191–200 of 206 posts
My personal rant is that I want a global setting on every printer to override differences in requested page size. For example, being in the UK, I print to A4, and that is the only size of paper I have available for my printer. If I print stuff from browsers, or documents from US people which are set to page size Letter, I DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO GO TO THE PRINTER AND PRESS A BUTTON TO PRINT ON THE ONLY PAPER AVAILABLE…
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I've done some extensive analysis of number systems (almost enough to write a book on the subject) and come to the conclusion that the best are senary (6) and quaternary (4). Six has all the benefits of twelve, save the extra divisor of 2 (and thus 4), but that is easily remedied by use of the square (36) when required. Quaternary may seem an odd choice, but the square is 16, so one naturally learns hexadecimal witho…
Interesting. I always thought base 16 was the only suitable number system. Base 2 is the only justifiable one, since base 1 is not much fun. Squaring base 2 twice to get a fair amount of information in a single column seems to just make sense. What are the downsides of 16?
http://web.williams.edu/Mathematics/sjmiller/public_html/105...
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I haven't heard many arguments against dozens. In fact, there are some groups that specifically argue for duodecimal systems. I'd be interested to hear your position in more detail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal#Advocacy_and_.22doze...
My main problem is that it's longer than "tens". And I have 10 fingers. And I use base-10 for everything, including counting the dozens. It's just more logical (and I say that without reading through the wiki page, so sorry if whatever I say doesn't make any sense with that in mind. I'm not good with words).
Also, "9 dozen" is the same in either base. "10 dozen" would become "ᘔ dozen", "11 dozen" to "3 dozen", and "12 dozen" to "10 dozen".
Finally, a dozen dozen is a gross and a dozen gross is a great gross, which at 1728 would be a likely replacement for "ton".
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It is a big, diverse world. And various, special use-cases are best addressed with different aspect ratios. But, to me, the point of ISO 216 adoption in place of US Letter (and other common sizes) is about having a general-purpose/common-use aspect ratio with inherent properties that help simplify things across the board for a lot of people. If it wasn't already used so much elsewhere, I'd be a "harder sell" (even to…
Are you volunteering to transition Sun III's physical files cabinets, storage boxes, warehouse shelving? To reconfigure their printers, rewrite their report software etc.? There's a lot of friction and it all takes place on the ground, unlike translating Python 2 programs to handle Unicode, there's no cloud service model that facilitates the transition. The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of…
> But what do you end up with folding the US Letter? Let’s see: > 216 mm x 279 mm ratio: 1.291 > 139 mm x 216 mm ratio: 1.554 > 108 mm x 139 mm ratio: 1.287 > 69 mm x 108 mm ratio: 1.565 > 54 mm x 69 mm ratio: 1.278 > 34 mm x 54 mm ratio: 1.588 > 27 mm x 34 mm ratio: 1.259 These ratios, in fact, just go back and forth between two values (because when you cut a piece of paper into fourths, it has the same aspect ratio…
> But what do you end up with folding the US Letter? Let’s see: > 216 mm x 279 mm ratio: 1.291 > 139 mm x 216 mm ratio: 1.554 > 108 mm x 139 mm ratio: 1.287 > 69 mm x 108 mm ratio: 1.565 > 54 mm x 69 mm ratio: 1.278 > 34 mm x 54 mm ratio: 1.588 > 27 mm x 34 mm ratio: 1.259 These ratios, in fact, just go back and forth between two values (because when you cut a piece of paper into fourths, it has the same aspect ratio…
However, I was just very absentmindedly skimming, It's a little more unbelievable for the author, the one doing the calculations, to miss this.
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No, you don't. You only need to learn separate spelling and pronunciation rules for each of the languages English has evolved or stolen from. The tough spellings usually come from Germanic roots via Old English and Middle English, whereas the French-Norman spellings are less difficult . Greek-Latin spellings are markedly less confusing when you learn the transliterations of the Greek alphabet. Of course Philadephia i…
I don't want to sound pedantic, but the correct pronunciation of "archaeopterix" is [ar-keh-o-pteh-riks]. Apparently the English Wikipedia page for it has the English-tainted pronounciation. I spent 5 good minutes trying to find a way to transcribe in a way that an Anglosaxon would pronounce correctly, as Greek-Latin vowels have a unique sound while in English their sound depend on the letters before or after them an…
I recall hearing or seeing the less-correct pronunciation near the relevant fossil or fossil reproduction at the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, but I can't remember if it was actually printed on the display card or not. I did have to explain to my kids why the correct pronunciation of root-combining words is important for effective communication. The exaggerated roll of the eyeballs means you're teaching it effectively! (Or at least that's what I keep telling myself.)
When someone claims uncritically that the ratio of any two integers is √2, I get a little edgy. I'm also having a hard time following this simplification: A / √A = A × A / A = A Huh? This only holds if √A = A = 1. I haven't checked the rest, but this doesn't give me much confidence. Of course, knowing those Europeans, these sizes do probably make tons of sense on paper (see what I did there?), even if this isn't the…
Basically, in metres the An page dimensions are pow(2, (plus or minus)1/4 - n/2) and always round down to the nearest mm.
Anecdote: the office management/finance/HR people in the european office where I work really, really hate US Letter formats, because they don't really fit in "normal" binders. They're the ones who really suffer from this, because they're the only people who deal with paper format documents these days, I guess.