I view this incident with some relief. A mistake was noticed and addressed relatively quickly.
In a classic experiment by Rotter, people continued to believe the time given by a clock when it was running at only 25% its normal rate. Rotter, George. 1969. "Clock-Speed as an Independent Variable in Psychological Research." The Journal of General Psychology 81:45-52. So this incident makes me wonder how large a mistake could be and still escape notice or at least be tolerated. The redundancy created by getting time from multiple sources protects against this, but not everyone follows this practice, and even among those who do, if one source is viewed as more authoritative than others, the error could be still be accepted by some. I also hope that something gets published about this incident--particularly about how the problem was first discovered, the response and the fixes. Kevin K. Birth, Professor Department of Anthropology Queens College, City University of New York 65-30 Kissena Boulevard Flushing, NY 11367 telephone: 718/997-5518 "We may live longer but we may be subject to peculiar contagion and spiritual torpor or illiteracies of the imagination" --Wilson Harris "Tempus est mundi instabilis motus, rerumque labentium cursus." --Hrabanus Maurus "Matsakis, Demetrios" <[email protected]> Sent by: <[email protected]> 11/25/12 03:33 PM Please respond to Leap Second Discussion List <[email protected]> To "[email protected]" <[email protected]> cc Subject Re: [LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 72, Issue 3 Rumors that the USNO tried to insert a leap decade as an experiment are not exactly correct. See the message in http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/ntp.html. One of the 50-odd emails we got indicated that it would take working all night to undo the damage. A few responded that it was a good lesson for them - they would now configure their NTP to get time from multiple sources for error-checking. I'm not sure if there is a moral for this listserve. We all know that equipment can break, and humans can make mistakes. Those who are against leap seconds will say that this is yet another example showing that even so-called experts can make mistakes, so we should KISS-away all potential programming hazards. Those who support keeping leap seconds will say that if the world can survive a 12-year rollback, how could one measly second make a difference? And I suppose many on this list will have even more to say. ________________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of [email protected] [[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, November 21, 2012 12:00 PM To: [email protected] Subject: LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 72, Issue 3 Send LEAPSECS mailing list submissions to [email protected] To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to [email protected] You can reach the person managing the list at [email protected] When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of LEAPSECS digest..." Today's Topics: 1. yesterday USNO said it was year 2000 (Steve Allen) 2. Re: yesterday USNO said it was year 2000 (David Malone) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2012 09:46:48 -0800 From: Steve Allen <[email protected]> Subject: [LEAPSECS] yesterday USNO said it was year 2000 To: Leap Second Discussion List <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Various messages in admin support forums are indicating fallout from the event recorded here http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2012-November/053449.html wherein the USNO's NTP servers tick and tock briefly jumped 12 years into the past. -- Steve Allen <[email protected]> WGS-84 (GPS) UCO/Lick Observatory--ISB Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99855 1156 High Street Voice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06015 Santa Cruz, CA 95064 http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m ------------------------------ Message: 2 Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2012 11:20:27 +0000 From: David Malone <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] yesterday USNO said it was year 2000 To: Leap Second Discussion List <[email protected]> Message-ID: <[email protected]> > Various messages in admin support forums are indicating fallout > from the event recorded here > http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2012-November/053449.html > wherein the USNO's NTP servers tick and tock briefly jumped 12 years > into the past. Not just that, but Android 4.2 doesn't know about December: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2412287,00.asp David. ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs End of LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 72, Issue 3 *************************************** _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
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