[LEAPSECS] alternative to smearing

[Steve Summit]

Warner wrote:
> There's problem, and trying to equivocate away by saying "well,
> if you just did it right it would be OK" isn't a helpful position.
> Requiring every computer to do complicated things so that a leap
> second can work once in a blue moon isn't a good engineering tradeoff.
> Ignoring the people that have actually implemented things when they
> tell you that it's a bad design isn't going to help make the design
> better.

Well, I will admit (I have even publicly admitted) that my quest
to improve the kernel's leapsecond handling is at least a little
bit Quixotic, but you know, your little lecture there would carry
more weight if those actually-implemented things *actually
worked*.  But what we have (and I know you know this, because
you were saying more or less the same thing a couple of days ago)
is a situation where we do all this work to ensure that
99.999998% of the time, our clocks are all synchronized to within
milliseconds of each other, and they never jump or run backwards,
because of course that would be Bad, but then, once every 18
months or so, and to no one's surprise, we *do* have a relatively
big jump, of a negative whole second!  Which we put up with!
And we're not even sure what will happen, all we know that it
*will* happen, and will keep happening every 18 months or so
until a miracle occurs.

I'm sorry, but in my book this is a bad design also, and saying
that it's fine, or that it's that way for good reasons (or that
it's more efficient, or whatever) isn't going to make things
better, either.