[time-nuts] Re: UTC

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Thu Jul 28 14:06:00 EDT 2005


In message <90362.1122573870 at phk.freebsd.dk>, "Poul-Henning Kamp" writes:
>In message <m3k6jabyoh.fsf at lysator.liu.se>, Bjorn Gabrielsson writes:
>>mikes at flatsurface.com (Mike S) writes:
>>
>>> Programmers cause programming errors. Leap seconds may make them apparent.
>>>=20
>>> >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 wa=
>>sn't properly programmed to deal with the leapsecond.
>>>=20
>>> The counter argument is that removing leapseconds will break properly imp=
>>lemented systems in unknown ways, the blame will them be not with someone w=
>>ho did things in violation of a well documented specification, but with tho=
>>se who changed the specification in a fundamentally incompatible way for se=
>>lfish 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.
>
>My interpretation of this is that systems which assume that DUT < 1s
>fail, when leap seconds are applied.
                            ^
                           not

>That's probably true, but since DUT is only relevant if you study
>extraterrestial objects, we can safely assume that 99.9% or more
>of those systems involve astronomers and optics.
>
>-- 
>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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-- 
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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