http://docs.python.org/dev/library/time.html#time.steady

Current:
"""Return the current time as a floating point number expressed in seconds. This clock advances at a steady rate relative to real time and it may not be adjusted. The reference point of the returned value is undefined so only the difference of consecutive calls is valid.

If available, a monotonic clock is used. By default, if strict is False, the function falls back to another clock if the monotonic clock failed or is not available. If strict is True, raise an OSError on error or NotImplementedError if no monotonic clock is available."""

Does "may not" mean that the user isn't allowed to adjust it, or that they system won't always have adjusted it?  Assuming that this really means it won't jump around for daylight savings time or manual time resets, it could be reworded as:



"""Return elapsed seconds as a floating point number.  The start time is undefined, so only differences between calls are meaningful.  steady() is the best clock for profiling response time, as opposed to CPU usage.

This function prefers to rely upon a high-precision counter that is not affected by resetting the system time.  If no such monotonic clock is available, steady() will substitute another clock, but steady(strict=true) will raise either NotImplementedError or OSError.  """