Re: [LEAPSECS] ITU-R SG7 to consider UTC on October 4
In message 20100809104622.gc32...@davros.org, Clive D.W. Feather writes: Poul-Henning Kamp said: and we have a constitution for Denmark that has relevant wording in it. Pardon me for being confused, [...] In Denmark the parliament reigns supreme, (Note to constitutional writers: This is a _really_ bad idea for a one-chamber setup!) and if they say that the law meant to say UTC+1h that's what the law means, even if they do not put it directly in a law. The courts will defer such questions to the legislature unless there are other controlling documents (human rights, EU treaties etc). That was a separate point. You said that the EU directive redefines the basis of legal time in Denmark (this was in the context of UT v UTC). It does. They ratified the EU directive in a Danish law, most recently (http://retsinformation.w0.dk/print.aspx?id=22064) which defines that DST (sommertid) starts 02:00 (local time) (etc). So now we have: A) The law about determination of the time says solar time at -15long. B) EU directive says DST starts at 01:00Z C) directive ratifying law says that is 02:00 local time. Ta-dah! Thanks to the wonder of sloppy legislating and a lack of a constitutioal court in Denmark, Denmark is now aligned to UTC while still having a valid, in force, law on the books that says something different. But it is the directive that links to UTC, not the law: You only find the link if you read the underlying EU directive. 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
Re: [LEAPSECS] ITU-R SG7 to consider UTC on October 4
Steve Allen wrote: Listen to the BBC. Many of the readers will announce that it's X o'clock GMT when that means X o'clock British Summer Time. BBC World Service announces X o'clock Greenwich Mean Time and really means GMT. (The immediately preceding pips are synchronised to UTC, not GMT, but the voice announcement doesn't have sub-second precision.) BBC services aimed at the UK tend to say X o'clock, not stating a timezone, and mean UK civil time. Do you have a specific citation for an instance where they got it wrong? Something that *does* say GMT and mean UK civil time is Microsoft's timezone software. The listing GMT London, Dublin refers to UK/Irish civil time (UT+0h/UT+1h). GMT Casablanca refers to Morocco civil time, which from 1979 to 2007 conveniently happened to be UT+0h all year round: in the late 1990s I used this as the only way to get a Windows desktop machine to stick to UT. From 2008 Morocco has switched back to a UT+0h/UT+1h arrangement, but of course with different transition dates from the UK. Zoneinfo suggests that Moroccans have never actually called their UT+0h offset GMT. -zefram ___ LEAPSECS mailing list LEAPSECS@leapsecond.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
Re: [LEAPSECS] ITU-R SG7 to consider UTC on October 4
Steve Allen wrote: The way that zoneinfo is structured gives the impression that POSIX systems (and anything which handles local civil time in a roughly equivalent way) could handle such a name change, Zoneinfo doesn't model the differences between flavours of UT, or indeed any sub-second effects. So yes, it can handle the name change, presuming that we treat TI as a flavour of UT for this purpose. (While it's certainly not a flavour of UT for many other purposes, not least the plain definition of UT.) -zefram ___ LEAPSECS mailing list LEAPSECS@leapsecond.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
Re: [LEAPSECS] ITU-R SG7 to consider UTC on October 4
In message 4c607952.2090...@yahoo.com, Michael Deckers writes: They ratified the EU directive in a Danish law, most recently (http://retsinformation.w0.dk/print.aspx?id=22064) which defines that DST (sommertid) starts 02:00 (local time) (etc). I am confused: there is no time scale specified in the Danish law quoted. Do you mean that the reference in the footnote is supposed to include the Danish text of a European Directive into Danish law, without even explicitly quoting it? Yes. So now we have: A) The law about determination of the time says solar time at -15long. B) EU directive says DST starts at 01:00Z No. The text of European Directive 2000/84/EC of 2001-01-19 is issued by the EU in 22 languages, all with equal standing. For the time scale determining the beginning and end of summer time, these translations refer to: [...] -- World time with UTC in parentheses in 1 case (DA), and And since this one is controlling for Denmark, Denmark is now on UTC+1h/2h timescale. In my opinion, this shows that the Directive does not intend to prescribe the time scale. Or do you think that it was the idea that the Danes and Slovenes should follow UTC while the British follow GMT? Then certainly the Welsh, Gaelic, Catalan, Basque,.. people would want to have their own versions! I have personally helped installed TCP/IP on all computers in the European Parliament in an earlier job. I met a LOT of the translators back then. I can tell you that a detail like the proper name for a timescale does not even register on their radar. So yes, I will argue that the directive specifies that all countries in EU change summertime at the same exact instant and that this is defined on the UTC timescale, which people call all sorts of different crap for historical, and in the case of GMT, hysterical, reasons. I can absolutely guarantee you, that if your argument is that the directive does _not_ say they should switch the same instant, you will have absolutely no traction in the EU-mindset, which is hell-bent on unifying the countries to a degree you can not even begin to fathom. 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
Re: [LEAPSECS] The Debate over UTC and Leap Seconds
In message: 20100809222912.gb8...@ucolick.org Steve Allen s...@ucolick.org writes: : The Debate over UTC and Leap Seconds : : is the title of a paper from the AIAA last week with contribution : from P. Kenneth Seidelmann : : It is probably the most comprehensive publicly-available paper since : the Metrologia paper many years back. : : It's available at : http://www.agi.com/downloads/resources/user-resources/downloads/whitepapers/DebateOverUTCandLeapSeconds.pdf A very insightful description of UT1: ... thereby making UT1 a very close approximation to the mean diurnal motion of the Sun and the best indicator of astronomical time of day presently maintained. Wouldn't that also make UTC also an approximation of the mean diurnal motion of the sun which isn't the best indicator of astronomical time of day, but still a very good approximation? When the law says Mean Solar Time, and there's a number of different ways to compute a mean solar time, which mean solar time is the law of the land? UT1? The noisier UT2? UTC? They are all approximations of mean solar time with differing degrees of error... Both UT1 and UT2 have changed how they are computed over the years. Are the laws specific as to how the mean solar time is computed? Warner ___ LEAPSECS mailing list LEAPSECS@leapsecond.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
Re: [LEAPSECS] The Debate over UTC and Leap Seconds
On Mon 2010-08-09T19:40:18 -0700, Steve Allen hath writ: On Mon 2010-08-09T17:32:47 -0600, M. Warner Losh hath writ: When the law says Mean Solar Time, and there's a number of different ways to compute a mean solar time, which mean solar time is the law of the land? UT1? The noisier UT2? UTC? They are all approximations of mean solar time with differing degrees of error... Both UT1 and UT2 have changed how they are computed over the years. Are the laws specific as to how the mean solar time is computed? Laws are rarely so specific, they dare not be lest the legislators be continually revising them as a result of changes in commonly accepted practice. Laws usually get no more specific than to refer to a particular code book from some trade organization. The details are left to the practitioners, and disputes to judge and jury. As I review the proceedings of the 1966 CCIR plenary in Oslo I note that the CCIR was itself not totally prescriptive. From 1951 through 1970 the relevant CCIR recommendation for broadcast time signals was number 374. As of 1966 it was at revision 374-1. At least one of the changes was to specify that broadcast signals should be within 100 ms of UT2 (which had not existed until 1956). The recommendation allows for signals to be with or without a fractional offset in carrier frequency, and I expect that was to allow for the variations in practice between stations using various technologies. Most of the rest of the recommendation is basically codification of the existing practices of the time service bureaus. That is to say, CCIR was leaving the particulars to the discretion of the practitioners. At that date the publications of the BIH indicated that those stations attempting to track UT2 using a frequency offset were not calling their broadcasts UT2. I suspect that is because they knew the difference between the broadcasts and UT2 was always significant. In the 1966 proceedings are reports from the many studies then in progress, and many directives for more studies. In particular was a directive to find a way to synchronize all broadcasts to 5 us (a mile of navigation). The amount of scholarship, research, and activity indicated by the 1966 proceedings is far beyond anything I've seen WP7A do about UTC. -- Steve Allen s...@ucolick.orgWGS-84 (GPS) UCO/Lick ObservatoryNatural Sciences II, Room 165Lat +36.99855 University of CaliforniaVoice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06015 Santa Cruz, CA 95064http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m ___ LEAPSECS mailing list LEAPSECS@leapsecond.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
Re: [LEAPSECS] ITU-R SG7 to consider UTC on October 4
On Aug 9, 2010, at 2:55 PM, Michael Deckers wrote: The text of European Directive 2000/84/EC of 2001-01-19 is issued by the EU in 22 languages, all with equal standing. For the time scale determining the beginning and end of summer time, these translations refer to: -- Greenwich time in 4 cases (EL, ET, HU, LV) -- Greenwich time with GMT in parentheses in 1 case (SV) -- Greenwich mean time in 5 cases (EN, FI, LT, MT, SK) -- Universal time in 5 cases (ES, FR, IT, PT, RO), -- Universal time with GMT in parentheses in 1 case (PL), -- World time (a term for UT according to the IAU) in 2 cases (DE, NL), -- World time with GMT in parentheses in 1 case (CS), -- World time with UTC in parentheses in 1 case (DA), and -- Universal coordinated time in just one case (SL). (Thanks to Steve Allen who first did this comparison.) In my opinion, this shows that the Directive does not intend to prescribe the time scale. Doesn't this show even more clearly that to the EU's translators there is no distinction whatsoever between Greenwich Mean Time and Universal Time in all these variations? The ITU's shell game depends on UTC being legally separable from GMT. This is yet another example of how unlikely it is that such is possible. Rob Seaman NOAO ___ LEAPSECS mailing list LEAPSECS@leapsecond.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
