[time-nuts] Nutty time-nuttery with WWVB

Ruslan Nabioullin rnabioullin at gmail.com
Thu Nov 10 17:56:34 EST 2016


On 11/10/2016 05:10 PM, Artek Manuals wrote:
> I think you have missed the point this is not so much about keeping time
> down to the nano-second

I was suggesting NTP, not PTP.

> The WWVB clocks being discussed here come in a plethora of decorator
> styles and display varieties ( though most are old analog dials) some up
> to 3' in diameter.. They are battery powered so one does not have to
> connect them to external power source.  They serve a dual purpose ....
> for the lady friends who keep us fat and happy they are pleasing to the
> their sense of form and feng shui (If momma aint happy ..aint nobody
> happy)

Then find a more rationally-minded wife or partner.

  .  For the engineer in us we know that the time is accurate to
> the second and we don't have get out the step ladder to crawl up there
> and reset the clock twice a year when daylight savings changes over.
> When I was a road warrior I had a wrist watch that kept WWVB time and I
> always knew down to the second how much time I had before I missed the
> next flight or train out of Dodge. ( I haven't worn a watch by the way
> since I retired in 2008 !)
>
> Nowadays I suppose you could build/buy one that talks to your WLAN but I
> suspect the battery life is not quite as good as the current WWVB
> version which can run off a watch battery for 5 years.

Well you would have to bother with the rather-pointless project of 
building a WWVB simulator, taking care not to cause interference. 
Stationary clocks do not have to be battery-powered.  Yes, battery life 
would obviously be a problem for typical smartwatches, but assuming a 
rational mind, virtually everyone will opt for a smartwatch over a 
WWVB-synchronized dumbwatch, despite the battery life penalty incurred.

> On the other hand
> I know I can sleep better at night knowing my WWVB clock has not joined
> the dark side and is mindlessly helping the terrorists bring down the
> power grid 8^(

What a brilliant idea---lets refuse to embrace computerization and the 
transition to Internet-of-things (which should've happened in the 80s) 
out of fear of the expansion of botnets; furthermore, lets roll back 
computerization, and maybe even eliminate all computers?  Why have 
progress when we can have regress?  Of course, we shall disregard the 
fact that there are a wide array of all sorts of security 
countermeasures (correctness proofs, sourcecode auditing, multifactor 
authentication, ASLR, DoD-style MACs, firewalls, IDSs, honeypots, 
tarpits, etc.) and the fact that all properly-designed high-security 
and/or critical systems are either completely air-gapped (SIPRNet, 
JWICS, NSANet, stock exchange internal networks, etc.), or are 
unidirectionally interfaced with the Internet (many SCADA sites, etc.)

-Ruslan


More information about the time-nuts mailing list