In message <c222a54a-321e-4a5f-ad7a-efb12a4fd...@noao.edu>, Rob Seaman writes:
>Phrases like "tight coupling" are misleading. The ITU position >has only ever been to remove *all* coupling. On this list we have >often discussed various ways to relax the current constraints. It >is the ITU who have been inflexible. You are fudging things as usual. The ITU proposal does not in fact talk about civil time at all, it talks only about the timescale civil time is defined relative to: UTC. The relationship between civil time and earth rotation is already a decision for respective governments, who get to decide the offset between civil time and UTC for their country. History has shown that very few, if any, governments have been unable to carry through their more or less well thought out policies in this area. Should your local government decide to keep the difference between Earth Rotation and civil time less than some tolerance, they are free to do so, by adjusting the civil time-UTC offset as they please. As evidence of this, please note that there are plenty of timezones not using multiple of 3600 seconds offsets. The ITU proposal therefore neither loosens nor removes the coupling between civil time and earth rotation. The ITU proposal transfers that decision to the countries governments, where it belongs. Poul-Henning -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 p...@freebsd.org | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list LEAPSECS@leapsecond.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs