Re: [LEAPSECS] a system that fails spectacularly

From: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk_at_phk.freebsd.dk>
Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2005 22:17:03 +0100

In message <004701c5fb6e$71df4880$b974b546_at_Fnord>, Brian Garrett writes:

>And you've gotta love the interpretation of UTC as "Universal Time Code" in
>the Canadian report. If they don't understand what UTC is, or at the very
>least understand that their users are going to be confused by their
>misleading use of the acronym, it's hardly a surprise that a leap second is
>going to pull the rug off their code and expose the bugs they've swept
>underneath it.

Some of us have been trying to drive this point though for some time:

  99.99% of all programmers have no idea what a leap-second is.

And these are the people who program the technology that runs our
civilization.

Think about it next time you press a button.


--
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk_at_FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
Received on Wed Dec 07 2005 - 13:27:39 PST

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