On Nov 17, 2011, at 8:29 AM, Warner Losh wrote: > That's the problem with leap seconds in a nutshell, btw. > > Nobody but extreme time geeks thinks about them. Nobody thinks they are > important. Nobody thinks that they matter.
They don't matter but civilization will topple if they exist? Cue the chorus: Leap seconds are a means to an end. The issue is redefining the meaning of Coordinated Universal Time. By all means debate alternate ways to meet the engineering requirements. > Lots of people have a "well, it's just a second, things will mostly self > correct if I screw it up, so why bother." It hasn't been until the last > decade that computers have been connected enough for it to start to matter > and all the "it doesn't matter to me, so screw everybody else" attitude is > getting in the way. The "screw everybody else" attitude is coming from the folks who can't be bothered to call a leap-less timescale "TI" as was decided in 2003. > The marketplace is voting with their feet that this standard is lame and not > worth doing right. The marketplace isn't voting at all. Ultimately physical reality wins all tie-breakers. And of course the ITU process has spurned the participation of railroads as it has everybody else. Rob _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
