9c8adc89...@noao.edu>
Rob Seaman <sea...@noao.edu> writes:
: M. Warner Losh wrote:
:
: > Leap-seconds, as implement, are unworkable.
:
: If so, there are worlds of possibilities short of the vain attempt
to
: eradicate them entirely.
Dude, stop misrepresenting my position.
Either we kill them entirely, since they are going away eventually
anyway, or we put them on a regular schedule like leap years. The
current system sucks too bad to be allowed to continue.
Like this silly discussion, leap seconds take a hugely
disproportionate amount of time and money in the implementation of
timing systems that I've been involved in.
All the rest is polemics..
Warner
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