Rob, To say that your unconvincing statement of conjecture as fact is getting a bit tiresome may be to understate the situation somewhat.
If you start with the name, the word that sets UTC apart from all the other UTs is the word "coordinated". That word refers to the coordination between the nation states as organized under the United Nations. Therefore UTC is not a mathematical timescale. Neither is it is a scientific timescale. Nor an astronomical timescale, It is the just, and only, the timescale nation states can agree and coordinate to use for transactions across borders. What they can agree on is up to the duly appointed representatives of these nation states. If the can agree to use rubberseconds, leapseconds, decimal hours or for that matter octal notation, then that is how they will agree to define UTC and that's the end of that: They own this timescale. What is very important to note is this: Nowhere does it say that any nation states notion or implementation of civil or military time must have any specific numeric relationship to UTC. If some country wants to run local time as determined by the kings wobly grandfather clock, then there is absolutely nothing to prevent them from doing so: They are a sovereign nation state. For instance the USA has a law that says "this or that secretary (commerce ?) decides what is legal time." and if that secretary does not like UTC, he can define US legal time to be based on the cherry blossom at the Tidal Pool, and there is nothing UN or ITU-R can do about it. All your interminable harping about civil time and its cultural roots and ramifications are issues you can and should take up with your local government, through whatever procedures and means your political system offers you. It has nothing to do with the definition of UTC: UTC is a timescale for coordination between nation states, and it must first and foremost serve that purpose. If the duly appointed nation state representatives in ITU-R decides that UTC does its job better without leap-seconds, then they can define UTC without leapseconds, if they can agree and coordinate to do so. Now, please stop the whining. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 [email protected] | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
