http://time5.nrc.ca/timefreq/bulletin_tf-b.html
In Canada if a budget isn't passed it triggers an election. We don't have government shutdowns.
I think the US Constitution either explicitly precludes this kind of system or could be construed to preclude it.
Failure to pass a budget is an automatic no confidence vote still which I think works very well.
https://time5.nrc.ca/timefreq/bulletin_tf-b.html
There's probably some really weird MITM attack possibilities here if people have automated systems fetching and using these files. Also, following the link from the article, it would seem the US government's official source is unencrypted FTP?
Also, and somewhat sad and just plain crazy: some functions of NIST are not considered essential!?! It seems to me someone in the gov. is not clearly reporting who and what functions are truly essential to the higher ups in the gov. Then again, maybe they have, but the higher ups ignore them. sigh
Nevertheless, cool post.
This seems backwards. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what the author is trying to say, and another poster could help clarify?
If UTC is based on the earth's rotation and TAI is based on cesium-atomic timekeeping, and UTC is slowing down, and TAI is "the measure of time against which UTC's watch is occasionally corrected," then how can UTC have leap seconds? Delaying for an additional second on December 31st would only make it one second even slower, exacerbating the problem.
I don't see how adding a delay to the slower clock is going to put it in sync with the faster one.
Is it instead that UTC is TAI, plus leap seconds to slow it down to keep it in sync with the rotation of the Earth?
IANAL, but:
I think not, facts are not under copyright. If you only copy facts (and avoid copying style), then you are not creating derivative work.
Furthermore, works created by federal employees in the course of their duties are not eligible for copyright in the U.S. [0] The U.S. does not have an equivalent of crown copyright. The U.S. government can only own copyrights transferred to them by private individuals or organizations, or state and local governments which may or may not hold copyrights on their works.
But I digress it's 80 past 45 and still haven't had breakfast :-)
TAI matches up with the atomic second, and UTC is that plus enough leap seconds to approximate UT1.
It all sucks, but this is reality. You can't fix reality. You'd have to tell the Earth to obey an atomic clock.
The question might be super naive, but I wonder how useful/workable a time-system would be that's completely decoupled from celestial body movements? Isn't Swatch Internet Time something like that?
Gonna be really interesting once humanity becomes interplanetary or even interstellar. Will we have whole different calendars and time zones for different planets and solar systems?
For observers outside the US, the idea of "the national government shutting down" probably seems way way more alarming that it does to most Americans. Almost all basic services in the US are handled by states and municipalities. This includes garbage collection, policing, firefighters, schools, local tax collection, road maintenance, the majority of prisons, most courts, most water and power infrastructure, building inspections and permitting, and many more.
Even airports, the site of a lot of hand-wringing during the shutdown due to the TSA (security screeners) and air-traffic controllers being federal employees, are usually (always?) municipally or state-owned. I have no idea of the legality of these municipalities or the airlines themselves stepping in to pay the ATCs or screeners, but it doesn't seem totally bonkers.
Certainly seems more practical to correct for this once in a while rather than having a variable length second.
Also, at least for computer applications, a variable lenfth second is easier to deal with than a leap second.
Now, maybe this unit of time needed for scientific purposes doesn't need to be the same one used for daily life.
Don't think the unit is the problem, it's the offset. And when it comes to that, we already have a virtualization layer which assures alignment with the sun for social purposes: time zones. No need to add another one over TAI.
Also, if you're a parent, it's not great for sleep training children. It just messes with everyone.
I honestly want to see them push a budget with something like "Canadian style health care plus a wall" to see if he bites.
I'm not an American, just an immigrant. Historically this isn't about caring, it's just about politics.
In this case, it is different, because Trump cares more about his "win" in this issue than about the country. Or even about winning reelection, because everything is pointing to public opinion being strongly against what he is doing right now.
However, the nation is hurting badly under the shutdown, and it is going to get worse. Even so Trump is blamed by a majority, and thus "politically" losing more, at some point the democrats will have to concede that the only way to stop the damage is to give in.
But by then, there will be no doubt in most voters' minds that Trump fundamentally doesn't care. And this makes him unelectable for a larger majority and may even pierce his senate-armor against impeachment.
I wonder if the right solution here is to have some kind of body provide insurance against frivolous litigation over licensing issues for open-source projects, so that this kind of stupidity doesn't arise.
Edit: It appears I was mistaken about the legal status of VLC: it is about software patent licenses, not software copywright licenses.
How do you figure? Patent law isn't copyright law, and doesn't apply equally around the world.
>why do so many open-source projects get ridiculously anal about license issues
Because it's their code and people are using it without compensation and in ways not amenable to them? I think you'd be pretty "anal", too, if someone took your software that you worked hard on, without wanting to contribute their improvements and without any other form of compensation.
x264 basically funds VLC. Don't steal other people's code.
