In Vox yesterday Matthew Yglesias argued that time zones ought to be abolished, writing "They were a good idea at the time, but in the modern world they cause more trouble than they are worth." It's tempting to agree. See: Yglesias M. The case against time zones: They're impractical & outdated. Vox 2014-08-05. http://www.vox.com/2014/8/5/5970767/case-against-time-zones Yglesias's underlying justification is essentially the same one that McCarthy and Klepczynski used in their proposal to discontinue leap seconds; see Steve Allen's summary of the resulting controversy in <http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/>.
On 07/08/14 00:39, Paul Eggert wrote:
In Vox yesterday Matthew Yglesias argued that time zones ought to be abolished, writing "They were a good idea at the time, but in the modern world they cause more trouble than they are worth." It's tempting to agree. See:
Yglesias M. The case against time zones: They're impractical & outdated. Vox 2014-08-05. http://www.vox.com/2014/8/5/5970767/case-against-time-zones
It seems to miss one fundamental fact ... That is currently how we work anyway. Any decent computer system is running everything on UTC and I've run the information systems that way for 20+ years. Timezones ARE the local schedules and do vary according to local dictates. They just provide a convenient way that those of us who need to check a train time across Europe can have some idea to the local time. If you scrap them then you need some means of managing a central repository of data on the replacement anyway? It's just called something else?
Yglesias's underlying justification is essentially the same one that McCarthy and Klepczynski used in their proposal to discontinue leap seconds; see Steve Allen's summary of the resulting controversy in <http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/>.
Now that is a different matter altogether. Just because some idiot decided that since time was based on seconds then we should count time from some arbitrary point was the mistake here. I've said before that I work with 'days' as the base unit and time is then fraction of a day. If one day just happens to be a second longer I can observe or ignore that fact :) We only need the tz database because we are working with a fixed clock. What that clock is locked to is nominally noon over Greenwich and because the rotation of the earth around the sun is not a constant, it's only an approximation anyway. That the approximation currently used only drifts a second every so often is probably testament to the achievements of the clock-makers of the past, and do we really know how today accurate that will be in 1000 years time? Just as we have leap years for dates, we need leap some-things for time and for the next 100 years seconds are as good as anything? It's only now we have a stable time source that we see the problem ... and that is perhaps because someone got the duration of a second wrong? Add a few more cycles to a second as they would have done 100 years ago by resetting the Greenwich clock :) -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
On 07/08/2014 4:52 AM, Lester Caine wrote:
It's only now we have a stable time source that we see the problem ... and that is perhaps because someone got the duration of a second wrong? Add a few more cycles to a second as they would have done 100 years ago by resetting the Greenwich clock :)
No, it's the length of the earth day that is changing over time as earth's rotation slows due to natural forces. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/why-in-the-jurassic-er... -- Oracle Email Signature Logo Patrice Scattolin | Principal Member Technical Staff | 514.905.8744 Oracle WebCenter Mobile applications 600 Blvd de Maisonneuve West Suite 1900 Montreal, Quebec
On 08/08/14 14:32, Patrice Scattolin wrote:
On 07/08/2014 4:52 AM, Lester Caine wrote:
It's only now we have a stable time source that we see the problem ... and that is perhaps because someone got the duration of a second wrong? Add a few more cycles to a second as they would have done 100 years ago by resetting the Greenwich clock :)
No, it's the length of the earth day that is changing over time as earth's rotation slows due to natural forces. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/why-in-the-jurassic-er...
Long term yes. Shorter term, say next 100 years, a small increase in period of a second would be a suitable alternative to the 'problem' of leap seconds ... -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
No, the real problem with the leap second is that it isn't predictable. Sometimes the observations make you require one, sometimes not, and there isn't a reliable way to predict this. Maybe a slightly longer second would lower the number of leap seconds needed but it would not eliminate it. Then what would be the point of going through such pain if the problem isn't fixed? On 08/08/2014 5:34 PM, Lester Caine wrote:
No, it's the length of the earth day that is changing over time as earth's rotation slows due to natural forces. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/why-in-the-jurassic-er... Long term yes. Shorter term, say next 100 years, a small increase in period of a second would be a suitable alternative to the 'problem' of leap seconds ...
-- Oracle Email Signature Logo Patrice Scattolin | Principal Member Technical Staff | 514.905.8744 Oracle WebCenter Mobile applications 600 Blvd de Maisonneuve West Suite 1900 Montreal, Quebec
Lester Caine said:
No, it's the length of the earth day that is changing over time as earth's rotation slows due to natural forces. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/why-in-the-jurassic-er...
Long term yes. Shorter term, say next 100 years, a small increase in period of a second would be a suitable alternative to the 'problem' of leap seconds ...
At the cost of changing every physical constant, starting with the force of gravity and the speed of light. -- Clive D.W. Feather | If you lie to the compiler, Email: clive@davros.org | it will get its revenge. Web: http://www.davros.org | - Henry Spencer Mobile: +44 7973 377646
On 15/08/14 21:02, Clive D.W. Feather wrote:
No, it's the length of the earth day that is changing over time as
earth's rotation slows due to natural forces. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/why-in-the-jurassic-er...
Long term yes. Shorter term, say next 100 years, a small increase in period of a second would be a suitable alternative to the 'problem' of leap seconds ... At the cost of changing every physical constant, starting with the force of gravity and the speed of light.
Helps to type first :( Finally somebody spotted the problem ... But if the original calculation of number of cycles for a second was wrong everything is wrong now anyway? :( -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
Lester Caine said:
But if the original calculation of number of cycles for a second was wrong everything is wrong now anyway? :(
It's not calculated, it's defined. The second *is* that number of oscillations of whichever atom it is, and the metre *is* the length that makes the speed of light the defined number. (I can't be bothered to look up either definition, but they're there.) -- Clive D.W. Feather | If you lie to the compiler, Email: clive@davros.org | it will get its revenge. Web: http://www.davros.org | - Henry Spencer Mobile: +44 7973 377646
On Aug 16, 2014, at 4:58 AM, "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive@davros.org> wrote:
Lester Caine said:
But if the original calculation of number of cycles for a second was wrong everything is wrong now anyway? :(
It's not calculated, it's defined. The second *is* that number of oscillations of whichever atom it is,
http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-1/second.html "The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom." (Extra nerdery follows that; for those who are curious at what *temperature* that's measured: "At its 1997 meeting the CIPM affirmed that: This definition refers to a caesium atom at rest at a temperature of 0 K. This note was intended to make it clear that the definition of the SI second is based on a caesium atom unperturbed by black body radiation, that is, in an environment whose thermodynamic temperature is 0 K. The frequencies of all primary frequency standards should therefore be corrected for the shift due to ambient radiation, as stated at the meeting of the Consultative Committee for Time and Frequency in 1999.")
and the metre *is* the length that makes the speed of light the defined number.
http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-1/metre.html "The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 of a second." although "The original international prototype of the metre, which was sanctioned by the 1st CGPM in 1889, is still kept at the BIPM under conditions specified in 1889." presumably for the lulz. The kilogram isn't quite so exotic: http://www.bipm.org/en/si/si_brochure/chapter2/2-1/kilogram.html "The international prototype of the kilogram, an artefact made of platinum-iridium, is kept at the BIPM under the conditions specified by the 1st CGPM in 1889 when it sanctioned the prototype and declared: This prototype shall henceforth be considered to be the unit of mass. The 3rd CGPM (1901), in a declaration intended to end the ambiguity in popular usage concerning the use of the word "weight", confirmed that: The kilogram is the unit of mass; it is equal to the mass of the international prototype of the kilogram. The complete declaration appears here. It follows that the mass of the international prototype of the kilogram is always 1 kilogram exactly, m() = 1 kg. However, due to the inevitable accumulation of contaminants on surfaces, the international prototype is subject to reversible surface contamination that approaches 1 µg per year in mass. For this reason, the CIPM declared that, pending further research, the reference mass of the international prototype is that immediately after cleaning and washing by a specified method (PV, 1989, 57, 104-105 and PV, 1990, 58, 95-97). The reference mass thus defined is used to calibrate national standards of platinum-iridium alloy (Metrologia, 1994, 31, 317-336)." Planck units: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units FTW.
"The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom."
So lets hope it was not a typing error and should actually be 780 ;) That is all I ment about 'calculated wrong' originally.
On 08/08/14 14:32, Patrice Scattolin wrote:
On 07/08/2014 4:52 AM, Lester Caine wrote:
It's only now we have a stable time source that we see the problem ... and that is perhaps because someone got the duration of a second wrong? Add a few more cycles to a second as they would have done 100 years ago by resetting the Greenwich clock :)
No, it's the length of the earth day that is changing over time as earth's rotation slows due to natural forces. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/why-in-the-jurassic-er...
Although it hasn't happened yet, it's possible to have a negative leap second: 59 seconds in a minute to correct a time. Although the long term trend is for days to get longer, in the shorter term the length of the day is chaotic and can go up or down. Much like stock prices :) Adding "a few cycles to a second" is not a sensible option. Both NIST (US) and the NPL (and the UK) would argue eloquently about that. ("The second is the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom.") jch
Swatch tried the timezone free time and it was a commercial failure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time Presumably people didn't see enough advantages in the lack of timezone to adopt the new convention. Note that for this to work, it would imply that the calendar and the day also has to be fixed in one timezone meaning that the transition between days will happen at different period of the local day, some switch at night, some in the middle of the day. On 06/08/2014 7:39 PM, Paul Eggert wrote:
In Vox yesterday Matthew Yglesias argued that time zones ought to be abolished, writing "They were a good idea at the time, but in the modern world they cause more trouble than they are worth." It's tempting to agree. See:
Yglesias M. The case against time zones: They're impractical & outdated. Vox 2014-08-05. http://www.vox.com/2014/8/5/5970767/case-against-time-zones
Yglesias's underlying justification is essentially the same one that McCarthy and Klepczynski used in their proposal to discontinue leap seconds; see Steve Allen's summary of the resulting controversy in <http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/>.
-- Oracle Email Signature Logo Patrice Scattolin | Principal Member Technical Staff | 514.905.8744 Oracle WebCenter Mobile applications 600 Blvd de Maisonneuve West Suite 1900 Montreal, Quebec
Note that for this to work, it would imply that the calendar and the day also has to be fixed in one timezone meaning that the transition between days will happen at different period of the local day, some switch at night, some in the middle of the day.
Exactly. Time zones allow us to have a relevant meaning for "today", "wednesday", "next saturday", etc. My son learned the days of the week as sing-song in preschool. I can imagine if we abolished time zones that it would go something like this: ♬ "There are seven-ish days, there are seven-ish days, there are seven-ish days in the week... Sunday-Monday, Monday-Tuesday, Tuesday-Wednesday, Wednesday-Thursday, Thursday-Friday, Friday-Saturday, Saturday-Sunday..." ♬
On Aug 6, 2014, at 7:39 PM, Paul Eggert <eggert@CS.UCLA.EDU> wrote:
In Vox yesterday Matthew Yglesias argued that time zones ought to be abolished, writing "They were a good idea at the time, but in the modern world they cause more trouble than they are worth." It's tempting to agree. See:
Yglesias M. The case against time zones: They're impractical & outdated. Vox 2014-08-05. http://www.vox.com/2014/8/5/5970767/case-against-time-zones
That certainly is pretty entertaining comedy. paul
On 07/08/14 15:20, Paul_Koning@dell.com wrote:
On Aug 6, 2014, at 7:39 PM, Paul Eggert <eggert@CS.UCLA.EDU> wrote:
In Vox yesterday Matthew Yglesias argued that time zones ought to be abolished, writing "They were a good idea at the time, but in the modern world they cause more trouble than they are worth." It's tempting to agree. See:
Yglesias M. The case against time zones: They're impractical & outdated. Vox 2014-08-05. http://www.vox.com/2014/8/5/5970767/case-against-time-zones That certainly is pretty entertaining comedy.
Certainly is. I was wondering what would happen in winter when some organisations change their office hours to avoid travelling to (or from) work (or school) in the dark? That would have a knock-on effect on train timetables so the train companies would adjust their schedules to match the demand and we'd get summer and winter timetables. What we really need is a very large array of mirrors and shades so that the entire planet has a common day/night schedule that is invariant through the year. jch
participants (9)
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Clive D.W. Feather -
Guy Harris -
John Haxby -
Lester Caine -
lester＠lsces.co.uk
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Matt Johnson -
Patrice Scattolin -
Paul Eggert -
Paul_Koning＠dell.com