[joshuak]

Agreed.

The point being these distinctions lead to the conclusion that this identifier isn't 'generally' useful, and even under optimal conditions it's utility is questionable. For example extra precision for an approximate value is not application dependent at all. The low order bits of the time component have no actionable meaning, though they imply sort order. That's the kind of subtile error in reasoning that is really easy to make here. I think there are too many land mines hidden here to make this useful.

[sagichmal]

You are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. Perfect general applicability to all problem domains is not a requirement of utility. Engineering is tradeoff analysis.