On Feb 14, 2006, at 2:28 PM, M. Warner Losh wrote:
Requirements should be kept separate from implementation. Whatever the underlying timescale, certain external global requirements apply. Whether NTP or some other implementation properly captures those requirements is a separate issue and should be treated as such. My understanding of the point you are making is that given an infrastructure like NTP that (more-or-less) assumes an even interval time scale, that UTC timestamps are indeterminate (to some level of precision) in the absence of a table of DTAI. Of course, given an accurate UTC clock, TAI is indeterminate without that same table of DTAI values.
As has been repeatedly emphasized, astronomers are serious users of *both* UTC and TAI. UTC is not always "best", rather different purposes require different time scales. Many of us happen to think civil time - on planet Earth - should remain some variant of UTC/GMT. That current implementations of the UTC standard have shortcomings is no surprise.
Leap seconds aren't needed by users - they are required by UTC that is needed by users for various purposes.
Now who is chauvinistic? Surely we could design a series of experimental programs to address these issues in an unbiased fashion. Is this a controversial statement? Rob |
- Re: An immodest proposal M. Warner Losh
- Re: Ambiguous NTP timestamps near leap second Markus Kuhn
- Re: Ambiguous NTP timestamps near leap seco... Steve Allen
- Re: Ambiguous NTP timestamps near leap seco... Warner Losh
- Re: An immodest proposal Markus Kuhn
- Re: An immodest proposal Rob Seaman
- Re: An immodest proposal M. Warner Losh
- Re: An immodest proposal Neal McBurnett
- Re: An immodest proposal M. Warner Losh
- Re: An immodest proposal Poul-Henning Kamp
- Re: An immodest proposal Rob Seaman
- Re: An immodest proposal Poul-Henning Kamp