[LEAPSECS] a modest proposal

Rob Seaman seaman at noao.edu
Fri Mar 28 18:55:26 EDT 2008


On Mar 28, 2008, at 5:22 AM, M. Warner Losh wrote:


> As someone who has been ill-treated by

> leapseconds, I fail to see why they are necessary in a society that

> accepts > 1hr deviation from solar mean time...


1) Again, this is confusing apparent solar time with mean solar time,
periodic effects with secular effects. Surely we would all choose to
solve some other less political technical issue by first correctly
modeling the physical behavior.

2) Have you been ill-treated by leapseconds or by badly designed and
implemented systems?

3) System engineering best practices exist precisely to make issues
evident to all stakeholders who may indeed fail to see the nature of
those issues at the beginning of the project.

We have yet to even begin a coherent process of characterizing what
the project "Civil Timekeeping v2.0" would consist of. Since the
current interim solution is viable for several centuries yet, what is
our hurry?

Rob Seaman
NOAO



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