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Re:Some DNS lookups causing 5xx errors due to leap second bug by ChuckMcM on Sunday January 01, 2017 @02:02AM (#13294967)
Once again we're screwed by different people wanting "time" to mean different things. There is no hope for humanity once we start traveling anywhere close to light speed into and out of the solar system.

I propose a new "non-time" time system. It has exactly two real values which range from 0 to tau and an integer, the first real number is radians of earth rotation, and the second is radians of the rotation around the Sun. The integer reflects the number of complete cycles. So lunch time in Greenwich 'pi'.

It has the benefit that its "source" is actually the planet, so we can use a telescope at Greenwich to pick a certain alignment of stars as the "zero", "zero" point and then each time it realigns to that exact point, you can increment the "year" count.

I believe we can build a robust system to support this out of stone. We'll need to create a circle of stones but using a small hole drilled through a stone and a marker on the ground we can always identify 0.0,0.0, 0.0,pi/2, 0.0, pi, and 0.0, 3*pi/2.

Re:Some DNS lookups causing 5xx errors due to leap second bug by vacri on Sunday January 01, 2017 @03:52AM (#13295150)
> It has the benefit that its "source" is actually the planet, so we can use a telescope at Greenwich to pick a certain alignment of stars as the "zero", "zero" point and then each time it realigns to that exact point, you can increment the "year" count

If you're going for such drastic change to get rid of the occasional minor issue with leap seconds, then a star clock is a bad idea - the stars move relative to us and each other. The constellations we look upon are differently arranged to the ones Julius Caesar & Co looked upon. You're basically swapping one source of error for another.

Similarly - the oddity of choosing a planet-based time system for the synchronisation of clocks moving interstellar distances? How do they accurately measure time when they're no longer on the planet? And, as others have mentioned, the reason why we have leap seconds in the first place is because the length of a day (and of a year) changes.

It's also worth noting that when stonehenge was used to mark the time, webpages came in the form of bardic tales. If your bard was asleep, you get a 500 error... and they were asleep a lot. Stonehenge time was terrible for information delivery :)

Re:Some DNS lookups causing 5xx errors due to leap second bug by notyourwork on Sunday January 01, 2017 @02:30AM (#13294996)
> Once again we're screwed by different people wanting "time" to mean different things. There is no hope for humanity once we start traveling anywhere close to light speed into and out of the solar system.

Time is relative, you'll have the feeling of angst until you accept the relativity. No pun intended.

Re:Some DNS lookups causing 5xx errors due to leap second bug by tezza on Sunday January 01, 2017 @02:50AM (#13295031)
and if the earth speeds up or slows down we loose sync with far off time keepers who dont know yet ?

mostly this is tektonic re-adjustments on a minor level or asteroid strike on a major level. of course you could say that an asteroid strike would be a larger problem than re-syncing the stone clock

Re:Some DNS lookups causing 5xx errors due to leap second bug by perennate on Sunday January 01, 2017 @02:19AM (#13294983)
If we somehow manage to "reverse" the Earth's orbit around the sun, does that mean we will have invented a time machine?!
Re:Some DNS lookups causing 5xx errors due to leap second bug by cmdrfred on Sunday January 01, 2017 @11:38AM (#13296215)
I'd be more impressed with a machine that can decelerate the earth and reverse it's spin direction without killing everyone as opposed to a time machine personally.
Re:Some DNS lookups causing 5xx errors due to leap second bug by semi-extrinsic on Sunday January 01, 2017 @06:47AM (#13295478)
This isn't exactly HN style, but here ya go...

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/f3/f7/7e/f3f7...

Re:Some DNS lookups causing 5xx errors due to leap second bug by pizza on Sunday January 01, 2017 @02:35AM (#13295006)
Re:Some DNS lookups causing 5xx errors due to leap second bug by EGreg on Sunday January 01, 2017 @02:15AM (#13294977)
What if the stones move?
Re:Some DNS lookups causing 5xx errors due to leap second bug by ChuckMcM on Sunday January 01, 2017 @02:28AM (#13294994)
Guess we better use really large stones :-)
Re:Some DNS lookups causing 5xx errors due to leap second bug by Godel_unicode on Sunday January 01, 2017 @03:00AM (#13295050)
You do know that stars move, right? And not even all in the same direction or at an easily predictable speed.

It's illustrative about how hard time is that you tried to create a new system from scratch, with the express purpose of being future proof for space travel, and it's already broken because the fixed point you chose is not, in fact, fixed.

Edit: grammar

Re:Some DNS lookups causing 5xx errors due to leap second bug by carbocation on Sunday January 01, 2017 @03:04AM (#13295058)
I believe that ChuckMcM is making a lighthearted, elaborate reference to Stonehenge. (If not, nevermind!)
Re:Some DNS lookups causing 5xx errors due to leap second bug by ChuckMcM on Sunday January 01, 2017 @04:38PM (#13297520)
It has been interesting to see the responses. And yes it was a not so oblique reference to Stonehenge. :-)