Re: [LEAPSECS] Introduction of long term scheduling

From: Rob Seaman <seaman_at_NOAO.EDU>
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2007 12:12:53 -0700

Warner Losh wrote:

> leap seconds break that rule if one does things in UTC such that
> the naive math just works

All civil timekeeping, and most precision timekeeping, requires only
pretty naive math. Whatever the problem is - or is not - with leap
seconds, it isn't the arithmetic involved. Take a look a SETI_at_Home
and other BOINC projects. Modern computers have firepower to burn in
fluff like live 3-D screensavers. POSIX time handling just sucks for
no good reason. Other system interfaces successfully implement
significantly more stringent facilities.

Expecting to be able to "naively" subtract timestamps to compute an
accurate interval reminds me of expecting to be able to naively stuff
pointers into integer datatypes and have nothing ever go wrong. A
strongly typed language might even overload the subtraction of UTC
typed variables with the correct time-of-day to interval
calculations. But then, what should one expect the subtraction of
Earth orientation values to return but some sort of angle, not an
interval?

Rob
Received on Sat Jan 06 2007 - 11:14:00 PST