Hi

If you have a “zero option” then nothing ever gets tested. It always sits at 
zero and gets ignored. If you 
dither back and forth +/- 1 second, it’s tested every month. The faulty system 
that does not follow the
signal gets spotted and fixed.

Bob

> On Jul 21, 2016, at 3:03 PM, Tom Holmes <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> Hi Tom...
> 
> Does your proposal allow for a Zero leap second, or does it require either 
> plus or minus 1 to work? Seems like you could stay closer to the true value 
> if you also have a zero option. Might also cause less consternation for some 
> services, like the finance and scientific worlds, that seem to have critical 
> issues when an LS appears.
> 
> I like your point that by having it occur monthly it forces systems to 
> address issues promptly, and maybe that's the argument for the non-zero 
> option.
> 
> Tom Holmes, N8ZM
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: time-nuts [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tom Van Baak
> Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2016 1:28 PM
> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement <[email protected]>
> Cc: Leap Second Discussion List <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Leap second to be introduced at midnight UTC 
> December 31 this year
> 
> Time to mention this again...
> 
> If we adopted the LSEM (Leap Second Every Month) model then none of this 
> would be a problem. The idea is not to decide *if* there will be leap second, 
> but to force every month to have a leap second. The IERS decision is then 
> what the *sign* of the leap second should be this month.
> 
> Note this would keep |DUT1| < 1 s as now. UT1 would stay in sync with UTC, 
> not so much by rare steps but by dithering. There would be no change to UTC 
> or timing infrastructure because the definition of UTC already allows for 
> positive or negative leap seconds in any given month.
> 
> Every UTC-aware device would 1) know how to reliably insert or delete a leap 
> second, because bugs would be found by developers within a month or two, not 
> by end-users years or decades in the future, and 2) every UTC-aware device 
> would have an often tested direct or indirect path to IERS to know what the 
> sign of the leap second will be for the current month.
> 
> The leap second would then become a normal part of UTC, a regular monthly 
> event, instead of a rare, newsworthy exception. None of the weird bugs we 
> continue to see year after year in leap second handling by NTP and OS's and 
> GPS receiver firmware would occur.
> 
> Historical leap second tables would consist of little more than 12 bits per 
> year.
> 
> Moreover, in the next decade or two or three, if we slide into an era where 
> average earth rotation slows from 86400.1 to 86400.0 to 86399.9 seconds a 
> day, there will be zero impact if LSEM is already in place.
> 
> /tvb
> 
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