| Mike Armstrong 2005-12-30, 5:45 pm |
| This is probably way down everyone's list of things to worry about, but
December 31, 2005 is actually 86401 seconds long, since this year NIST
sneaks in a leap second at midnight. (The official clock goes from 23:59:59
to 23:59:60 to 00:00:00.) TOD will eventually self-correct, since most of
us synchronize periodically with a NIST source, but anyone interested is
precise interval measurement including this period should be careful of the
time references used. Excel's time functions, for example, do not appear to
take this into account. If anyone places a long-distance call to wish a
Happy New Year in real time and CDR data is used for billing, the odds are
we'll all give away that second without noticing. Or caring, most likely...
Happy New Year,
Mike Armstrong
UF/IFAS CREC
Lake Alfred, FL
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