[time-nuts] Re: UTC

Bjorn Gabrielsson bg at lysator.liu.se
Thu Jul 28 13:58:06 EDT 2005


mikes at flatsurface.com (Mike S) writes:

> 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.

How does a properly implemented system accounting for leapseconds fail
when leapseconds fail to come? Sure there will be unnessesary code
that could be removed. But I do not see why the system would break.

--
        Björn





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