From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,TO_NO_BRKTS_FROM_MSSP autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,9fbc059a74d74032 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-05-29 09:03:17 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!feed.textport.net!news-out.nuthinbutnews.com!propagator!feed2.newsfeeds.com!newsfeeds.com!newsranger.com!www.newsranger.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada From: Ted Dennison References: <9elpii$30i$1@nh.pace.co.uk> <3B0ED67B.E40A4E06@averstar.com> <9f0ciq$itb$1@nh.pace.co.uk> Subject: Re: Leap Seconds Message-ID: X-Abuse-Info: When contacting newsranger.com regarding abuse please X-Abuse-Info: forward the entire news article including headers or X-Abuse-Info: else we will not be able to process your request X-Complaints-To: abuse@newsranger.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 12:02:33 EDT Organization: http://www.newsranger.com Date: Tue, 29 May 2001 16:02:33 GMT Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:7846 Date: 2001-05-29T16:02:33+00:00 List-Id: In article <9f0ciq$itb$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says... > >Further research into leap-seconds indicates that effectively, they are >unpredictable. The International Earth Rotation Service sort of announces .. >Now I'm wondering what I'm supposed to do with the requirement that I count >them??? :-) I once worked on a project where we had a requirement to never loose an inter-process message, and to hold the client and all recipients until we knew it was received by all designated recipients. The more astute of you out there will immediately recognise this as a variant the "Byzantine Generals Problem". We were not so astute, unfortunatly. I find the best thing to do in these situations is to find some desirable extra that you were going to add anyway, or would be trivial to add (there's always a few of those once development starts), and "trade" it for the impossible requirement with your customer. Do this after pointing out to them that they have asked the physically impossible, preferably using supporting material from scholarly sources (eg: the website you mentioned). This is also a good way to get rid of other requirements that are way more expensive to implement than they are worth (in that case, you use a good estimate of the financial impact of adding the feature as your supporting material). --- T.E.D. homepage - http://www.telepath.com/dennison/Ted/TED.html home email - mailto:dennison@telepath.com