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

[Andrew Suffield]

On Tue, Sep 07, 2004 at 07:36:39PM +0800, Cameron Patrick wrote:
> Andrew Suffield wrote:
> 
> > > > ctime(time() + 10000000)
> > > 
> > > 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.
> > 
> > Add some more zeros. Sooner or later it will become significant.
> 
> Sure, the magnitude of the error will become larger over time, but I
> don't believe that it's ever likely to be a problem.
> 
> If there's an average of one leap second every year, say, that makes
> the average difference between real UTC and "she'll be right mate" UTC
> about 0.03ppm.  That's sufficiently close to zero that most of the
> time, you can ignore it.

This argument resoundingly defeats "use UTC because it's more
accurate", and gives "you might as well stick with GMT, it's at least
as good and more familiar".

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
 `. `'                          |
   `-             -><-          |

signature.asc
Description: Digital signature