Leap Seconds: You're Fired!

Time waits for no one: 'leap seconds' may be cut | ITworld (read more at this link)

Sparking a fresh round of debate over an ongoing issue in time-keeping circles, the International Telecommunications Union is considering eliminating leap seconds from the time scale used by most computer systems, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Since their introduction in 1971, leap seconds have proved problematic for at least a few software programs. The leap second added on to the end of 2008, for instance, caused Oracle cluster software to reboot unexpectedly in some cases.

Some computer professionals argue, however, that abolishing the leap second at this point will just cause another set of difficulties. The revision "would cause more trouble than it naively claims to circumvent," wrote programmer Rob Seaman, on the Leap Seconds mailing list.

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