Greetings, especially to those in favour of stopping leap seconds!
A conference concerning astronomical software is coming up at the start
of October and there will be a discussion forum (BoF) on the leap second
proposals. The conference (www.adass.org) is mainly directed towards,
and attended by astronomical software engineers, a number of whom have
contributed to this list.
Part of the discussion forum will be to explain the background and
reasons for eliminating leap seconds. As a co-organizer it occurred to
me that rather than have your views espoused by "astronomer-types", who
you may imagine to be biassed, that you may wish to present a summary of
the reasons why you believe leap seconds must be discontinued.
If any of you will be in the vicinity of Madrid in the period Oct/03-05
(the BoF is yet to be scheduled) and would like to give a five to ten
minute presentation then we would be delighted to receive it. If you
can't attend, but could prepare a half-dozen or so slides (in whatever
format you desire), or perhaps some plain text that can be read out, I
will undertake to present it, verbatim, on your behalf.
As the audience will be scientific/technical in nature, a few well
chosen, specific examples that illustrate the technical aspects of your
argument would be most effective.
Mark Calabretta
ATNF
