[time-nuts] Re: UTC - A Cautionary Tale

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Wed Jul 20 06:38:29 EDT 2005


In message <20050719.085848.10965548.imp at bsdimp.com>, "M. Warner Losh" writes:
>In message: <20050719105613.47749a7a.obyrne at iol.ie>

>OK.  For leap years, we know from 1500ish until ~4000 (assuming they
>change it) the rule will be:
>
>	if (y % 4 == 0) && (y % 100 != 0 || y % 400 == 0))
>		leap-year
>	else
>		not-leap-year
>
>This gives a mean year that's very close to the actual mean year.  By
>not having a leap year in the year 4000, 8000, etc, I believe that it
>arrives at an even close answer, but that hasn't been promulgated as a
>standard.

I was actually wondering about that -- does the pope still "own"
that standard/definition ?

>DUT1 can be as much as a
>half minute off and lots of people won't know and won't care.

Experience with daylight savings time and timezones indicate that
it can be two hours off and people still survive.

-- 
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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