Portable general timestamp format, not 2038-limited

[Thomas Jollans]

On Sunday 01 July 2007, Roedy Green wrote:
> On 25 Jun 2007 18:46:25 -0700, Paul Rubin
> <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted
>
> someone who said :
> >You cannot accurately compute
> >the number of seconds between Nixon's resignation and 1800 UTC today,
> >unless you take into account the leap seconds have been occurred
> >between then and now.
>
> There are two valid answers to those questions.  In a court of law,
> say did some document arrive before  deadline, you must use civil
> time.  Arguing leap seconds would not fly.
>
> On the other hand, if you used civil seconds to computer satellite
> orbits, tiny errors mount up quickly in the calculation.

"civil" time/seconds ? I dare say that if they exist, they are variably 
defined.

I know for a fact that here in Germany, official time is based on UTC, NOT UT 
(was GMT) or some other approximation of local time. Ergo, you *can* argue 
leap seconds in a court of law as they *are* "civil time".

In fact Wikipedia [1] makes it sound like UTC is used in the US, and as leap 
seconds are part of UTC, you could probably argue with them in a US court as 
well

Also, UTC and UT/GMT are always less than a second apart, so who cares...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Time_Zone etc.