generating a sequence of seconds

 Again, in my opinion, all time date should be recorded in GMT.

It depends on context.  If you are studying traffic flow or
electricity usage, then you want local time with all its warts
(perhaps stated as time since 3am so any daylight savings time
problems are confined to a small portion of the data), perhaps along
with time since sunrise and time since sunset.

I see your point. But if my data is in GMT, that is a unique timestamp
value. And, given that, along with location information, I should then be
able to generate a local time for "human activity". E.g. when do people go
to lunch? Another plus of this is that there is no confusion during "fall
back" whether this is the 1st or 2nd instance of something like 02:27:00.
Long ago, I worked for a city government. The recorded everything on the
machine in local time. Including police log entries. Always made me wonder
why some lawyer didn't have a nice window of confusion if something
allegedly happened on time change day and was logged as 02:30:00.

If you are studying astronomy, then UTC is appropropriate.


Bill Dunlap
TIBCO Software
wdunlap tibco.com

There is nothing more pleasant than traveling and meeting new people!
Genghis Khan

Maranatha! <><
John McKown

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