ietf-nntp Section 11.5 - NEWNEWS

[Charles Lindsey]

In <20001121154022.F79388 at demon.net> "Clive D.W. Feather" <clive at demon.net> writes:


>Paul Overell said:
>> Because in 1986 (the date of RFC977) the basis of civil time was (and
>> still is) UTC.

>Where ? Because in the United Kingdom the basis of civil time was and is
>GMT. Allow me to point you at:
><http://www.hmso.gov.uk/si/si1997/97298201.htm>
>(The Summer Time Order 1997), the Interpretation Act 1978, and the
>Definition of Time Act 1880 (the latter two don't appear to be on the Web).

>The Coordinated Universal Time Bill never got through Parliament.

So how is "GMT" legally defined in the UK? Presumably by the say so of the
Astronomer Royal, who is doubtless in breach of his statutory duty by not
continuing to take observations using the transit telescope at Greenwich
(though I hear there are plans afoot to bring it into use again as part of
the Maritime Museum's activities).

But, as Clive and I know only too well, there are much worse stupidities
in UK law :-( .

>But if my client allows 3 minutes and the server is out by 5 minutes I'm in
>trouble anyway. What is a sensible aount of slack ? We should say. 

I think we should be silent (otherwise, servers will take it as a licence
to be out by whatever margin we say, whereas they should (with a small
's') be as accurate as they can). So if we add a note advising a fudge
factor, it should just mention "a suitable margin" and leave it to clients
(and/or implementors) to use their common sense. In any case, they Ought
to be using DATE and that SHOULD work.

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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