Hello, I am a new entrant into the leap second debate and I have just written a paper in which I have outlined what I think is the real problem with UTC and leap seconds as they are currently implemented and a proposed solution. I have put the article on my web page:
http://ivan.Harhan.ORG/~msokolov/articles/leapsecs.txt The short summary is that I believe the root problem is not the adjustments made to the civil time scale to match Earth's rotation, but the fact that UTC is not expressible as a real number. Read the article for a detailed explanation of what I mean by that. I encourage both pro- and anti-leap second advocates on this list to read my article since there is that slight possibility that the problem I point out (which I haven't seen anyone else point out so far) and the solution I propose might just be the breath of fresh air that both sides of the debate need, and my proposal would allow civil time to be well anchored to Earth's rotation without causing grief for computer systems like leap seconds currently do. (Hey Poul -- I'm the maintainer of 4.3BSD-Quasijarus, so I guess our operating systems are distant cousins :) BB, MS
