leap second

[morwen]

breaking the long drought of leap seconds, the International Earth Rotation Service announced earlier this month there is to be an extra second on Saturday 31st December 2005, at midnight GMT. so it will go from 23:59:58 to 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 and then to 00:00:00 on new year's day.

many of us have wished for more time. what will you do with the extra second?

Comments

[vampwillow]

probably waste it, just like the rest of them ... ;-/

[lithiana.livejournal.com]

"International Earth Rotation Service"? and here i was thinking the earth rotated all by itself...

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

Hah, and I suppose you think continental drift just happens, too?

The IERS even has a website (http://www.iers.org/).

[lithiana.livejournal.com]

apparently, the US wants to stop the world turning remove leap seconds (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05210/545823.stm)...

[danalkaelra.livejournal.com]

So instead of telling programmers to write better software, they want to alter the measurement of time.

'it's not the program that's buggy it's your concept of reality'

[eldritchreality.livejournal.com]

That's the ultimate in the: "it's not a bug, its a feature" line of argument.

I can see it now, "Our software is futureproofed, we run on mordern up to date time 2.0, not that outdated badly designed time 1.0 you're all working with."

"You need to get new metaphysics before you can run our software. Your previous model is 6 billion years old, don't you think it's time to upgrade? We can assure you, the model we prefer is 100% made in the US, and guaranteed until the end of time"

That's a point, have any soothsayers popped up and made comments about the "end of time" yet? They've got to be able to get some serious milage out of this.

[abigailb.livejournal.com]

I think it's the people who made minutes sometimes have 59 or 61 seconds who are altering the measurement of time. Obviously they've won, and this is just an attempt to try and restore the old measurement of time.

[reddragdiva]

New Year's Eve will go up to eleven!!

[the_borderer]

Before i answer, just how much alcohol can someone drink in one second?

[alexa-jay.livejournal.com]

Funnily enough my first thoughts were alcohol-related.

[eldritchreality.livejournal.com]

depends on whether having it surgically pumped into your bloodstream counts as drinking or not.

[lady-miamew.livejournal.com]

Hey now that sounds a damn fine idea :o)