21–30 of 68 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The metric system still fails to impose itself universally, so we can wait some time before the decimal mark is unified...
The 2006 CIA Factbook stated that the "US is the only industrialized nation that does not mainly use the metric system", (in addition to non-industrialised Burma/Myanmar and Liberia).
"...AlternativeTo had about 217.000 visitors on that first day..." Why can't we all agree upon a universal, consistent notation for math and science?
this is why I usually use spaces to separate thousands, so that I don't confuse people expecting either notation. The standard where I'm from is also a period for thousands, and a comma for the decimal fraction, but reading as much English scientific and computing literature, I am well aware that the period for decimal fraction is almost a de facto standard. So I tend to use spaces for the thousands and a period for…
Sometimes we use the number "1 million" to mean "a lot"; in that system it would be written as 100 ten-thousands. A more "natural" way to express "a lot" in that system is ten-thousand ten-thousands, or 100 million in our system.
I loved learning little "weird" things like that, and discovering that our own way of doing things isn't the only way. Studying other cultures also teaches us about our own.
Any better-qualified Japanese speakers please correct anything I've gotten wrong, this memory file was just swapped in from 20 years ago...
Probably one of the reasons Google linked to them, is that they have so many Google ads on their pages (3 of them - quite disturbing to me). And Google takes about 32% of the price paid by the advertiser. Just a back-of-the-envelope calculation: let's assume 217000 page views, with a 1% CTR, and a 1$ CPC. The result (of that 1 day) : ~2000$.
Probably one of the reasons Google linked to them, is that they have so many Google ads on their pages (3 of them - quite disturbing to me). And Google takes about 32% of the price paid by the advertiser. Just a back-of-the-envelope calculation: let's assume 217000 page views, with a 1% CTR, and a 1$ CPC. The result (of that 1 day) : ~2000$.
congratulations!
at this achievement, i hope you will put some effort (also) in improving the UX of the site so that users like me get keep visiting whenever we want an alternative.
Some observations (at http://alternativeto.net/software/google-reader/ page):
- Ads are covering a large part of the area
- The list of alternatives are not prominently visible (need to scroll down)
- UI is a bit cluttered (offering too many options)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This particular case is not English vs. Metric, but rather lack of cohesion in the metric system. English: Use commas for separating thousands, use periods for decimals. Metric: Use spaces for separating thousands, use periods OR commas for decimals. In this instance, the English approach is obviously the superior one, as spaces are more confusing to use as a delimiter than commas, and there should only be one way to…
There is some other system that uses periods for thousands and commas for decimals - the exact reverse of what you've listed as the english convention. I always thought it was a european convention. It makes more sense than what you've listed as the metric convention.
However, I think that must be a convention from before the universal adoption of the metric system by the EU, as the 22nd General Conference on Weights and Measures (held in 2003) declared that the symbol for decimals should be "the point on the line or the comma on the line".
i.e. the official metric system symbol is period or comma, regardless of what actual Europeans use.
http://www.bipm.org/utils/en/pdf/Resol22CGPM-EN.pdf [page 11]
"...AlternativeTo had about 217.000 visitors on that first day..." Why can't we all agree upon a universal, consistent notation for math and science?
PS: I'm an Aussie living in the US.