21–30 of 186 posts
I dream of a world where everything is UTC, UTF-8, and metric.
Personally, I wish everyone used the 24:00 clock. Maybe the military has messed me up, but I really prefer seeing something like 18:22 over 6:22pm. It just seems simplier.
Also dates in numeric order I.e. yyyy/mm/dd you know like all the other numbers we deal with not dd/mm/yyyy or the crazy mm/dd/yy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd strongly consider voting for a US presidential candidate solely on if moving to metric was a big part of their platform. So much time is wasted in school on the confusing mess that is the imperial system.
The amount of time and money to shift at this point would be astronomical wouldn't it? It would take a few generations as we would continue to have to teach imperial so people could convert when they ran across any existing media referring to the imperial system measurements. Hundred years of machines that use imperial, speedometers, odometers, books, tools, software, air conditioning, heating, manufacturing, constru…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd strongly consider voting for a US presidential candidate solely on if moving to metric was a big part of their platform. So much time is wasted in school on the confusing mess that is the imperial system.
The amount of time and money to shift at this point would be astronomical wouldn't it? It would take a few generations as we would continue to have to teach imperial so people could convert when they ran across any existing media referring to the imperial system measurements. Hundred years of machines that use imperial, speedometers, odometers, books, tools, software, air conditioning, heating, manufacturing, constru…
Apart from some things like miles and gallons which would require a massive synchronised change that is.
I'd also like it if we drove on the RHS here as well so we can get decent import vehicles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, I wish everyone used the 24:00 clock. Maybe the military has messed me up, but I really prefer seeing something like 18:22 over 6:22pm. It just seems simplier.
Yes couldn't agree more with that. Also dates in numeric order I.e. yyyy/mm/dd you know like all the other numbers we deal with not dd/mm/yyyy or the crazy mm/dd/yy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd strongly consider voting for a US presidential candidate solely on if moving to metric was a big part of their platform. So much time is wasted in school on the confusing mess that is the imperial system.
The amount of time and money to shift at this point would be astronomical wouldn't it? It would take a few generations as we would continue to have to teach imperial so people could convert when they ran across any existing media referring to the imperial system measurements. Hundred years of machines that use imperial, speedometers, odometers, books, tools, software, air conditioning, heating, manufacturing, constru…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd strongly consider voting for a US presidential candidate solely on if moving to metric was a big part of their platform. So much time is wasted in school on the confusing mess that is the imperial system.
The amount of time and money to shift at this point would be astronomical wouldn't it? It would take a few generations as we would continue to have to teach imperial so people could convert when they ran across any existing media referring to the imperial system measurements. Hundred years of machines that use imperial, speedometers, odometers, books, tools, software, air conditioning, heating, manufacturing, constru…
If you really want to, you can do it. And it's not as painful as presented especially since many countries have done it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_system). And the longer you wait the more painful it becomes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The amount of time and money to shift at this point would be astronomical wouldn't it? It would take a few generations as we would continue to have to teach imperial so people could convert when they ran across any existing media referring to the imperial system measurements. Hundred years of machines that use imperial, speedometers, odometers, books, tools, software, air conditioning, heating, manufacturing, constru…
The total cost to switch has gotta be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Has anybody done such a calculation?
All your major trade partners use the metric system: EU, China, India, Australia.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd strongly consider voting for a US presidential candidate solely on if moving to metric was a big part of their platform. So much time is wasted in school on the confusing mess that is the imperial system.
The amount of time and money to shift at this point would be astronomical wouldn't it? It would take a few generations as we would continue to have to teach imperial so people could convert when they ran across any existing media referring to the imperial system measurements. Hundred years of machines that use imperial, speedometers, odometers, books, tools, software, air conditioning, heating, manufacturing, constru…
SI units are already in wide use in the US, for instance for electricity (Amperes, Watts, Volts). For the most part, international trade has pushed US industries to adopt metric anyway: metric fasteners are used all over, in cars for instance. Also, countries that have switched still use inch-pattern stuff; in Canada we still use NPT threads and imperial size pipes with no ill effects; even in Europe they still use some imperial-threaded stuff.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The amount of time and money to shift at this point would be astronomical wouldn't it? It would take a few generations as we would continue to have to teach imperial so people could convert when they ran across any existing media referring to the imperial system measurements. Hundred years of machines that use imperial, speedometers, odometers, books, tools, software, air conditioning, heating, manufacturing, constru…
Isn't the United States in practice a worst of both worlds approach where you have both imperial and metric measurements inconsistently mixed together?
The separation is mostly distinct, at least to me. We mostly use imperial and in science class and such we use mostly metric.
The worst of both world I've seen was England.
They're mostly metric until you drive their car and then they decide to use mile per hour. That's pretty random...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_speed_limits_in_the_Unite...
While the article doesn't flat out say it but if you stare at the uk speed sign image and the comment below the image you will see they are in fact in MPH.
edit:
found an article about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_King...
I wonder what the pros and cons weighed in the discussion were. Clearly not supporting Unicode text in non-UTF-8 locales (except through, like, some kind of compatibility function, like recode or iconv) is the Right Thing. One problem that I have is that current UTF-8 implementations typically are not "8 bit clean", in the sense that GNU and modern Unix tools typically attempt to be; they crash, usually by throwing a…
It was sort of darkly funny to be reading along as you're quoting the guy then all of a sudden hit so matter-of-factly, "He's dead, but you can still get the thing from...." A real splash of cold water.