Re: [Phys-L] Leap Second Computer glitches

[Chuck Britton <cvbritton@embarqmail.com>]

The inconvenient beasties that I was referring to were the occasional 
Leap Seconds.

They are just as random as the Leap Days that we have all learned to 
accept and to deal with.

Many in the High Tech community would like to do away with these Leap 
Seconds because they evidently don't know how to deal with them. (Or 
aren't willing to deal them yet.)

To them , I say, Get Over It. Learn to DEAL with IT.
.
At 12:56 PM -0700 7/2/12, John Denker wrote:
> On 07/02/2012 11:33 AM, chuck britton wrote:
> >  Many in the IT community want to do away with these inconvenient
> >  beasties - but I think a better plan is to learn to deal with them.
>
> I'm not sure what "beasties" that refers to.
>  -- If we are talking about gross failures of scheduling systems,
>   the only way to deal with the failures is to make them go away.
>  -- If we are talking about leap seconds in connection with civil
>   time, they are not going away any time soon.
>
> That may look like a dilemma, but it's not.
>
> There is a straightforward way to avoid any dilemma:  Do not use
> civil time for timestamping, sequencing, or interval calculations.
> Readily-available alternatives include TAI and TDB:
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Atomic_Time
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycentric_Dynamical_Time
>
> I note for example that the "qmail" program uses TAI for timestamping.
> This makes sense.
>
> Sooner or later it will be considered programming malpractice to use
> UTC for timestamping, sequencing, or interval calculations.
>
> Alas I'm not holding my breath.  There is a certain /major/ software
> vendor that still sets the hardware clock to *local* civil time ...
> not even UTC ... even on laptops that can easily move from one timezone
> to another.  I wonder whether they even know how to spell TAI.
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