[ale] OT ntp - leap second - how many knew what this was 3 weeks ago

[Ed Cashin]

I thought I had read this article by Google recently,

  http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/time-technology-and-leaping-seconds.html

... but time flies.  It's from last September!

I remember shaking my head and thinking that smearing the leap second
seemed fairly obvious but that there are surely several patents held
already and more applications in the pipe.

On Wed, Jul 4, 2012 at 10:39 AM, Ron Frazier (ALE)
<atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Around the beginning of this year, I was doing quite a bit of research into
> ntp and gps and eventually set up my own gps based ntp time server in both
> Linux and Windows. At the end of June, a leap second was inserted into the
> time sequences of the clocks on Earth. For those that may not know what that
> is, the atomic clocks are coordinated with the earth's rotation, so, for
> example, when the clock says noon, the sun is always roughly overhead.
> However, the earth's rotation speeds up and slows down at times.
> So,sometimes, we have to tweak the clocks to match the earth again. At the
> end of June, an extra second was inserted. Normally, the seconds go 58 ...
> 59 ... 00. This time, they went 58 ... 59 ... 60 ... 00. As it turns out,
> this crashed a number of servers.
>
> I find this very interesting, and somewhat scary as a potential programmer.
> Since I'm thinking of learning programming again, and since I have an
> interest in timekeeping, I have considered writing a world clock program
> etc., to show the time in different parts of the world. However, prior to my
> NTP research, I never knew about the leap second. So, there would have been
> a good possibility, had I written the program prior to this year, that my
> program would have crashed as well.
>
> So, my question is, how many of you knew about leap seconds prior to this
> incidence of it and prior to my describing it. If you were writing a clock
> program, would you have known to account for this?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
>
> --
>
> Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9 Mail.
> Please excuse my potential brevity.
>
> (To whom it may concern. My email address has changed. Replying to former
> messages prior to 03/31/12 with my personal address will go to the wrong
> address. Please send all personal correspondence to the new address.)
>
> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
> call on the phone. I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
> mailing lists and such. I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)
>
> Ron Frazier
> 770-205-9422 (O) Leave a message.
> linuxdude AT techstarship.com
>
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-- 
  Ed Cashin <ecashin at noserose.net>
  http://noserose.net/e/
  http://www.coraid.com/