[LEAPSECS] UTC Redefinition Advanced

Jonathan E. Hardis jhardis at tcs.wap.org
Fri Oct 22 20:14:17 EDT 2010



On Oct 22, 2010, at 1:16 PM, Rob Seaman wrote:


> It will, for instance, cost astronomers many millions of dollars

> simply to restore current functionality to thousands of

> interoperating systems.


Oh ... come, come.

How do these "thousands of interoperable systems" currently get the
time?

You're free to insert an inexpensive interface box between your data
source and the systems that use the data that adds or subtracts
however many integer number of seconds you wish. For example, it
would be trivial to set a private collection of NTP servers that
provide a well-documented time offset from other NTP servers that
maintain UTC.

In other words, if you want a time scale that preserves leap seconds,
you're perfectly free to maintain one yourself for astronomical
purposes -- whether or not the rest of the world follows suit.

- Jonathan



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