Steve Allen wrote at 20:47 -0800 on Feb 9, 2008: > On Sat 2008-02-09T23:44:40 -0500, John Cowan hath writ: > > Steve Allen scripsit: > > > There are very few systems which are not POSIX compliant, and not > > > capable of updating their zoneinfo. > > > > I confess I didn't see where the satire came in until here. > > Can we identify and enumerate them?
'Twould take some time. All the same systems that could not update their leap seconds table... and more. Those systems that have no connectivity or no [easy] mechanism for receiving leap second updates (these are the systems for which people have mentioned they would like leap second tables out to 10 years in the future or more) will be similarly out of luck for receiving zoneinfo files. At least _some_ deployed systems have been manhandled (it's not pretty) to get leap second updates (via GPS, for instance). Those systems have no mechanism to get zoneinfo files. Not to mention many of these systems specifically and purposefully don't care about time zones _because_ of the zoneinfo updating problem. That said, I understand where you're coming from. Now if we could even take it a step further. If only we can convince people and their computer clocks to stop using UTC and just use TI (a non-leap-second timescale) for figuring out when to pick their kids up from school, then the systems I've described will no longer be mandated to provide UTC (!). Then the time everyone uses for daily life can freely drift off from solar time, our progeny can casually ponder the days when it used to be sunny at noon, and UTC can be relegated to historical applications of time rather than real time ones. Yes, that would make life easier for lots of systems. +1 p.s. add to the bureaucratic hurdles you mentioned the task of convincing the zoneinfo maintainers to sign on to the job of keeping leap seconds, too. Not rocket science, but it is more work for them to do. _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
