Slashdot Mirror
Vote To Eliminate Leap Seconds
Mortimer.CA writes "As discussed on Slashdot previously, there is a proposal to remove leap seconds from UTC (nee 'Greenwich' time). It will be put to a vote to ITU member states during 2008, and if 70% agree, the leap second will be eliminated by 2013. There is some debate as to whether this change is a good or bad idea. The proposal calls for a 'leap-hour' in about 600 years, which nobody seems to believe is a good idea. One philosophical point opponents make is that the 'official' time on Earth should match the time of the sun and heavens."
The French tried Decimal time (aka French Revolutionary Time) for a while, although of course the Chinese invented it.
Decimal time always reminds me of the scene in Metropolis with two clocks on the office wall -- a 24-hour clock and a 10-hour clock (the length of the workers' shifts).
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
I thought of this issue years ago, and had actually sat down and done the math at one point... basically, to solve the time discrepancy, just slightly lengthen the second. Everything lines up. Of course, every book, piece of software, scientific instrument, medical equipment, ... well, basically everything in human civilization ... would need to be re-build, re-calibrated, re-programmed, re-manufactured, etc. If nothing else, we'd stimulate the living hell out of the world's economy.
How about going the other way... leap microseconds. Many times during the day. Then nobody will hardly notice.
A leap minute every 10 years (or so)?
One event every 10 years does not cause lots of disruption, and being a minute out of sync with solar time is not large enough to be a problem. You'd notice an hour's difference if you're in a northerly latitude and have Daylight Saving Time...
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
The leap second is required because the earth's spin is slowing down in a complex, non-linear way.
Changing the length of the second simply won't work, in a couple of hundred years we'll be right back to where we started again. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second for details.
The leap hour is a daft idea, why change something that isn't broken, if a tad inconvenient.
DST is set by local governments. This is an entirely different thing, an international standards body messing around with time, instead.
BTW: I'm of the opinion that it's not DST that should be abolished, but non-DST. Non-DST time is a good mathematical division of the day, centred equally around 12:00 (+- 30mins). Unfortunately, as a society, we seem to have decided to centre our actual lives around 13:00 instead. Switching permanently to DST would fix this.
Inherently, those who want to get rid of leap seconds also want to get rid of time zones (at least they indirectly do).
Having our clocks NOT agreeing with astronomical time, completely eliminates all the benefits of time zones.
Whether you actively think about it or not, our sense of direction is substantially driven by the combination of our clocks, and the Sun. We use it as a reference all the time (why do you think it's harder to find your way in a new area, when it's dark?). Even if there's no other defining features, there's still the Sun to tell us which way is North (or South), and our clocks give us a reference to relatively where the Sun should be. Subtly change someone's clocks, and you'll see them having a slightly more difficultly with their (otherwise good) sense of direction.
Seems to me, the only argument here is that there are a few groups who _really_ just happen to need TAI time, but they see that it's just much easier to access sources of UTC time, and so want to redefine UTC (eliminating leap seconds) so that it is monotonic, and strictly corresponds with TAI at all times. Did I miss anything?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
From the article..There are two people, Tina Farrel and a sales assistant that need to be darwinised.
Its actually even worse.
You might think of the "9-5" workday when saying that the center is 13:00.
But in reality, its more like 15:00 (most people wont be a lot of time awake _before_ going to work, but lots of time after...
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Personally, I think the people who judge other people fit to be "darwinised" - especially based on a page-long Web article - are the ones we could do without, rather than the people who's worst known flaw is that they can't count below zero.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.