Hmm... there is certainly a problem when it comes to specifying legal time referring to the future: sun time is not predictable into the future with a high degree of precision. People wanting that kind of precision in legal documents would have two choices:
1) Specify local time in a location and juristiction where local time is legally determinable to high degree of precision within some specified prior time (e.g., 6 months). UTC+fixed local offset (allowing for DST) could serve this purpose, in juristictions where courts accepted it.
2) Use a uniform time scale, which would be disconnected from the sun. TAI could serve this purpose. Parties would have to accept that the specified time is not directly meaningful to humans. This would not be useful to most people, but could be useful for contracts where precise duration is more critical than human readability.
/glen
-----Original Message-----
From: Leap Seconds Issues [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf
Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: December 22, 2003 4:20 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] the legacy of ephemeris time
Steve Allen scripsit:
> I assert that there is no need to disengage civil time from the sun
> just to satisfy the users of precision time. Is there any argument
> which can justify why civil time needs to be precise and uniform to a
> millisecond?
I believe there is. Disclaimer: I am *emphatically not* speaking for
my employer here.
Currently, the problem of simultaneous transactions in the world's financial
markets is handled by three things: 1s accuracy is considered good enough,
transactions are inherently serialized by individual market systems, and
distinct markets are not strongly coupled. None of these things is going to
persist, and that in a timescale of years, not centuries. In order to
correctly coordinate transactions in multiple markets, it will be necessary
to achieve subsecond accuracy in LCT -- LCT, because it is LCT that is legal
time.
--
It was impossible to inveigle John Cowan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Into offering the slightest apology http://www.reutershealth.com
For his Phenomenology. --W. H. Auden, from "People" (1953)
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