[LEAPSECS] Leap smear

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Tue Sep 20 05:53:26 EDT 2011


In message <5739CD71-48B7-4F98-9BA5-93F0DAAB0FD3 at noao.edu>, Rob Seaman writes:


>The whole point of DST is an adjustment from a norm.


Now you are making even less sense than usual.

The whole point of DST is not "adjustment from a norm", that would
be rulemaking for rulemakings sake.

The "whole point of DST" are some vague economical and dubious
quality-of-life arguments, and it has absolutely nothing to do with
leap seconds, except to show that

A) Changes to civil time are not only feasible but also relatively
painless, provided computers are programmed to deal correctly with it.

B) Earth Orientation is not important at sub-half-hour precision.

--
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.


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