[LEAPSECS] Leap seconds decision deferred until 2015

[Steve Allen]

On 2012 Jan 19, at 17:41, Warner Losh wrote:

> I'm surprised that nobody had the 'announce earlier' or

> 'phase in DUT1 > 1s over decades' card out of their pocket.


At this point in history "predictable" is a red herring.  Yes, if a
scheme that involved "predictable" had been in place 30 years ago,
then that would be in use and things would be happier.  But at the
points that decisions were made there was no notion of such a scheme,
and by now it's too late.

For the systems that rely on leaps this ides makes the difference grow
outside of the bounds which are currently tolerated.  For the systems
which cannot tolerate leaps at all this introduces leaps which are
even bigger than the ones they can't handle now.

At this point a "predictable" scheme makes both sides less happy
than they are now, so that is not going to happen.

What is the goal?  I don't think the ITU-R saw it today.
Is the goal to make life easier for operational systems?
Is the goal to make life easier for bureaucrats?
Is the goal to preserve conceptual definitions?
Not all of those are attainable.

Any way it goes, many man years of effort will be expended.
There's no getting around that.  This is not going to be easy.
                                                                                 
--
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