[Javascript] OT: leap seconds (was: Is integer?)

[tedd]

At 10:19 AM -0400 5/31/06, Steve Clay wrote:
>Tuesday, May 30, 2006, 7:24:19 PM, tedd wrote:
>> No, there is a lot of computation involved.
>
>David was just suggesting that, unlike leap years, you can't predict leap
>seconds with an algorithm alone; you need /observed data/.


I realize that, but there's more to it.

I said:

"... you don't even want to know the computations for that."

And he replied

"No computations in the world can help you with that...."

I think he misspoke himself and I was simply stating that a computation is different than an algorithm.


>We don't have to worry about leap seconds because Unix time isn't really a
>count of seconds, but rather a mapping of the first 86400 seconds of each
>UTC day. The mapping is discontinuous on longer/shorter days (eg. added
>leap seconds have no Unix time equivalent), but it guarantees that
>adding/subtracting 86400 always gives you the same time the next/previous
>day (if that time exists).
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_epoch#Encoding_time_as_a_number
>
>Steve

Well.. throw a couple of million years into it and see if your UTC day still works -- it won't.

One point here is that static "time" is based upon some notion that we have conjured up -- it doesn't exist in the real world and it's just like any other of our physical measurements which are based upon "standards" that are only standardized within our limits of observation.

Certainly an algorithm could be created to determine when to add a leap second, but our limits of observations error in greater magnitude than what we find acceptable for the algorithm.

I don't want to get into a discussion about this for two reasons: 1) It's off-topic for this list; 2) It really doesn't matter anyway.

tedd
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