Re: [LEAPSECS] Mechanism to provide tai-utc.dat locally

From: Zefram <zefram_at_fysh.org>
Date: Tue, 26 Dec 2006 12:40:29 +0000

M. Warner Losh wrote:
>Actually, the real answer is domain specific. There are many things
>that don't really care (when do I need to make the next 20 house
>payments, off by one second just doesn't matter at all since
>transcations are batched on a daily basis a few days early).

In that case you don't really want a TAI<->UTC conversion. You want
an estimate of TAI<->UT1. Possibly you'd prefer an exact TAI<->UTC
conversion but want to fall back on the planetary rotation estimate in
the event that UTC isn't defined that far yet. The point is that you're
asking a different question from the one that elicits "I don't know".

>Writing a library that copes with both types of users can be
>problematical at best...

I think a different library is required. One is about atomic timekeeping,
the other is about astronomy.

-zefram
Received on Tue Dec 26 2006 - 04:41:12 PST