[ntp:questions] Re: no more leap seconds?

David L. Mills mills at udel.edu
Thu Aug 11 18:02:31 UTC 2005


David,

I can tell you haven't read the white papers at the NTP project page. 
There is no hazard on the 2036 roll.

Dave

David Schwartz wrote:
> "Thomas A. Horsley" <tom.horsley at att.net> wrote in message 
> news:uacjp5p9a.fsf at att.net...
> 
> 
>>If both time systems are readily available on computers and you still 
>>argue
>>UTC should change, then what you are really arguing is that all the
>>programmers working on all these critical apps are too stupid to make the
>>right choice, and if you have such stupid programmers working on this 
>>stuff,
>>you have bigger problems than leap seconds :-).
> 
> 
>     Well, the facts are:
> 
>     1) A lot of current systems can't properly handle leap seconds.
> 
>     2) Those systems will have to be redesigned by 2038 anyway.
> 
>     What I advocated in 1998 when people were talking about the Y2K problem 
> was a new time standard for computers that wouldn't break in 2038 and could 
> properly handle leap seconds. However, on most current operating systems, 
> it's impossible even today to build code that will work in 2070.
> 
>     DS
> 
> 




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