[time-nuts] FW: Bulletin C number 30

Magnus Danielson cfmd at bredband.net
Tue Jul 5 12:50:14 EDT 2005


From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk>
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] FW: Bulletin C number 30 
Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2005 16:40:54 +0200
Message-ID: <35307.1120574454 at phk.freebsd.dk>

Hej Poul-Henning,

> In message <6.2.3.4.0.20050705100343.0412ac70 at mjs.alientech.net>, Mike S writes
> :
> 
> >No, you didn't. What you and Warner HAVE demonstrated is that you
> >_chose_ the wrong time coordinate system for your systems/applications.
> 
> This made me laugh...
> 
> Ohh, how I wish I were in a position to tell POSIX: "Sorry, the
> time_t definition is wrong (and useless), fix it now please!".

OUPS! <quick Google search on POSIX time_t> BUT IT IS BROKEN!!!!
However, the ISO C standard has it (more) right. 

Now I learned something.

Haven't this been discussed with the POSIX people?

> Heck, I would even love get the Danish parliament to fix the law
> from 18mumble so it doesn't define legal time as "the mean solar
> time of the observatory in Copenhagen".

Some neighboring countries have aligned their normal and summer time as
offsets to UTC in law, with the shift between them coordinated with the EC.
Yes, you should have the Danish parlament moving in that direction.

> When you point out the mistakes and misunderstandings, legal will
> tell you that the specifications can not be changed "for contractual
> reasons".
> 
> If you insist, legal briefs the Mgt and your project leader will
> receive a memo from them saying merely: "Annex 9 shall happen as
> written."
> 
> Two years down the road, the customer will tell you "If only
> you had told us!" and sales will call it an "opportunity" and
> thank legal for preventing the programmers from screwing up
> our profit yet again.

In some buissnesses that works, in some it doesn't. There is ways to train the
management, but it takes time and patience. After letting the management learn
from expensive experience that some advice is best taken rather than overruled,
things get more on track.

Cheers,
Magnus




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