The metric system sucks
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From: J. Clarke on 4 Feb 2010 09:17 Mike Dworetsky wrote: > Aatu Koskensilta wrote: >> "Mike Dworetsky" <platinum198(a)pants.btinternet.com> writes: >> >>> Marshall wrote: >>> >>>> And mad props to Lord Rutherford for it! Of course the USA was the >>>> first country to make it go BOOM, plus we still have that whole >>>> "moon" and "internet" thing going. >>> >>> Using refugee European physicists who all worked in metric units. >>> Most American physics (certainly nuclear physics) was also done in >>> metric, even then, and all of it is done in metric now everywhere, >>> as is nearly all science. Some American engineering is for obscure >>> reasons done in Imperial, hence the Mars probe disaster. >> >> I doubt Marshall was trying to argue against the metric system, or >> for the Imperial system. He was, I take it, simply valiantly >> defending the good name of American and British engineering. >> >>> American engineers invented Darpanet, a communications network for >>> defense purposes that leaked out as Arpanet to civilian applications >>> such as email and ftp; a British scientist at CERN came up with the >>> hypertext protocols that led directly to the internet, a way to use >>> the interconnected network for passing, storing and creating >>> information content quickly and easily. >> >> Well, no. > > I was using the term internet a bit loosely. Would have helped if > you had elaborated. > > Well, technically, what we now call the internet is a system of > interconnected computer systems sharing certain protocols such as IP > and TCP and was around and being used by academics in the 1970s and > 1980s, but it was difficult to send stuff and sometimes it took days > for an email to propagate to the recipient if in another country. > There was Arpanet, NSFnet, Janet, IBMnet (or something like that, I > can't recall its name). And Arpanet won. What is your point? > So in that sense yes the Internet existed before Berners-Lee et al > came up with better ways to create documents that you read on a > terminal screen (with links). Actually that better way wasn't much of an improvement until GUIs became commonplace. > What we used to do was create ftp > sites and people could send or retrieve stuff to and from such sites, > or send each other attachments as text documents. It was clunky and > slow. Might have been clunky but ftp is not slow. > Back then your typical terminal couldn't do images, and the > first browsers pre-Netscape were things like Mosaic using http and > ftp that could embed links in the text. You are aware, are you not that Netscape is based on Mosaic? And that Mosaic is not text-based? > It was a terrific > improvement, at least if you were doing science. By then documents > could be formatted in post-script using TeX and that made it easier > too. Actually when you use TeX you are formatting in TeX--there are translators that let TeX documents be printed on PostScript printers but they aren't any different from any other printer driver. > MS Word didn't come along until later. Actually Word predates the Web by almost a decade, and is roughly contemporary with TeX. TeX was a more capable system by far but also more cumbersome.
From: J. Clarke on 4 Feb 2010 09:23 Bart Goddard wrote: > nospam(a)nospam.com (Paul Ciszek) wrote in news:hke34s$n19$13 > @reader2.panix.com: > >> >> In article <Xns9D149007B59A1goddardbenetscapenet(a)74.209.136.91>, >> Bart Goddard <goddardbe(a)netscape.net> wrote: >>> >>>> So, while the rest of the world marches on, Americans >>>> are certainly free to remain behind. >>> >>> Right, people who use your preferred system are "ahead" >>> while anyone else is "behind". This is an odd definition >>> of "ahead" and "behind", and is, in fact, just a >>> restatement of the original, unsupported thesis. >> >> No, a nation of people who insist that the world is only 6,000 years >> old, and refuse to teach their teenage children anything about birth >> control or even the most basic facts about human reproduction are >> behind. > > Maybe. But the point above is that one's measuring system > is NOT the reason one is "behind". > > (And, really, our children seem to know all about reproduction, > and are quite skilled at it. It seems odd that you think > your kids are "ahead" in this when you have to teach them > how to do what ours seems to know inately.) In any case, I want to know to what nation he is referring.
From: J. Clarke on 4 Feb 2010 09:40 jmfbahciv wrote: > Andrew Usher wrote: >> On Feb 3, 11:30 am, Uncle Al <Uncle...(a)hate.spam.net> wrote: >> >>>> http://www.google.com/search?q=1+cubic+mile+in+fluid+ounces >>>> 1 (cubic mile) = 1.40942995 � 10^14 US fluid ounces >>>> We have machines for tasks like this. >>> What makes you think that is the correct number? An axiomatic >>> system is no better than its weakest axiom. When the Pentium with a >>> defective math look-up table was circculated, were its answers >>> correct because they appeared on a screen? >> >> If it absolutely must be correct, one should calculate it more than >> once, of course. I verified that number correct. >> > The pharmacist did just that with his calculator for a drug JMF > had to take 8 hours before chemo. The pharmacist thought > the answer was wrong and repeated the calculation several times. > The calculator gave the same answer each time so the pharmacist > finally packaged the dose. JMF got an overdose. > > Not everybody knows how to emulate RPN on a non-RPN calculator. If it has to be correct repeat the calculation on different systems. I remember doing my taxes one year and discovering that the spreadsheet I was using ("Smart") was giving me incorrect results for multiplication (I don't remember the numbers now, but it was _bad_--like 2*2=801589). Suspecting that my CPU was wonky I tried it on a different machine (one downside to product activation is that this sort of testing becomes difficult or expensive) with the same result. I had an older version--I installed that and got the same result, ruling out a defective copy. Smart went back into its fancy box never to emerge and I did my taxes that year by hand before evaluating alternative spreadsheets.
From: J. Clarke on 4 Feb 2010 09:58 jmfbahciv wrote: > Heidi Graw wrote: >> >> >>> "Andrew Usher" <k_over_hbarc(a)yahoo.com> wrote in message >>> news:285479b4-f90d-445b-824a-> >>> In that case, there's no benefit from going metric either. >>> >>> Andrew Usher >> >> ...and it also means that going metric doesn't necessarily mean >> it sucks. Given today's computerization of virtually everything, >> if the programming is done right, one just needs to dial in >> and the machine will cut to whatever measure it has been >> programmed for. If you want an ark using the cubits measure, >> dial in, and be done with it. >> >> Anyway, I don't really care what measure is used. All I want >> is something that works and what will weather a storm, etc. >> >> As for cooking, I use a pinch of this and a pinch of that. >> A handful of this or that, add a dollop and a splash... >> voila! A Heidi Graw special that can never be repeated >> in exactly the same way. LOL... >> > <grin> Then you don't plan to write a cookbook which > will reproduce the same taste and nutrition. Cooking > and baking are acts of chemistry. Canning is also chemistry > plus a dash of physics and a large dose of microbiology. > Personally, I'd rather be in a chem lab than the kitchen. Just a comment but pinch, smidgen, and dash are becoming defacto standard units--some outfit started making joke measuring spoons of 1/32, 1/16, and 1/8 teaspoon capacity with those markings, and another outfit picked up on it, and now I'm seeing them all over the place. > I grew up in the US and cannot think in metric terms so I > always have to do a conversion to make guesstimates. > For some strange reason, kilometers seem to take "longer" > to drive than miles when I drove from Buffalo to Port > Huron, Michigan. :-) > > /BAH
From: Marshall on 4 Feb 2010 10:03
On Feb 4, 4:56 am, "Mike Dworetsky" <platinum...(a)pants.btinternet.com> wrote: > Aatu Koskensilta wrote: > > "Mike Dworetsky" <platinum...(a)pants.btinternet.com> writes: > > >> Marshall wrote: > > >>> And mad props to Lord Rutherford for it! Of course the USA was the > >>> first country to make it go BOOM, plus we still have that whole > >>> "moon" and "internet" thing going. > > >> Using refugee European physicists who all worked in metric units. > >> Most American physics (certainly nuclear physics) was also done in > >> metric, even then, and all of it is done in metric now everywhere, as > >> is nearly all science. Some American engineering is for obscure > >> reasons done in Imperial, hence the Mars probe disaster. > > > I doubt Marshall was trying to argue against the metric system, or for > > the Imperial system. He was, I take it, simply valiantly defending the > > good name of American and British engineering. > > >> American engineers invented Darpanet, a communications network for > >> defense purposes that leaked out as Arpanet to civilian applications > >> such as email and ftp; a British scientist at CERN came up with the > >> hypertext protocols that led directly to the internet, a way to use > >> the interconnected network for passing, storing and creating > >> information content quickly and easily. > > > Well, no. > > I was using the term internet a bit loosely. That's not correct. "Loosely" is not a synonym for "wrong." Marshall |