Re: [OT] Internet time (Biel Mean Time)

[Paul E Condon <pecondon@peakpeak.com>]

On Sun, Oct 26, 2003 at 06:39:21PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> What's the point of it?
> 
> According to http://www.luvit.se/stefanp/lec_35_manual/swatch.html ,
> "As a result Internet Time is the same all over the world."
> 
> Well, gee, since Internet Time is equivalent to BMT, what's the
> big deal about "same all over the world" and "the era of time zones
> has disappeared"?  The same would be true about GMT, American EST,
> or any other time zone that people standardize on.
> 
> In fact, long ago, the US military standardized on GMT as "Zulu
> time", as opposed to "Lima", a.k.a. local time.
> 
> They'd have had a fighting chance if they'd have stuck with GMT.
> In fact, I think that a metric system based on GMT is a good idea,
> since 1/100th of a "beat" is 0.864 seconds, which gives just as
> good a granularity as the second.
> 

BMT is, so far as I know, a marketing scam of Swatch. It has 
zero intellectual merit, and near zero following in the internet 
world. Existing, accepted time standards were developed as part of
the development of astronomy. In astronomy research, an accepted
standard of time is necessary for the exchange of data. The existing
internet standards piggy back on prior work in astronomy. There is
little room for useful innovation by a gaggle of marketers.

HTH
-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon@peakpeak.com