On 13 Jun 2014, at 16:28, Steve Allen <[email protected]> wrote: > 2014-07-05: Birmingham and Cardiff > https://twitter.com/LeapSecondsUK/status/476691895469748225
I've signed up for that (it's actually in Tamworth, which is stretching the definition of "Birmingham" to breaking point). I'd be happy to turn up with "I am concerned about....but I have spoken to other stakeholders and they in contrast are concerned about....". I've attended early-stage government consultation exercises before, and I'm of the opinion that the most useful output from them is to get all the issues recorded, rather than attempting to influence one way or the other. My own views are that from the point of view of the general public, the problems (slow drift of mean noon) are in the noise floor compared to the error in mean noon across a time zone or the error in actual noon over the course of a year, and therefore the risk of problems ensuring from broken software mis-handling leapseconds are probably not justified. On the other hand, those same members of the general public are unlikely to be concerned about precise interval timing over midnights using time_t, and therefore have little to gain from changes to the current system other than (possibly) freedom from (possible) bugs in software. As there haven't been any general public affecting leap second issues so far, the benefits of any change are unlikely to be significant. So my gut feel is that "no change" is the most likely outcome, because the benefits to the public of the change are small, there are significant numbers of stakeholders for whom it will cause problems, and the British Way (TM) is that you leave alone unless there are clear benefits (see also: AV referendum). Therefore the most useful thing to do is record the stakeholders for whom it is a potential problem (people with DUT1-consuming equipment which assumes DUT1<1), note that the claimed benefits are rather nebulous, and quietly draw a veil over the whole thing. Remember, the starting position of the UK government appears to be "no change", so yelling "CHANGE THIS OVER MY DEAD BODY" is likely to make people look unhinged... ian _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
