Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability (was Re: it's WP7A week in Geneva)

2009-10-06 Thread Nero Imhard
On 2009-10-03, at 23:56, Rob Seaman wrote: However, is it a true assertion that currently deployed GPS receivers return GPS time significantly more reliably (all those 9's) than they do UTC? (Assuming a particular model supports both?) It's hard to see this as supporting a position that

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability (was Re: it's WP7A week in Geneva)

2009-10-06 Thread Poul-Henning Kamp
In message e8fcfabf1874eff9e7b857bf0282e50e.squir...@mx.pipe.nl, Nero Imhard writes: On 2009-10-03, at 23:56, Rob Seaman wrote: It's hard to see this as supporting a position that Only UTC can be disseminated... Does anyone have a clue? I read it as: I won't get invited to the BIPM

[LEAPSECS] Reliability (was Re: it's WP7A week in Geneva)

2009-10-03 Thread Rob Seaman
Tom Van Baak wrote: when all is said and done). A 12.5 minute down time means your annual reliability can only be 4 9's, not 5 9's... This is why many receivers remember the last UTC offset values and warm start with them if they have only been off a short period of time... Warner

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability (was Re: it's WP7A week in Geneva)

2009-10-03 Thread Poul-Henning Kamp
In message 0b8b21eb-dbea-4dec-89c5-f27557f37...@noao.edu, Rob Seaman writes: Tom Van Baak wrote: It is clearly aberrant design for any system to ever lie about a return value. Well, lie is such a strong word. I know for sure that both the Motorola UT+ and M12+T in certain a certain specific

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-07 Thread Clive D.W. Feather
Rob Seaman said: The leap occurs at midnight UTC on 30 June or 31 December. These dates apply west of Greenwich, e.g., we saw the leap second in Tucson at 5 pm on New Years Eve. East of Greenwich it is already the morning of 1 July or 1 January when the leap second occurs. I know what

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-07 Thread Daniel R. Tobias
On 6 Jan 2009 at 10:12, Tony Finch wrote: Note that there's no need for global co-ordination. Each country (or county) can change when it is convenient for them. The effect would probably be a shifting of timezone boundaries in lumps and bumps that averages out to the overall DUT1 drift.

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-07 Thread Rob Seaman
Tom Van Baak wrote: why in your opinion, are leap seconds OK but leap tenth-seconds, or leap minutes, or leap hours not OK? Each of these preserve, to one degree or another, the notion of stationary wrt solar time. I'll refrain from references to current practice. We often get tangled

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-07 Thread Rob Seaman
Adi Stav wrote: But what do you think about my suggestion of phasing the time standard every few centuries when the standard's DUT reaches 30 minutes? Won't it make leap hours workable? I suspect that none of the factions will welcome repeated redefinitions of a fundamental standard.

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-07 Thread M. Warner Losh
In message: 49646f64.11204.11917...@dan.tobias.name Daniel R. Tobias d...@tobias.name writes: : On 6 Jan 2009 at 10:12, Tony Finch wrote: : : Note that there's no need for global co-ordination. Each country (or : county) can change when it is convenient for them. The effect would :

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-07 Thread Tony Finch
On Mon, 5 Jan 2009, Rob Seaman wrote: Alternately, by relying on shifting timezones, there would be no underlying stabilized civil timescale permitting commonsense timekeeping inferences by humans. What do you mean by stabilized here? Atomic time is the basis of our most stable time scales. I

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-07 Thread Tony Finch
On Wed, 7 Jan 2009, Rob Seaman wrote: On the other hand, permitting a long delay between events - or rather, between scheduling opportunities for events - risks losing the corporate knowledge to handle the events properly. The good thing about timezones is the code to implement them and alter

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-07 Thread Poul-Henning Kamp
In message alpine.lsu.2.00.0901071929250.7...@hermes-1.csi.cam.ac.uk, Tony Fi nch writes: On Wed, 7 Jan 2009, Rob Seaman wrote: On the other hand, permitting a long delay between events - or rather, between scheduling opportunities for events - risks losing the corporate knowledge to handle

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-06 Thread Tony Finch
On Mon, 5 Jan 2009, Rob Seaman wrote: Is it too much to ask that an attempt be made to describe how the logistics would work? Exactly the same way that current time zones work. Every so often, jurisdictions that become dissatisfied with their current timezone offset or DST arrangements because

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-06 Thread Magnus Danielson
Zefram skrev: Magnus Danielson wrote: They also made a correction for the accumulate error to restore phase relationships. Except that this correction was faulty. By the mid 16th century, the phase relationship between the seasons and the

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-06 Thread Rob Seaman
Tony Finch wrote: The reason DST exists is to more closely sync our activities to sunrise. The reason DST exists is because it has become a self-propagating cultural meme. Your April Fool's post on risks may be the most coherent analysis I've read on the subject. (Not trying to be

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-06 Thread Tony Finch
On Tue, 6 Jan 2009, Rob Seaman wrote: To return to a previous point, Tony Finch wrote: Note that there's no need for global co-ordination. Each country (or county) can change when it is convenient for them. The effect would probably be a shifting of timezone boundaries in lumps and bumps

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-06 Thread Brian Garrett
- Original Message - From: Rob Seaman sea...@noao.edu To: Leap Second Discussion List leapsecs@leapsecond.com Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 5:30 AM Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability Tony Finch wrote: The reason DST exists is to more closely sync our activities to sunrise

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-06 Thread Rob Seaman
Tony Finch wrote: I think for real time you mean local civil time, and for civil time you mean atomic time. Not precisely, but that's the gist. In the future that role would be taken by atomic time. Yes it won't trivially relate to any kind of local time at any place on earth, like UTC

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-06 Thread Adi Stav
Thank you for the discussion so far. On Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 04:31:44PM -0700, Rob Seaman wrote: Adi Stav wrote: what problems could exceeding the tolerance(s) cause? Well covered in the archive. For astronomy, 1 second of time is 15 seconds of arc on the equator. This is a large error

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-06 Thread Adi Stav
On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 08:58:29PM -0700, Rob Seaman wrote: Here's a notion I don't recall seeing before on the list: Coordinate leap seconds with leap days. Introduce an integral number of leap seconds each February 29th. Discuss. February 29th does not start and end all over the world at

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-06 Thread Nero Imhard
On 2009-01-06, at 22:35, Adi Stav wrote: I am trying to identify a requirement for civil time having a low (say, below 30 minutes) DUT. I would say that the actual requirement is for DUT to stay within a small interval. Of course this also implies a low DUT, but debating the need for a

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-06 Thread Tom Van Baak
This is the part I disagree with. Global civil time (the underlying timescale for the numerous local civil time variants) needs to be stationary with respect to mean solar time. The requirements for Rob, A problem is what defines your stationary (what bandwidth) and what defines mean

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-06 Thread Adi Stav
On Tue, Jan 06, 2009 at 11:31:52PM +0100, Nero Imhard wrote: I believe this to be false. People's tolerance for being some fixed time offset (modulo 1 DST hour) away from their time meridian has nothing to do with their tolerance for this value to drift. I see. And how would such

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-05 Thread Rob Seaman
Zefram wrote: Rob Seaman wrote: Coordinate leap seconds with leap days. Introduce an integral number of leap seconds each February 29th. Discuss. There's also a risk that the lower frequency of leaps would exacerbate the psychology of leap seconds being an infrequent event.

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-05 Thread Zefram
Rob Seaman wrote: Coordinate leap seconds with leap days. Introduce an integral number of leap seconds each February 29th. Discuss. That would mean bigger leaps. I think a 62-second minute (when most minutes are of 60 seconds) is too great a disuniformity. It would also exceed the capacity

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-05 Thread Poul-Henning Kamp
In message 421fb837-f23f-4a16-b6f4-f26d1c58c...@noao.edu, Rob Seaman writes: It seems very unlikely that leap day will move from February. People are fond of February. Also, a leap day at the end of December would be December 32nd :-) Which would break incredibly badly thought out

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-05 Thread Zefram
Rob Seaman wrote: Also, a leap day at the end of December would be December 32nd :-) Only if there were no February 29. My point is that the leap day appears to be at the end of the year if you don't bother with months and just use day-of-year. Just as the idea that February 29 is the leap

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-05 Thread Adi Stav
On Sun, Jan 04, 2009 at 08:58:29PM -0700, Rob Seaman wrote: Adi Stav wrote: Then why 4 seconds? Because they could be predicted a decade in advance? Isn't that putting the cart before the horses? Yes, indeed. You asked a question. I provided a guess. Personally, I think the current

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-05 Thread Rob Seaman
Adi Stav wrote: We know that human tolerance to DUT is higher than 20 minutes because we don't usually bother to compensate for apparent solar time. We know that it is probably not much higher than one or two hours because time zones generally have about that resolution. We guess that it

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-05 Thread Adi Stav
On Mon, Jan 05, 2009 at 09:39:28AM -0700, Rob Seaman wrote: Lower limits are hard to pin down. Human tolerance on a particular day is not the same thing as the tolerance over a year or a lifetime. Straining a tolerance for one human is not the same as straining it for 6 billion. Human

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-05 Thread Rob Seaman
Adi Stav wrote: what problems could exceeding the tolerance(s) cause? Well covered in the archive. For astronomy, 1 second of time is 15 seconds of arc on the equator. This is a large error (colossal for some purposes). It doesn't appear that any other industry has actually performed

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-05 Thread Gerard Ashton
...@leapsecond.com [mailto:leapsecs-boun...@leapsecond.com] On Behalf Of M. Warner Losh Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 7:26 PM To: leapsecs@leapsecond.com; sea...@noao.edu Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability In message: ae6c787c-1725-48cb-bba8-4a1bbe06d...@noao.edu Rob Seaman sea

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-05 Thread Magnus Danielson
Rob Seaman skrev: Adi Stav wrote: We know that human tolerance to DUT is higher than 20 minutes because we don't usually bother to compensate for apparent solar time. We know that it is probably not much higher than one or two hours because time zones generally have about that resolution. We

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-05 Thread Magnus Danielson
Poul-Henning Kamp skrev: In message 421fb837-f23f-4a16-b6f4-f26d1c58c...@noao.edu, Rob Seaman writes: It seems very unlikely that leap day will move from February. People are fond of February. Also, a leap day at the end of December would be December 32nd :-) Which would break

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-05 Thread Brian Garrett
- Original Message - From: M. Warner Losh i...@bsdimp.com To: leapsecs@leapsecond.com; sea...@noao.edu Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 4:26 PM Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability All other users of time, it is widely agree, basically want everyone to agree on a time, have the sun

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-04 Thread Rob Seaman
Our humble and long suffering moderator informs me that this message bounced a few days back since the attachment was too big. My apologies, since my more recent messages were predicated on folks having seen this plot. I've put the attachment online as I should have in the first place:

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-04 Thread Rob Seaman
Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: Nobody is dispensing with mean solar time, you will always be able to calculate it if you want to. Just as you are now able to calculate TAI from UTC :-) The issue, of course, is in details. By redefining UTC, the ITU proposal would require rewriting our

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-04 Thread Rob Seaman
Adi Stav wrote: On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 08:29:21PM -0700, Rob Seaman wrote: Civil time is solar time. The rate is the issue, not local offsets. Let's move past the fantasy that the ITU can redefine timescales willy- nilly to serve the requirements of a civilization of mole people, and

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-04 Thread Adi Stav
On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 08:29:21PM -0700, Rob Seaman wrote: Civil time is solar time. The rate is the issue, not local offsets. Let's move past the fantasy that the ITU can redefine timescales willy- nilly to serve the requirements of a civilization of mole people, and rather address

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-04 Thread Jonathan E. Hardis
I've put the attachment online as I should have in the first place: http://iraf.noao.edu/~seaman/images/HowLongIsADay.pdf Nice. Thanks! - Jonathan ___ LEAPSECS mailing list LEAPSECS@leapsecond.com

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-04 Thread Rob Seaman
Steve Allen wrote: On Sun 2009-01-04T20:58:29 -0700, Rob Seaman hath writ: Here's a notion I don't recall seeing before on the list: Coordinate leap seconds with leap days. Introduce an integral number of leap seconds each February 29th. Discuss. This ignores the existing operational

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-03 Thread Tony Finch
On Fri, 2 Jan 2009, Rob Seaman wrote: So yes, I think the angular momentum of the Earth is more real than the observations that might be compiled to generate an estimate for its value. But the value is an estimate, so if you plug numbers into a model based on this estimate you are only going

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-03 Thread Zefram
Tony Finch wrote: (Um, do we actually know the earth's angular momentum and moment of inertia to any useful accuracy? Our knowledge of the planets' masses is limited. From watching orbits we know very precisely the product of each planet's mass with the gravitational constant. But we only know

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-03 Thread Rob Seaman
Tony Finch wrote: (Um, do we actually know the earth's angular momentum and moment of inertia to any useful accuracy? I would have thought models would be based directly on angular velocity since that can be measured more precisely.) I think it's wrong to say that a directly measurable

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-03 Thread Poul-Henning Kamp
In message dff642c4-e47a-4e80-adbc-7a8b4677c...@noao.edu, Rob Seaman writes: While they are debating this, it is a mental model they have about timekeeping that guides the discussions. Their mental model clearly must include the notion that mean solar time is dispensable - else they

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-02 Thread Magnus Danielson
Dear Brian, b...@po.cwru.edu skrev: From: Rob Seaman sea...@noao.edu ... Like I keep saying, the mean solar day is trivial to compute from the sidereal day. Look at it this way, there are really 366.25 days per year. That extra day just gets sliced and diced among all the others. Nice,

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-02 Thread Zefram
Rob Seaman wrote: It's the usual familiar layered architecture and the apparent position of the Sun is from a higher layer then the - so-called - mean position. Sidereal time isn't entirely linear in time either, as we all know. So if the mean behaviour is the more fundamental, presumably you

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-02 Thread Rob Seaman
Hi Richard, Yes, it's certainly true that sundials show apparent solar time. I looked into buying or building a state of the art sundial when we moved into a new house a few years back. The cost can be staggering, so this was hard to justify, but the state of the art is pretty spiffy

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-02 Thread Rob Seaman
Zefram wrote: Rob Seaman wrote: It's the usual familiar layered architecture and the apparent position of the Sun is from a higher layer then the - so-called - mean position. Sidereal time isn't entirely linear in time either, as we all know. So if the mean behaviour is the more

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-02 Thread Tony Finch
On Fri, 2 Jan 2009, Rob Seaman wrote: Mean solar time is highly regular and elegantly simple. Compared to our clocks it's too irregular. Civil timekeeping (even under the ITU proposal) is about the underlying diurnal period. What does atomic time have to do with the position of the Earth?

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-02 Thread Tony Finch
On Fri, 2 Jan 2009, Magnus Danielson wrote: b...@po.cwru.edu skrev: That's 303*365+97*366=146097 days for an average of 365.2425 days per year. Your arthmetic describes solar days, but fails to describe the sidereal days. No, he's talking about calendar years, as opposed to the

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-02 Thread Rob Seaman
Tony Finch wrote: I find it odd that you are arguing that the mathematical model of the earth's orbit and rotation is more real than the observations from which the model is derived. Clearly I failed again to make my point. There are two different uses to which one might put statistics.

[LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-01 Thread Rob Seaman
Tony Finch wrote: M. Warner Losh wrote: Time used to be strongly coupled to the earth. Only because it was the most accurate clock we had. It might still be the most reliable clock we have but our natural tendency to optimisation means that isn't the most important consideration. The

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-01 Thread Rob Seaman
Tony Finch wrote: On Thu, 1 Jan 2009, Rob Seaman wrote: Mean solar time will outlast artificial clocks and the species that built them by a factor of something like 5,000,000,000 to 50,000. Not really, because mean solar time is also artificial and can't exist without mechanical clocks

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-01 Thread M. Warner Losh
In message: 96c34d96-8a20-453a-b4a6-b8491287b...@noao.edu Rob Seaman sea...@noao.edu writes: : Apparent solar time is derived from mean solar time, not the other way : around. Can you explain this, since I thought it was the other way around... Warner

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-01 Thread Rob Seaman
M. Warner Losh wrote: Rob Seaman writes: Apparent solar time is derived from mean solar time, not the other way around. Can you explain this, since I thought it was the other way around... We live in an empirical world. When investigating the behavior of a class of objects (or

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-01 Thread Daniel R. Tobias
On 1 Jan 2009 at 20:47, Rob Seaman wrote: So the point of that preface is that the meaning of the word mean depends on the purpose of the exercise. What does mean mean? Don't be mean about it! :-) -- == Dan == Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/ Dan's Web Tips:

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-01 Thread Steve Allen
On Fri 2009-01-02T00:10:10 -0500, Daniel R. Tobias hath writ: What does mean mean? Don't be mean about it! :-) In this particular arena, the accepted meaning of mean has been changed as it was handed along a chain of names, notably among them, but not limited to Ptolemy 150

Re: [LEAPSECS] Reliability

2009-01-01 Thread blb8
From: Rob Seaman sea...@noao.edu ... Like I keep saying, the mean solar day is trivial to compute from the sidereal day. Look at it this way, there are really 366.25 days per year. That extra day just gets sliced and diced among all the others. Nice, now we have extra days! A leap