I can already imagine the arguments the team required to implement this change are having about the best way to make this change in the db.
Surely the DB just stores the full date of birth so it’s no issue.
South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting
61–70 of 138 posts
Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting
#62Ah standards. Taking all the fun out of international travel confusion. Now if we could only get the US onto the metric system and abolish daylight saving time.
Alternative take: the US customary units have stuck around because SI has failed to present itself as better enough to switch. Grant that all base units are arbitrary[1], many of the customary units make easier logical sense in day-to-day life, or are designed to be divisible in easier units than SI units are designed to be. Do you want ⅓ of a foot? Well, that's 4 inches (12 inches in a foot, divide by 3, you get 4).…
> Do you want ⅓ of a foot? Well, that's 4 inches (12 inches in a foot, divide by 3, you get 4). Feet are made up of 12 inches, a number that can be divided by 2, 3, 4, and 6. Very convenient. One yard is three feet, gaining all the divisibility benefits that feet already have, and then some.
That doesn't work out so conveniently when you are measuring natural things. You get something that is say 73 inches long and dividing it in 3rds won't come out even. It's convenient for many manufactured things because for things where people will have to subdivide them manufacturers pick lengths that will be easily divisible into those subdivisions.
But manufacturers can do that in SI units too. E.g., if you were making say rods and you expected customers to need to cut them into equal pieces you could make them 84 cm (just over 33 inches). That's divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 14, 21, 28, 42, and 84.
> How about temperature?
What I don't get about metric temperature is why it even exists. All C really changed from F (once they flipped the direction of Celsius' original scale when had higher numbers mean colder!) is the size of the degree and the zero point.
With the other metric units (length, volume, area, mass) the new units cleaned up messes of a whole bunch of named units in all kinds of relationships. But there was no mess with F. F would have been fine as the temperature for metric and (as you noted) it actually fits in a lot better with the range of temperatures that most people have to deal with.
Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternative take: the US customary units have stuck around because SI has failed to present itself as better enough to switch. Grant that all base units are arbitrary[1], many of the customary units make easier logical sense in day-to-day life, or are designed to be divisible in easier units than SI units are designed to be. Do you want ⅓ of a foot? Well, that's 4 inches (12 inches in a foot, divide by 3, you get 4).…
The US being an exception that failed or successfully resisted switching is a false premise in the first place, based on obscure and pedantic definitions of metric acceptance. We learn the metric system in school, and it's not some sort of rebel cause either. Sure, Americans also use non-metric units, but that's not as unique as is claimed. First hit for "site:.uk mpg" is "MPG stands for miles per gallon and is used…
> The US being an exception that failed or successfully resisted switching is a false premise in the first place, based on obscure and pedantic definitions of metric acceptance.
I disagree it is a false premise. If you look at major economies – other than the US and UK – >80%, >90% of units encountered in everyday life are metric. In the US, it is more like the other way around. The UK and the US are both outliers from the global average on this, but the UK to a lesser degree than the US is. No other major economy (for any reasonable definition of "major") is an outlier in that sense.
> We learn the metric system in school,
In the majority of countries worldwide, people only learn the metric system at school. The US is an exception in having an education system which still teaches non-metric measurements.
> Sure, Americans also use non-metric units, but that's not as unique as is claimed. First hit for "site:.uk mpg" is "MPG stands for miles per gallon and is used to show how far your car can travel for every gallon (or 4.55 litres) of fuel it uses".
That's not a very good argument – the US and the UK are the only major economies to use miles for road distances (and hence also speed, fuel efficiency, etc). All other major economies use kilometres, not miles.
Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting
#64Ah standards. Taking all the fun out of international travel confusion. Now if we could only get the US onto the metric system and abolish daylight saving time.
Alternative take: the US customary units have stuck around because SI has failed to present itself as better enough to switch. Grant that all base units are arbitrary[1], many of the customary units make easier logical sense in day-to-day life, or are designed to be divisible in easier units than SI units are designed to be. Do you want ⅓ of a foot? Well, that's 4 inches (12 inches in a foot, divide by 3, you get 4).…
> Alternative take: the US customary units have stuck around because SI has failed to present itself as better enough to switch.
The thing that doesn't make sense about this argument – the US and the UK are the only major economies which haven't adopted metric for 90%+ of use cases. (Everywhere retains non-metric units in certain exceptional cases – e.g. most countries use feet for altitude in aviation, although that is largely due to the economic influence of the US, and to a lesser extent the UK.) And even the UK uses metric significantly more than the US does, despite the retention of miles for road distances being an obvious holdout.
If your argument really explains why the US hasn't switched, how does it explain the fact that the vast majority of the rest of the world has?
Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting
#65I actually wished a change in reverse direction, the world adopting the Korean standard of age accounting for full existence, not just postpartum existence. The later feels quite arbitrary, at least for me.
The latter is the only one of those two whose length you actually know.
Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting
#66Ah standards. Taking all the fun out of international travel confusion. Now if we could only get the US onto the metric system and abolish daylight saving time.
> Now if we could only get the US onto the metric system Seriously though, I wonder if immigration is going to help with that? Almost everyone else in the world uses metric in everyday life. Immigrants to the US have to go through the unpleasant process of adjusting to not doing so. I'm sure many (most?) of them wish they didn't have to do that. As the immigration process continues, might this lead to growing popular…
America is a free country. If you want to use metric units there, go for it. Most packaging and standards already reflect metric. But many don't, and many people may be confused. Be the change you want.
Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Now if we could only get the US onto the metric system Seriously though, I wonder if immigration is going to help with that? Almost everyone else in the world uses metric in everyday life. Immigrants to the US have to go through the unpleasant process of adjusting to not doing so. I'm sure many (most?) of them wish they didn't have to do that. As the immigration process continues, might this lead to growing popular…
America is a free country. If you want to use metric units there, go for it. Most packaging and standards already reflect metric. But many don't, and many people may be confused. Be the change you want.
> America is a free country. If you want to use metric units there, go for it. Most packaging and standards already reflect metric.
Under 16 CFR § 500.8, metric-only labelling is illegal in the US for many categories of consumer products. Does any other country make metric-only labelling illegal?
Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US being an exception that failed or successfully resisted switching is a false premise in the first place, based on obscure and pedantic definitions of metric acceptance. We learn the metric system in school, and it's not some sort of rebel cause either. Sure, Americans also use non-metric units, but that's not as unique as is claimed. First hit for "site:.uk mpg" is "MPG stands for miles per gallon and is used…
> The US being an exception that failed or successfully resisted switching is a false premise in the first place, based on obscure and pedantic definitions of metric acceptance. I disagree it is a false premise. If you look at major economies – other than the US and UK – >80%, >90% of units encountered in everyday life are metric. In the US, it is more like the other way around. The UK and the US are both outliers fr…
People say the US, Liberia, and Myanmar are the only countries to reject metric.
If this wasn't bullshit, then people would be able to spontaneously state the criterion that produced this specific list.
I mean, the criterion exists, and therefore the list is technically correct, but nobody researches it before repeating the meme, and it's not at all obvious without research.
If the reasoning doesn't come to you naturally and intuitively, endorsing it I think is insincere. Like the redefinition that demoted Pluto from planethood.
>The US is an exception in having an education system which still teaches non-metric measurements.
This is too vague to even determine if true. Also the implied premise is getting silly. Teaching non-metric measurements needs to be stamped out? Do people learn about miles and gallons in hedge schools in proper countries? If so, is that to be emulated? Is it bad to teach languages other than your preferred one? Do French people know what CV stands for?
Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's 3.5 gallons in ounces? 448. That's not even hard. There's 128 fluid ounces per gallon. 3×128=384, add 64 to that for 448. You could work through that from the smaller units if you didn't know off hand. Still, it's pretty unusual to want fluid ounces at that scale. Keep it at 3.5 gallons.
> > What's 3.5 gallons in ounces? > 448. That's not even hard. There's 128 fluid ounces per gallon. 3×128=384, add 64 to that for 448. I think you just unironically showed why SI is the superior system.
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Re: South Korea adopts new law to join the international standard of age counting
#70> South Koreans will become at least a year younger... "At least"? Who is becoming two years younger...?
Anyone with a birth day after the transition day will become two years younger when the change goes into effect, assuming the article’s description is correct (which it may not be.) Under the old system you were one year old at birth, and a year older at the beginning of the next year (not, as one might expect, at their next birth day.) That means at the beginning of the year on which under the more common system one…
Oh whoops I missed that second part, that everybody's birthday is New Year's. Thanks!