[time-nuts] Re: UTC - A Cautionary Tale
Robert Lutwak
Lutwak at Alum.mit.edu
Sat Jul 16 07:37:01 EDT 2005
Rob Seaman wrote:
>Straightforward algorithms (a few lines of C) can convert standard time to
>local time and mean time to apparent time.
It ain't "...a few lines." Properly dealing with timezones, daylight
savings, and leapseconds can easily run into thousands of lines of code, by
the time you include of of the oddball irregularities around the world. Not
only does the clockmaker have to implement all of this garbage, he has to
test it all.
Personally, I'd like to eliminate timezones and daylight savings, as well as
leapseconds. Why is it so important that everyone on the planet clock in at
8 a.m. or that we all have dinner at 6 p.m. ?
It's not just for the clockmakers. I used to live in Ohio, just over the
Indiana border. Indiana doesn't do daylight savings, so half of the year my
town was on the same time as the next town over and half of the year they
were an hour different. Whose fault is it? Indiana, for non-conforming, or
the rest of us, for arbitrarily moving their clocks back and forth twice a
year?
-RL
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Robert Lutwak, Senior Scientist
Symmetricom - Technology Realization Center
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(978) 927-4099 FAX Lutwak at Alum.MIT.edu (Personal)
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