Re: Proposal for a Smoothed Coordinated Universal Time(UTS)

From: Markus Kuhn <Markus.Kuhn_at_cl.cam.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 30 Oct 2000 15:25:43 +0000

"Clive D.W. Feather" wrote on 2000-10-25 20:37 UTC:
> This new UTS would have a second whose length is either 1.000, 0.999,
> or 1.001 SI seconds. No new problems.

I agree with everything, except for a tiny detail: The UTS proposal has
modified seconds that are exactly 1, 1000/999 or 1000/1001 SI seconds
long. That is slightly different from exactly 1.000, 0.999, or 1.001 SI
seconds. You could indeed also define UTS such that the modified seconds
are exactly 999/1000 and 1001/1000 ms long, but I consciously chose the
other option. It just depends on whether you prefer finite length UTS
decimal fractions at the beginning of each UTC second (as I do) or
finite UTC decimal fractions at the beginning of every UTS second.
Perhaps a matter of taste, which table representation you want to be
more intuitive. I looked for but could not find a really nice definition
of UTS such that both table representations have finite decimal
fractions.

Markus

--
Markus G. Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK
Email: mkuhn at acm.org,  WWW: <http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/>
Received on Mon Oct 30 2000 - 07:25:39 PST

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