US DoD Poll On Leap Seconds

@10u8 writes "For time scales to leap, or not to leap, has been the question here before. The ITU-R will be considering leap seconds again in a few weeks. This week the USNO posted a survey about leap seconds by the US DoD. The issue has civil implications as well as technical ones, and there is a demonstrated way to respect the history, remove leaps from navigation and POSIX time, yet keep the sun overhead at noon."

Comments

Kill DST instead!!!!

[wealthychef]

I'd be more interested in killing Daylight Savings Time than dealing with Leap Year.

Re:Kill DST instead!!!!

[Kjella]

Killing it? I want to change them completely, and wintertime too. Now, I live a bit further north than most people (60 degrees latitude) and what happens in the winter is that I, like most people, head to work in the dark and come home in the dark. Maybe you get to see some sun on your lunch break, but unless you got an office with a view you won't see much of it otherwise. If we have like 6 hours of sun, they should be 4PM-10PM so you can do some outdoor activity after work. What happens now is I sit indoors during the day because of work, and I sit indoors in the evenings because it's dark and cold outside. I haven't got any stats to back it up but I'd think most people work indoors these days, the reason to have light == noon so you could run around outside just isn't there. I'd be happy with mornings that suck (some more) and evenings that were bright and nice all year round.

Re:Automated and consistent leap seconds

[klapaucjusz]

There should be a planned algorithm that kicks in,

This assumes that we know when, in the future, we'll need to insert leap seconds. And we don't.

Leap seconds are introduced in order to compensate for medium-term variations in the earth's rotation speed. We don't have a good understanding of the way the earth rotates -- knowing what UTC time it will be in ten years' time is about as difficult as predicting the weather for next week-end.