-------- In message <[email protected]>, "Daniel R. Tobias" writes : >On 31 May 2015 at 19:33, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: > >> Most likely, at some random time after the leapsecond, your clock >> steps a second. > >...which is basically how most computers deal with time >synchronization, excepting the minority that actually attempt >continuous high precision and accuracy; the computer's clock, not all >that accurate a timepiece, drifts off from external standards within >the period (hours, days, weeks) between synchronizations, and has to >step a few seconds one way or the other to catch up (possibly >smoothed out to prevent discontinuities that harm processes in >progress); the leap second, if any, is lost in the noise.
I have no idea what kind of computers you are talking about here, but your description has very little to do with the computer where leap-seconds matter. You may be right for the typical kids game-computer and the computer in your set-top-box, and for such purposes I doubt leap seconds are going to wreck havoc[1]. I'm talking about "work computers" (and so is Microsoft Azure) and here timekeeping matters, because otherwise emails are after the replies to them, databases don't agree about stock, medicine does not live up to FDA rules etc. etc. etc. In this world, NTP rules, PTP is the up and coming kids where it really matters, and leap-seconds are not at all lost in the noise. The big problem here, is that we have lost a generation of good IT-people to the dot-com period[2], and they think, like you seem to think, that "What Me Worry?". [1] Although, if all Playstations and X-Boxes suddenly go into a full CPU-spin at the same time, that might tilt certain weaker electrical grids. [2] The IT profession grew by a factor of about 1000 during the dot-com years. Everybody who could sit still in front of a keyboard and read an O'Really? book was suddenly a web-programmer. It is probably historys greatest dumbing down of any trade - ever - and we're still spending a lot of our energy educating these people. -- 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] https://pairlist6.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
