For five years running the Chilean government has provided very short notice of
changes to the local daylight saving time rules. This year only 2.5 weeks
advance notice (shifting off DST was scheduled for March 8):
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.minenergia.cl%2Fministerio%2Fnoticias%2Fgenerales%2Fministerio-de-energia-anuncia-fechas-de.html
Chile's rules are familiar because many observatories are located in that
timezone, but presumably the same shenanigans play out worldwide. It is not
obvious why a couple of weeks notice is acceptable for hour amplitude clock
adjustments, but six months is not acceptable for leap seconds. And the IERS
has already indicated that the six months notice could be lengthened, rather
than shortened as with politically driven timezones.
While the talking point on this mailing list recently has been to hide the
solar time requirement under the rug in the timezone system, elsewhere they are
still talking about accumulating the embargoed leap seconds into leap minutes.
Again, not obvious why variable radix arithmetic is ok for minutes, but not for
seconds. Or for that matter why variable radix 25-hour or 23-hour days are ok
for drifting timezones or other variations of the leap hour notion.
Presumably the response will be that in each case the inevitable intercalary
adjustments will have been rendered less frequent. Less frequent but far more
disruptive and chaotic, and in the mean time UTC would no longer function as
Universal Time.
Rob
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