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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."
Just hang on a sec....
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've been keeping time with my sundial and temple-top observatory the way Ra intended! Damn you kids and your new-fangled timekeeping.
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.
In other news, people in 2612 voted to put off the issue of 'leap hours' until 16412, where they propose to add a 'leap day', ostensibly in February.
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...
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This is why I refuse to set the time on my VCR...
788652 = 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 19 x 1153
Yeah, because the best way to to deal with a small problem is to put it off until it becomes a really big problem.
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Or better, wake up at 256, eat lunch at 512 andd GOTO sleep at 1024.
Um... isn't the whole point of this article that some people think it's a good idea? TFS even says there is debate over whether it is a good or bad idea!
It gets worse than that, even.
What is a year?
Is it the time from perihelion to the next perihelion?
Is it the time from zenith on the shortest day to zenith on the shortest day next year?
Is it the time for when a star within our galaxy is in the same position again?
Is it the time for when a star outside our galaxy is in the same position again?
The earth's orbit rotates, and the solar system rotates, in a galaxy that rotates. And speculation is that the universe rotates too.
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.
One swallow does not a fellatrix make
Leap years are to deal with correcting the length of the year, which isn't an integral number of days. Leap seconds are to deal with the fact that the length of a day changes slowly and at a variable rate. It's not the same problem at all.
Yay, imperial time!
The smallest unit is the "Moment", and then the "While" (or, less used, the "Whilst"). A while is about 14.4 moments. Then you have the "long while", which is 13.8 whiles, then the "time", and "long time"...
For example, it took me a while and three moments to write this comment. I'm not a quick typer...
Tis women makes us love, Tis Love that makes us sad, Tis sadness makes us drink, And drinking makes us mad.
Run computers on TAI (International Atomic Time). Keep it constantly flowing, and never add or remove seconds, as per the definition. Then simply calculate UTC in software from a published leap offset between the two, which compensates for the leap seconds:
UTC = TAI - leapseconds
Then define all the timezones off of UTC as normal. All this basically does, is make the calculations for the timezones into a few hours plus or minus a few seconds. This makes a lot more sense, because then you actually have a fundamental time (TAI) which doesn't have discontinuities, but if you want to consider your astronomical orientation, you look at UTC or your local time. We don't need to redefine these types of time, because these already exist. We just need to use them more intelligently.
There were 240 pence to the old (pre-decimalisation) pound, comprised of 20 shillings each worth 12 (old) pence. Do you remember guineas, crowns, half-crowns, shillings, tanners (6-penny piece), threepenny bit, pennies, half-pennies, farthings (a quarter penny)? I do. I suspect that I am quite a bit older than you and I cannot ever remember there being 120 pence to the pound. So either please provide a citation or confess that you are mistaken/talking bollocks. :-)
But the main thrust of your post was correct with regards to dividing sums of money easily. Or at least it was until the education system decided that mathematics and mental arithmetic were not the most important subjects in life. I'm not sure how some of today's young people could cope with such problems.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
16412 is also a leap year The extra day in February would be the ultra rare 30th of February. It's worth doing even if you have to wait 14405 years for it work.
Travelling forward in time at a rate of 1 second per second.
That would be an interesting transition period as people got used to indicating or recognizing the numbers 4 or 128...
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
That's a long time to wait for a birthday for the poor kid born on Feb 30th!