Steve Allen wrote on 2011-11-08 17:27 UTC: > http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111108/full/479158a.html > > "they failed to reach a consensus"
Just for the record: the Nature article may give the impression that I said in the phone interview something along the lines of "Linux operating systems, for example, have experienced problems because they add the whole second in one abrupt jump at midnight, which confuses the software." In fact, I only said that this abrupt implementation of the leap second in the current Linux kernel *could* in theory cause problems because it makes computer time non-monotonic. I never said I know evidence of noteworthy real-world problems caused by Linux-style leap seconds. After all, misbehaving clocks are a common feature of the real world, and applications need to deal with them robustly in any case, with or without leap seconds. I believe that leap seconds cause only a tiny fraction of abnormal clock behaviour seen in real-world systems, and if they stand out then only because they are widely advertised in advance. In a discussion where the collection of evidence for leap-second caused real-world problems resembles the game "Chinese wispers", I'd rather not be seen contributing to the latter. I was also quoted as supporting the Google solution for implementing leap seconds. That's an oversimplification: for a more detailed review of Google's approach versus the UTC-SLS proposal, see http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/time/utc-sls/#google Markus -- Markus Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ || CB3 0FD, Great Britain _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
