[LEAPSECS] Straw men

[Michael Sokolov]

Ian Batten <igb at batten.eu.org> wrote:


> > There are, for instance, ongoing Y2K-related issues.

> [Citation Needed]


I am continuing to deal with Y2K fallout issues in 4.3BSD-Quasijarus
to the present day, as it becomes apparent to me that my initial fixes
made just before the Y2K moment aren't good enough in the long term.
The most recent code change I've made in connection with Y2K was just
a few months ago in 2011-07: I have finally changed SCCS to use
4-digit years instead of just the last two digits.  The change I had
made earlier (just before the Y2K moment) maintained 2-digit years,
but made it roll over cleanly from 99 to 00.  Ditto in sendmail, troff
and other places: I had kept 2-digit years almost everywhere and
merely fixed things up so that 99 was followed by 00 rather than 100
or some other garbage.  It was only years later that I slowly realized
bit by bit that it was a poor solution and that the right thing to do
was/is to move to full AD year numbers.  If my memory serves me right,
it was 2004 when I finally implemented the RFC 1123 change of mail
header dates from 2-digit to 4-digit years, i.e., in early 2004 I was
still sending mail with dates reading xx Jan 04 and such.

The conversion to 4-digit years still isn't complete: 4.3BSD-Quasijarus
troff and nroff still have my old 2-digit hack, such that \n(yr
currently reads 12.


> The set of equipment that needs any time other than civil time is

> vanishingly small.


It isn't just equipment that matters, it's also people.  Every living
person has an inalienable right to choose which timescale s/he wishes
to use in his/her personal life.  Many people have chosen to live
their lives on mean solar time, and up to now have been relying on UTC
to provide a low-cost readily accessible form of it.  (Low cost
meaning not having to operate one's own high-precision observatory and
flywheel timekeeper, as each time station had to do in the pre-atomic
days.)

By fundamentally redefining the meaning of UTC (previous minor
redefinitions were mere technical changes as to means of achieving the
unchanged goal of serving something that can pass for MST, hence a red
herring) without changing the name, you are attempting to force other
people to change their personal timescales without them knowing it.
That is called fraud and ought to be subject to criminal prosecution.


> The question is, should the rest of us be obligated to use a time scale which

> causes us difficulties which we could fix easily were it not for the needs of

> a small scientific community?


If you prefer a leapless atomic timescale for YOUR personal life, you
have every right to it.  But pick a new name for it: you have NO right
to usurp the name "Universal Time" which others have already defined
to be THEIR timescale, suited to their purposes rather than yours.

MS