Warner Losh <[email protected]> wrote: > The ITU standard is the standard for radio broadcast time. That's why > everybody broadcasts UTC (+/- some fixed offset) today. To conform with > international standards, they would broadcast the new timescale.
But how are you going to enforce it? Suppose "rogue" country X decides to operate, say, a 1 MW (megawatt) transmitter broadcasting a time code that deliberately disobeys the ITU-R recommendation. Furthermore, suppose that transmitter operates on a "squatted" frequency without asking anyone else for permission. The transmitter is physically located on the sovereign territory of country X, but its emissions can be easily heard well outside of that country. Are you (USA or whoever) saying you are going to drop atomic bombs on country X for doing this? > So the more pertinent question will be 'what are the labs going to do?' > since that's what everybody, or nearly everybody, will blindly follow. But not every country has its own time lab: some poorer countries (including most micronations) can't afford one. A country that can't afford its own time lab has to rely on the time broadcasts from other countries. However, such a country could choose to apply an offset to those foreign transmissions to get its legal time. Suppose that the time code transmitted by WWVx in USA, whatever its name, gets 1.5 s ahead of UT1. Let's say a hypothetical micronation located 14 nautical miles off the coast of USA chooses UT1 as the basis of its legal time, but can't afford its own time lab, so it has to rely on WWVx transmissions instead. The nation in question (micro or otherwise) could easily make a law that requires every user of WWVx transmissions to subtract 1.5 s from the time received from WWVx before using it in any legal context. Furthermore, if country X can afford its own time code transmitter but not its own time lab, it could set up equipment that receives foreign time codes, automatically applies an offset that is locally controlled to bring the time back into alignment with some form of MST, and retransmits it back out (maybe even at a megawatt or more on a squatted frequency) as "rubber time" that is directly usable as a realization of MST without the user having to apply any offsets. Or if a megawatt transmitter on a squatted frequency isn't an option, substitute a publicly reachable Internet server instead. > They are the domain experts, they deliver time to me, why would I > use anything else[*]? Religious/philosophical reasons. > Who wants to be the first lab that's the "odd man" out? The time community > is very tight knit and my sense is that peer pressure will keep everybody > doing the same thing. It is indeed rather unlikely that any of the already existing time labs would have the courage to act on a leap second notice sent from Daniel Gambis' personal Gmail account instead of the IERS servers, unfortunately. However, if some highly ideologically-driven nation that does not currently own a time lab ponies up the cash to set a new one up, it could very well be set up to deliver an atomic clock-based timescale that is steered into alignment with MST. MS _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
