From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com>
Subject: Re: Leap Seconds
Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 02:01:18 GMT
Date: 2001-05-31T02:01:18+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <wccsnhme0pd.fsf@world.std.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 9f347i$jo1$1@nh.pace.co.uk
"Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com> writes:
> In any case, my point was that your watch and my watch can both be ticking
> off seconds in relative synch even though my watch says "4:30am, Tuesday"
> {actually it doesn't "say" anything - you have to look at it.} and your
> watch says "3:15pm, Wednesday" You can therefore safely ignore leap-seconds
> and leap-years as long as all we're doing is saying "Let's meet for a beer
> at Ruby Tuesdays in The Gardens Mall, Palm Beach Gardens, FL (free plug
> there, guys!) in one hour, thirty two minutes and 15 seconds." As long as no
> leap-seconds or leap-years happen between now and then, we're fine
> (depending on traffic).
I don't get it. If we both agree on when the epoch is, and we have a
way of counting seconds since the epoch, then we can agree to meet for
beer at 1,234,567,890.0 seconds after the epoch. It doesn't matter that
my clock shows a different time than yours (because I count leap seconds
and you don't, or because I don't believe in "nightdark wasting time",
or because we're in different time zones, or whatever).
Isn't all the leap-seconds business about converting to/from a human
readable form. I mean, leap seconds are exactly one-second long, just
like any other seconds. (Unlike leap years, which are longer than other
years.)
By the way, it seems to me that Ada *forbids* counting leap seconds, in
that the upper bound of Day_Duration is 86_400.0, rather than 86_401.0.
True?
> Time can be a *very* confusing business!
Indeed.
- Bob
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2001-05-31 2:01 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 43+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2001-05-25 14:17 Leap Seconds Marin David Condic
2001-05-25 22:02 ` Tucker Taft
2001-05-29 14:43 ` Marin David Condic
2001-05-29 16:02 ` Ted Dennison
2001-05-29 16:46 ` Marin David Condic
2001-05-29 18:38 ` tmoran
2001-05-29 19:26 ` Marin David Condic
2001-05-30 18:20 ` Wilhelm Spickermann
2001-05-30 18:55 ` Marin David Condic
2001-05-30 23:16 ` Larry Kilgallen
2001-05-31 6:34 ` Joseph P Vlietstra
2001-05-31 9:27 ` Wilhelm Spickermann
2001-05-31 15:31 ` Marin David Condic
2001-06-01 7:55 ` Wilhelm Spickermann
2001-06-01 13:34 ` Marin David Condic
2001-06-01 15:24 ` Wes Groleau
2001-06-01 16:18 ` Marin David Condic
2001-06-01 20:28 ` Wes Groleau
2001-06-04 13:54 ` Marin David Condic
2001-06-04 16:05 ` Wes Groleau
2001-06-04 16:15 ` Marin David Condic
2001-05-31 16:53 ` OT: Relativity misunderstood Wes Groleau
2001-05-31 17:20 ` Ted Dennison
2001-05-31 19:00 ` Wes Groleau
2001-06-01 6:49 ` Wilhelm Spickermann
2001-06-04 17:51 ` [OT] Black holes for interstellar travel (Re: OT: Relativity misunderstood) Jacob Sparre Andersen
2001-06-05 14:07 ` Wes Groleau
2001-05-30 0:42 ` Leap Seconds Arthur Evans Jr
2001-05-30 10:14 ` AG
2001-05-30 11:20 ` Larry Kilgallen
2001-05-31 16:34 ` Wes Groleau
2001-05-30 14:00 ` Marin David Condic
2001-05-30 15:33 ` Larry Kilgallen
2001-05-30 15:39 ` Marin David Condic
2001-05-31 2:01 ` Robert A Duff [this message]
2001-05-31 3:15 ` dale
2001-05-31 7:02 ` tmoran
2001-05-31 15:26 ` Marin David Condic
2001-05-31 16:39 ` Paul Storm
2001-06-02 6:40 ` Joseph P Vlietstra
2001-05-31 16:36 ` Wes Groleau
2001-05-31 18:12 ` Marin David Condic
2001-05-30 16:36 ` Darren New
replies disabled
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox