Re: 'Leap Second' to Be Added on New Year's Eve This Year

["Björn Lundin" <b.f.lundin@gmail.com>]

On 2017-01-13 07:51, Tim wrote:

>>
> Speaking as a former programmer, for 99.9% of the programs out there, 
> adding a Leap Second doesn't really mean anything. Where it gets 
> interesting is when the program is dealing with seconds and portions of 
> seconds - sometimes very minute portions of seconds. Then one had to look 
> very closely at how one handles things. 

(just saw that I replied to not c.l.a)

Or just something trivial as church bells

Story in Swedish

<https://www.sydsvenskan.se/2017-01-02/kyrkklockorna-ringde-in-aret--i-nio-timmar>

 but the geist of it is that the
church bells were ringing early in the morning
(just after midnight that is) Jan 2nd
and not Jan 1st

The bells should ring in the new year, but failed.
This is the first time a computer controlled the ringing.

Now- I think the program was polling the time,
and when it polled 00:00:01 - and checked the date,
it actually found 23:59:60 and concluded that this is the
wrong day => do not start ringing.

The day after - at 00:00:01 it did the same thing, and
the bells started to ring in the new year - 24 hours too late...


Yes - I speculate - but I don't think leap seconds only affect
super-duper-time-sensitive calcuations.

--
Björn