On Wed 2003-07-02T15:45:44 -0400, Seeds, Glen hath writ:
> > From: Steve Allen [mailto:sla_at_UCOLICK.ORG]
> > Unlike the POSIX timestamping community which has buried its head
> > in the sand and refused to admit that time_t should be TAI, any
> > form of TI must be uniformly incrementing forever.
>
> There are several inaccuracies in this statement.
>
> The POSIX timestamping community has already had many long discussions of
> these issues. The current state of the standard reflects several realities.
I stand by the tense of my statement: time_t *should* be TAI in order
that POSIX timestamps can be unambiguous and monotonically increasing.
I fully recognize the realities that prevent it from being TAI. And I
applaud the POSIX Real Time folks for taking the broader view which,
when fully implemented, will permit compatibility with existing usage
as well as monotonicity.
The notion of DUTH in my proposal is the safety valve which permits
leap seconds to be ignored for 500 years while still demanding that
there be a mechanism which will handle the longer term problems. If
such a DUTH scheme were implemented it might still be that posterity
would decide never to increment it, but at least they would have the
option built into the systems of the world.
sign me
Waiting (but not holding my breath) for the SRG to take the same sort
of broader view with respect to civil time and broadcast time signals.
--
Steve Allen UCO/Lick Observatory Santa Cruz, CA 95064
sla_at_ucolick.org Voice: +1 831 459 3046 http://www.ucolick.org/~sla
PGP: 1024/E46978C5 F6 78 D1 10 62 94 8F 2E 49 89 0E FE 26 B4 14 93
Received on Wed Jul 02 2003 - 14:07:49 PDT