Steve Allen scripsit:
Nature interviewed Markus Kuhn about the leap second and did a good job.
UPI has turned the Nature story into an abomination; e.g.,
A total of 32 seconds have already been added over the decades, making
the year just over half a minute longer. I needed a good giggle
Rob Seaman scripsit:
No one has ever claimed that solar time won't face a challenge in the
far future. This proposal does absolutely nothing to address these
challenges - in fact, it complicates the issues by introducing a huge
unpalatable time step that will be no more predictable than leap
Clive D.W. Feather scripsit:
In the US I belive something is antique when it is 25 years old,
AFAIK that applies to cars only.
in Europe I think it has to be 50 years old to gain the distinction.
100 years.
Same in the U.S.
--
It was dreary and wearisome. Cold clammy winter still held
Steve Allen scripsit:
Australia's change to UTC is about to happen.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,12070,1556764,00.html
Another point made in the article, that GMT is a conventional name
for the U.K.'s LCT, is all too true. Recently I was to take part in a
teleconference
Clive D.W. Feather scripsit:
The problem here is Microsoft, whose software appears to believe that the
current LCT here is GMT Daylight Time.
How thoroughly stupid. Nevertheless, when I talked to the teleconference
organizer, it became thoroughly clear that for him GMT meant the time
on my
Rob Seaman scripsit:
I did find it striking, however, that the public confusion being
discussed was completely unconnected to issues of precision
timekeeping such as leap seconds. Rather, the very definition of
civil time was misunderstood, whether by Microsoft or by somebody
else.
I think
Steve Allen scripsit:
Yet the zoneinfo needs to be updated numerous times per year at
unpredictable intervals as a result of arbitrary actions by
legislatures all over the world.
Indeed, but the user has a substantial incentive to update to the latest
data if directly affected by the change:
Mark Calabretta scripsit:
Currently the timezone offset is essentially fixed for a particular
place, yes there are quirks but it's hardly relevant to the argument.
If by currently you mean at this very moment, then that's trivially
true. If by currently you mean in the last few decades, then
Ed Davies scripsit:
GMT is, unfotunately, widely used to mean the time in Britain
during winter.
Indeed, it is sometimes used to mean that even in the summer. There was
some confusion in my company last year about a teleconference scheduled in
GMT which turned out to actually refer to British
