Re: [LEAPSECS] Consensus rather than compromise

From: Mark Calabretta <mcalabre_at_atnf.CSIRO.AU>
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 12:23:58 +1000

On Tue 2005/08/30 19:46:51 +0200, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote
in a message to: LEAPSECS_at_ROM.USNO.NAVY.MIL

>keep "the clock" as people see it on their wrist [1] in sufficient
>sync with the light of day through minor acts of timezone adjustments.

If such a system were to be adopted, then in future, in order to
determine a historical time, the full record of timezone changes would
be needed. For general purposes, a record would have to be maintained
for every civil administration that sets its timezone (I'm thinking of
/usr/share/zoneinfo). This would be a much bigger deal than the current
daylight saving switches.

Inevitably it also means that the world's timezones would fragment
as adjacent civil administrations adopted disparate policies on timezone
adjustment. And then, as the political map of the world changes, so
the record would become ever more hopelessly complicated.

Mark Calabretta
ATNF
Received on Tue Aug 30 2005 - 19:25:11 PDT