[LEAPSECS] presentations from AAS Future of Time sessions

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Thu Jan 16 06:33:27 EST 2014


In message <2747CB51-6467-4A14-92BE-2299017559A5 at batten.eu.org>, Ian Batten wri
tes:


>That ship's already sailed. Days are the intervals between successive

>civil time midnights,


...except in Norway and Denmark, and a few other select countries where
our language as a word for "24 hour period" ("døgn") distinct from
the word for "day" ("dag").

The important thing to notice here, is that it's the local governments
choice of timezone that decides when civil time midnight is, relative
to earth rotation, and that is a non-smooth function of time in
most countries.

UTC was standardized exactly in order to get these legislators out
of international phone bills.

--
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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