[LEAPSECS] Cheating means more planning, not less

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Sun Dec 28 09:57:41 EST 2008


In message <0B4062CC-0E7E-407F-A856-37F9C74DC081 at noao.edu>, Rob Seaman writes:

>I wrote:

>

>>> The ITU has a responsibility to consider options with a long term

>>> future.

>

>Poul-Henning Kamp writes:

>

>> ITU has no such responsibility:



>1) An organization with a limited scope (telecommunications) should

>not control a standard with a much broader scope (timekeeping).


People should not kill, machines should not fail, intelligent
discourse should not use should in passive form.

50 years ago, I might have agreed with you (NB: cheap claim, I'm not
that old).

But in the networked global village of this age, I do not: timekeeping
is very much a telecoms issue.

In fact, that is why we even debate leap seconds now: They are a
bump in the digital road.

Poul-Henning



--
Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.


More information about the LEAPSECS mailing list