Re: [Gnu-arch-users] s/GMT/UTC/

[Cameron Patrick]

Andrew Suffield wrote:

> > All civil time systems use UTC.
> 
> Other way around. They mostly use GMT because they have to. A few use
> something strange that is neither GMT nor UTC.

Am I correct in understanding that you mean that they have the same
idea of the current time as UTC, but pretend that leap seconds never
happened when computing past or future times?

> This is only true from a rather skewed perspective. For example, NTP
> ensures that the *current* time of your clock is correct... but the
> output of:
> 
> ctime(time() + 10000000)
> 
> Will be wrong. Thusly UTC is quite impossible to use for civil
> purposes. It denies you the ability to talk about times in the future.

That's hyperbole.  In most situations, the possibility of the absolute
time three months from now being one second different from what you
think it will be is irrelevant.

Cameron.

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