[time-nuts] Re: UTC

Mike S mikes at flatsurface.com
Thu Jul 28 10:32:55 EDT 2005


At 08:29 AM 7/28/2005, John Ackermann N8UR wrote...
>Mike S wrote:
>>That is a deliberately misleading statement. It MUST be the case that the loss of life occurred due to and improperly designed, incorrectly specified, or improperly used system. The person/organization at fault seeks to misplace blame.
>
>that leap seconds will cause programming errors,

Programmers cause programming errors. Leap seconds may make them apparent.

>Certainly the death (if it occurred) was not an automatic result of the leapsecond, but rather was the result of something that broke because it wasn't properly programmed to deal with the leapsecond.

The counter argument is that removing leapseconds will break properly implemented systems in unknown ways, the blame will them be not with someone who did things in violation of a well documented specification, but with those who changed the specification in a fundamentally incompatible way for selfish reasons.




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