Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> Sometimes it is civil, sometimes it is military, most of the time it is
> corporate.
We have frequently debated vocabulary here. This is why I suggested a glossary
would be a good idea.
"Civil timekeeping" has often been taken to mean something like "the common
worldwide timescale underlying the timezones and serving manifold purposes for
everybody excepts specialists (and often for them as well)". I reject the
attempt to equate "civil timekeeping" with "the big mess of timezones
administered by random governments worldwide including foibles like daylight
saving". In particular, the only reason DST works is that we have standard
time to fall back on, and the only reason the standard timezones work is that
they have UTC to fall back on.
> And finally: The reason I react to your mantra about "best systems
> engineering practises" is that the time window for that is long past,
Rather, the window was never opened. The ITU has done nothing except pursue
this one insipid initiative since day one and has trampled every effort at
consensus. They ignored the results of the meeting at Torino in 2003 and they
have refused to participate in this list.
System engineering is like quitting smoking. It's better if you start earlier,
but starting late is better than never starting. Arguing that an inherently
technical issue is best addressed by crappy engineering is - well - dumb.
Not to mention that the current standard is viable for centuries yet and any
haste was artificially injected by the ITU themselves in the first place.
> "Politics is the continuation of systems engineering with different
> means".
Hence:
http://www.archive.org/details/SF121
Rob
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