Definition
Two layers of encoding make up Unix time. These can usefully be separated. The first layer encodes a point in time as a scalar real number, and the second encodes that number as a sequence of bits or in another form.
As is standard with UTC, this article labels days using the Gregorian calendar, and counts times within each day in hours, minutes, and seconds. Some of the examples also show International Atomic Time (TAI), another time scheme, which uses the same seconds and is displayed in the same format as UTC, but in which every day is exactly 86 400 s long, gradually losing synchronization with the Earth's rotation at a rate of roughly one second per year.
Read more about this topic: Unix Time
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“... if, as women, we accept a philosophy of history that asserts that women are by definition assimilated into the male universal, that we can understand our past through a male lens—if we are unaware that women even have a history—we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The definition of good prose is proper words in their proper places; of good verse, the most proper words in their proper places. The propriety is in either case relative. The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning, and no more; if they attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“Perhaps the best definition of progress would be the continuing efforts of men and women to narrow the gap between the convenience of the powers that be and the unwritten charter.”
—Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)