On Jan 25, 10:31*am, nos...@de-ster.demon.nl (J. J. Lodder) wrote:
> Alan Browne <alan.bro...@FreelunchVideotron.ca> wrote:
> > On 2012-01-24 08:42 , Peter H. Coffin wrote:
> > > On Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:00:08 -0800, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:
> > >> What I find so frustrating about the whole situation is that this is
> > >> simply another case of daylight-savings-time. *Real computers (read
> > >> anything but the MS crap), already use seconds since some arbitrary
> > >> epoch to measure time. *The timezone and DST corrections are addedby
> > >> the display routines when the time is presented to the humans. *Itis
> > >> amazing (and frustrating) that leap seconds aren't accounted for in this
> > >> manner too. *If one needs to display the time one could just as easily
> > >> do as GPS systems do and add the accumulated leap seconds in the display
> > >> routines and internally use a linearly incrementing clock that adds one
> > >> second per second.
>
> > > It *shouldn't* cause problems. The NTP protocol datagram has indicators
> > > that account for leap seconds, which should be telling the recieving
> > > system "account for this if you haven't already". The actual number of
> > > seconds in the timestamp isn't itself adjusted, but the indicator is to
> > > keep the OUTPUT display properly calibrated if it hasn't been informed
> > > to otherwise."
>
> > Wolfgang is more worried about derivative products of the "time"
> > changing. *"Shouldn't" means a programmer _accounted_ for it. *Laziness,
> > budget, ignorance, laissez-faire attitudes (not to mention those who
> > deem the problem as non-problematic) mean there are oodles of code out
> > there that don't account for it and that might cause transient issues in
> > some systems.
>
> Sounds like a good reason for keeping leap seconds.
> The Y2K misery cleared out a lot of programming rubbish too.
>
> I still see nothing here beyond:
> We are incompetent, so the rest of the world must adapt to us,
>
> Jan
Of course you are incompetent but that is by choice and if you are all
so stupid to follow a system based on a continuous string of 24 hour
days in a 365/366 format and still conclude stellar circumpolar motion
equates to daily rotation,no wonder your fate will be similar to the
scientists who couldn't come to terms with the Piltdown Man episode.
You are from the Netherlands and can't understand the nominal
conversion of natural noon cycles to the 1461 AM/PM cycles which cover
4 circuits of the Earth when your countryman explains how the
averaging process takes place -
" Draw a Meridian line upon a floor and then hang two plummets, each
by a small thread or wire, directly over the Meridian, at the distance
of some 2. feet or more one from the other, as the smallness of the
thread will admit. When the middle of the Sun (the Eye being placed
so, as to bring both the threds into one line) appears to be in the
same line exactly you are then immediately to set the Watch, not
precisely to the hour of 12. but by so much less, as is the Aequation
of the day by the Table." Christian Huygens
http://adcs.home.xs4all.nl/Huygens/06/kort-E.html
Only when Harrison came along and created a set of Equation of Time
tables for a leap year and the extra natural noon cycle did the entire
system become complete and this is not rocket science,it takes only
the basic fact of 1461 rotations in 1461 days or one 24 hour rotation
is the same as one day.
The leap second dummies,and you may very well be one of them,have an
accumulative 4 extra rotations for those 1461 days so that since the
year 2000,the leap second guys have now 12 extra rotations up to Feb
29th 2012 that the Earth never had.
Here is what you software guys do,look at the rotation of the Earth
from space over a period of 24 hours within the present calendar
cycle,the day is May 29th 2008 and the Earth turned once that day as
it did the next day until you reach Feb 29th in a number of weeks and
that will be the 1461 st rotation -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxrIMHKobk0
Ah look,the mind of a programmer is generally wired differently than
those who can interpret observations and few can cross the divide,I
know this through Pascal who accurately commented on why genius is a
combination of mathematical adventure and intuitive restraint at some
times and the opposite at others,the person with the greatest balance
possesses both traits and while many have a strong mathematical
faculty,few have that intuitive sense as Pascal knew it.For these
reasons,every time I explain the highly intuitive spacial awareness
process which makes an astronomer what he is,you mathematicians
perceive it as a threat because it exists outside the confines of your
system.It is not only that the conclusions are wrong,it is the
muddleheaded manner in which these errors are made.
"The reason, therefore, that some intuitive minds are not mathematical
is that they cannot at all turn their attention to the principles of
mathematics. But the reason that mathematicians are not intuitive is
that they do not see what is before them, and that, accustomed to the
exact and plain principles of mathematics, and not reasoning till they
have well inspected and arranged their principles, they are lost in
matters of intuition where the principles do not allow of such
arrangement. They are scarcely seen; they are felt rather than seen;
there is the greatest difficulty in making them felt by those who do
not of themselves perceive them. These principles are so fine and so
numerous that a very delicate and very clear sense is needed to
perceive them, and to judge rightly and justly when they are
perceived, without for the most part being able to demonstrate them in
order as in mathematics, because the principles are not known to us in
the same way, and because it would be an endless matter to undertake
it. We must see the matter at once, at one glance, and not by a
process of reasoning, at least to a certain degree. And thus it is
rare that mathematicians are intuitive and that men of intuition are
mathematicians, because mathematicians wish to treat matters of
intuition mathematically and make themselves ridiculous, wishing to
begin with definitions and then with axioms, which is not the way to
proceed in this kind of reasoning. Not that the mind does not do so,
but it does it tacitly, naturally, and without technical rules; for
the expression of it is beyond all men, and only a few can feel it."
Pascal
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