Why the U.S. Wants To End the Link Between Time and Sun

Re:Why the U.S. Wants To End the Link Between Time and Sun by kamjam on Wednesday August 29, 2012 @12:48PM (#4449548)

I know it's a joke, but it's lazy programming/lazy thoughts like this that caused the issues with the systems in the first place :)

Although I still don't fully understand why leap seconds caused such a problem - we can handle leap years and we can handle daylight savings, surely this is just another clock correction action such as these?

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Re:Why the U.S. Wants To End the Link Between Time and Sun by freehunter on Wednesday August 29, 2012 @01:25PM (#4449839)

The problem with programming for a leap second is you don't know when a leap second will occur. Compare this to a leap year, which happen every 4 years, always. Leap seconds are sporadic [1]. Programming a clock to accept the time of 11:59:60 only on occasion is trivial in a web app, but slightly more complex in a firmware or high-reliability system like flight controls.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second#Insertion_of_leap_... (see the chart at the side)

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Re:Why the U.S. Wants To End the Link Between Time and Sun by kamjam on Thursday August 30, 2012 @04:15AM (#4453580)

Thanks for the explanation, makes sense. I see what you mean about the sporadic nature of the insertions!

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