[LEAPSECS] An example

Steve Allen sla at ucolick.org
Tue Nov 2 15:48:05 EDT 2010


On Tue 2010-11-02T18:55:17 +0000, Poul-Henning Kamp hath writ:

> >The existing international agreement for the meaning

> >of "day" is "mean solar day".

>

> You mean "one of the existing..." ?

>

> The astronomical meaning of the word day may indeed be what you say,

> but the equally internationally agreed standard for computer operating

> systems define a day as 86400 SI seconds.

>

> The question is which one ITU-R adopts.


I would like to have the citations for such agreements.

The POSIX standard admits that its "seconds" are not all of the same
length, and for practical purposes that makes them "mean solar
seconds", not "SI seconds" nor "seconds of TAI".

I'm not interested in this as "I win"; rather to explore more of how
the status quo is "We all lose" and where it is that effort is needed
to clearly document that status quo.

--
Steve Allen <sla at ucolick.org> WGS-84 (GPS)
UCO/Lick Observatory Natural Sciences II, Room 165 Lat +36.99855
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