Re: [LEAPSECS] Precise time over time

From: Steve Allen <sla_at_UCOLICK.ORG>
Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 06:51:21 -0700

On Tue 2005-08-09T11:57:01 +0200, Poul-Henning Kamp hath writ:
> For some reason, the acronym POSIX comes to mind :-)

The POSIX time_t corresponds quite well to the way that civil time has
been maintained throughout history. I doubt that POSIX could have
done anything with time_t other than to supplement it with an
interface which was designed with uniform time in mind.

> FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe

Warner Losh has written to me about the references to FreeBSD in my
online bibliography. It is still not clear what FreeBSD actually
does with leap seconds, or whether the online documentation is
obsolete. It is clear that Warner Losh is thinking of changes:
http://groups.google.com/group/lucky.freebsd.standards/browse_frm/thread/7d1bc731550b39f1/95e6d49f9e5b33ca?lnk=st&q=%22leap+second%22&rnum=6&hl=en#95e6d49f9e5b33ca

No doubt there are a lot of other folks thinking of changes to their
leap second handling code in anticipation of the end of December.

And the media continue to tell the story
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.time08aug08,1,5872031.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines
Note the unfortunate factual error here. The year 1905 was during one
of the decadal fluctuations when the earth was rotating more slowly than
it ever has. It is quite wrong to say that a day today is longer than
a day in 1905.

--
Steve Allen                 <sla_at_ucolick.org>                   WGS-84 (GPS)
UCO/Lick Observatory        Natural Sciences II, Room 165       Lat  +36.99858
University of California    Voice: +1 831 459 3046              Lng -122.06014
Santa Cruz, CA 95064        http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/        Hgt +250 m
Received on Tue Aug 09 2005 - 06:51:35 PDT

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