Poul-Henning Kamp says:
Other people think that by sheer majority of users, the UTC
timescale no longer belongs to the astronomers, and that it can and
should be redefined to serve its major target audience better.
You _really_ need to get out more...
I did get out more. I've been focusing on two other issues entirely
since scribbling that message. In the week or so since the message I
was replying to was written, there have been dozens of other things
going on. I will continue to return to UTC since it is an ongoing
problem. Glancing over my message, I regret deciding to throw
together a response - but it is hard to find time to give every issue
the time it deserves to polish one's responses.
That said, are you of the opinion that your limited perception of my
project list (or social calendar, for that matter) has anything at
all to do with resolving technical issues? As you say, some fraction
of the people interested in the topics of the definition and
transport of civil time believe that UTC is a throwaway time scale
that should be sacrificed for the greater good. Believing this does
not make it so.
Let me reiterate my core assertions:
1) Civil time is a subdivision of the calendar and is thus a
representation of time-of-day.
2) That said, one could imagine basing civil time on some time scale
other than UTC. This is a policy question that should be addressed
forthrightly, not via a tricky initiative involving a mid-level
bureaucratic committee. We aren't just talking about leap seconds,
we are talking about the definition of the concept of the "day".
This is a potentially explosive political, legal and religious
issue. Its current obscurity should not be taken for granted.
3) Whatever time scale civil time is based upon, the integrity of the
underlying time scale should be respected. UTC has an existence
separate from the ITU. It should be maintained whether or not civil
time continues to correspond to UTC.
4) The real issue is the improvement of systems, data structures, and
APIs used to transport time signals corresponding to multiple time
scales. The current proposal is as much an attempt to sweep this
important work under the rug, as it is an attempt to avoid subjecting
non-conforming systems to the horrors of leap seconds. Shame on
anyone who is looking for an easy way out.
Time is complex. Embrace the complexity.
Rob Seaman
NOAO
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