[time-nuts] imprecise but adequate time

[Tom Van Baak]

Hi Eric,

 > 2. Date/time stamps in the data shall be rounded to the nearest EVEN 
second by the system instances

That's a clever way to both mask accuracy & uncertainty and to avoid 
leap seconds. Still, it smells like a hack, unfit for the 21st century. 
But I feel your pain.

BTW, this is how mod times are stored in the FAT file system. [1] For 
example, if a camera uses a SD card, you'll see that every photo has an 
EVEN time stamp. In this case it wasn't to avoid leap seconds but rather 
it allowed time-of-day to fit in 16 bits (back in the era when bytes 
mattered). So there's ancient (any maybe even forensic or legal) 
precedent for what you're doing.

I worry, though, about the next person tasked with improving your 
design. You have fused two separate issues together: the issue of 
timestamp accuracy / resolution / legal traceability, and the issue of 
properly handling UTC (leap seconds). Are you sure there's no other 
practical solution than to use EVEN seconds?

/tvb

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table