This past week both Die Welt and Die Zeit ran articles on leap seconds.
In one Andreas Bauch of PTB has an unprecedented quote
Schlampig programmierte Software ist das Problem, nicht die Schaltsekunde
( translation
Sloppily programmed software is the problem, not the leap second
although one reference offers "slutty" as an alternative to "sloppy".
Upon reflection, I'd probably be a lot richer if I wrote slutty software.)
Of course I have already said that the root of the problem lies not so
much with POSIX itself, but with the proprietary nature of ITU-R
TF.460 which so obscured what POSIX needed to do that it contained the
concept of "double leap seconds" for a decade before it was corrected.
Also, this morning at 06:28 PST when I looked at my CDMA cell phone it
was telling me that it was 07:28. It was not until I cycled the power
that it bothered to note that daylight time had ended.
Next year there should be even more chaos as a batch of consumer
products in the US with embedded code that "just knows" the dates of
the US daylight time transitions will fail because congress decided to
save something like 0.3% of the annual US energy budget by increasing
the calendar interval during which daylight time will be in use.
Could it be that the public awareness generated by that will interfere
with any further attempts to modify the public perception of time?
--
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 Sun Oct 30 2005 - 07:23:09 PST