> The serious timekeeping people gave up on rubberseconds in 1972 and > I will object with all that I can muster against reinventing them > to paste over a problem that has a multitude of correct solutions.
As I learned from a recent posting to this mailing list, it seems that even TAI has rubber seconds (adjustments to the rate is made from time to time to compensate for errors that have been accumulating, making TAI a better (more useful) approximation time). Do you object to those adjustments (rubber seconds) to TAI as well? If so, then what are we to do? (Even two atomic clocks will not run at exactly the same speed, and something must be done to cope with the fact that they will drift apart.) If not, then would you please quantify your threshold of objection regarding the size of changes to the rate of a second of TAI? Is it one ppm, 100 ppb, 10 ppb, 1 ppb, 10^(-10), 10^(-11), 10^(-12), or *what*? > > "Coordinated Universal Time with Smoothed Leap Seconds (UTC-SLS)", > > Markus Kuhn, 18-Jan-06. (36752 bytes) > > > > http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-kuhn-leapsecond-00.txt This draft bugs me a bit because it changes the length of a second (as seen by its clients) by a rather large amount (a thousand ppm). A change in rate of one ppm would not bother me, but that would take a bit more than 11.5 days to accomplish the change. A change in rate of ten ppm could accomplish the phase change with less than 1 day's warning before the UTC leap second insertion if accomplishing it could be split between the 50,000 seconds before UTC midnight and the 50,000 seconds after UTC midnight. Hmm.... -Tim Shepard [EMAIL PROTECTED]