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Playing With Atomic Clocks At Home
Wired is running a profile of the Time Nuts, a small group of people who buy surplus precision time equipment — cesium clocks for example — on eBay and keep really accurate time, because they can. The article quotes Tom Van Baak, who has outfitted a time lab superior to those of many small countries: "If you have one clock... you are peaceful and have no worries. If you have two clocks... you start asking, 'What time is it, really?'"
...Some people have too much time on their hands.
=Smidge=
Real men just run ntpd and let the whole world keep time for them.
Hammer time.
...who can have two or more clocks and not constantly ask myself "what time is it?... really?"
Anyone can make the world keep time for them. Only real men can make the sun keep it for them.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
If you really, really know what time it is. You will find yourself quite lost. Darn that Heisenberg!
Break the sound barrier - bring the noise.
This is really the first post; your clocks just don't agree with mine.
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Your missing out if you only skimmed the article. Make sure you find this gem:
When the family returned to the suburbs two days later, the cesium clocks were off by the precise amount relativity predicted. He and his family had lived just a little more life than the neighbors.
An amazing PROOF that time is actually affected by gravity. We still know so little (ahem) relatively about time in physics, that seeing evidence of it being manipulated in this manner is awesome. will there be giant contained gravity wells in ambulances to slow time while patients are rushed to the hospital? Will I be slowing down time so I can get First Post AND spell check? The possibilities are endless!
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
NTPD isn't good enough for me -- bad weather on the Internet has caused my server to loose synchronization one too many times, which can be mighty irritating when comparing your log files with those of other systems. On the other hand, acquiring an atomic clock seems a bit over the top to me. So, I figured a good compromise solution would be to connect a GPS receiver to my serial port and synchronize NTPD to that. I've ordered a Garmin GPS 18 OEM LVC that I will receive later this month (hopefully). According to these instructions it's not that difficult to set up, while the result is microsecond precision on Linux 2.6 and nanosecond precision on BSD -- good enough for me. All you need to do is to make sure that your GPS device has a reasonable view of the sky.
Isn't it obvious? It wasn't relativity, the family lived an extra 22 milliseconds because they drove up a mountain and were closer to God. That's the only logical solution, I can't see this "gravity" you speak of. Every time someone has a problem with time physicists think they can solve it just by throwing a few nanoseconds at it. Ridiculous...
They got the saying all wrong. It goes "A man who wears one watch always knows what time it is; a man who wears two watches is never sure."
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
What's the fascination with uber-accuracy at home?
They are calling these "clocks" only because that is what the typical reader understands. A better term is "frequency standard". There are many uses for a stable frequency, the most common one is running a microwave transmitter. This is the major source of the surplus devices too, from cell towers. As the phone companies modernize equipment these "clocks" find their way to eBay and then into people's houses.