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Our Friend, The Meter
dbirchall writes "Upon hearing that SpaceShipOne reached 100km today, I did some hasty math based on the altitude in feet sttated by Scaled Composites in their press release, and was surprised to come up with a number under 100,000 meters. Fortunately, a friend pointed out that my inches-to-meters conversion was flawed. Some quick Googling determined that lots of people still have no idea how many inches are in a meter, even after some folks have had big problems because of conversion errors."
you mean it has nothing to do with iambic?
Well, at least NASA knows what happened to it's probe, unlike some other space agencies. ;->
Yeah, okay. You use meters, congratulations. But can you spell "lose"?
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Which to me means nothing so much as is silly to point out you're right by simply being more right. The correct thing to do is to point out the above.
As a side note, this means I am doing the right thing. Go me!
Hell no! You'll get my inches, miles, and gallons when you pry them from my cold dead hands!
Loosing the probe was part of the mission design. To bad we lost it afterwards. It really sucks to lose something once you've set it loose.
As he's apparently British, he can't spell "metre" either.
get a meter-o-meter and inch-o-meter, drive across the US, divide the numbers, BAM there is your answer, ok, move on to next story :)
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Maybe some are confused between the nautical inch and the statute inch ... oh wait ...
... for ... ummm ... "discrete" measurement verification ...
... my rocket *does* go 100 km up.
Maybe another reason is that some people are believing the doctored rulers they have laying around
Ya baby
"With your centilliters and you milliliters." /Eddie Izzard
You cant fight in here, its a war room!
Jesus man! That's 19 883.8782 rods!
haven't you heard the stonecutters song:
Who controls the british crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
We dooo! We dooo!
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
The scale measured in Kg and I was able to say, "whoa! that's X pounds!"
Your kid only weighs X pounds? Sorry to hear that. My 10 month old baby boy is weighing in right about XXX pounds right now. And he's starting to walk!
Hmmmm, am I the only one left using Roman numbers? I guess if I'm gonna use this metric thing I'm going to have to upgrade to Arabic numbers, eh? Nah, it would cost too much.
Like what I said? You might like my music
How many stone do you weigh?
How would it make you better off in Australia? Do you have to keep spare sets of measuring spoons or something around for when we come over to visit?
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
It's "40 rods to the hogshead", actually. A "rod" is 16.5 feet; a "hogshead" is 63 gallons. Consequently, the elder Mr. Simpson's car putatively ran at 0.002 mpg.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
Usually speled "tonne" to make it clear.
It always bothered me in Star Trek when Spock would be reading off sensors of some object and say "5 million metric tons". Unless you go to 3 significant figures, it doesn't matter which kind of ton(ne); and in the 24th century I rather hope the imperial ton has gone the way of the cubit.
The USA may not admit it, but it yearns
for royalty, just like what we gave up
with our Revolution. How else to explain:
(1) fastination with Hollywood celebrities
(2) continued re-election of undeserved
politicians (like the House of Lords)
(3) elevation of GW Bush to near-sainthood?
Because it takes longer than seven days to reach Mars?
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
or what you manage. You can still be an idiot. Just take a look at the president...
Is that the metric spelling?
Anyone with half a brain can realise the the problem with making this change, especially in an environment where you're working with existing materials. The following is a genuine conversation I had while out buying some 4 inch guttering:
Me: Hi, I need some 4 inch guttering.
Plumbing shop: Oh sorry, we don't have any 4 inch guttering.
Me: How can you not have any? This sucks!
Plumbing shop: As luck would have it, we do have some 101.6mm guttering that is exactly the same size.
Me: I'll take it!
LOL, what a looser!
We need to just forego metric altogether in the US and skip straight to Modern Physics units!
My car tops out at about 0.000000231 c
It can travel about 5000000000000 nanometers per tank of gas
and it's engine produces around 937500000000000000000000 electron volts per second at the crank.
It's the wave of the future!
`which fortune`
Well, I hope your boss doesn't read Slashdot...
Well it would mean maybe one day once all imperial had dissapeared, we would only have ONE set of socket wrenches...
and plus all the crocodiles would sound shorter, as they would only be 2 metres instead of 6 feet!
"whoa! that's X pounds!" I might be impressed if you actually worked out what X was. :)
I'm still being astounded that amidst the expected discussion of metric, there's this fervent metadiscussion of whether I did in fact post it. Of course, even though I'm making it clear that I did post it, there's the possibility that I am not who I say I am. Although, why I would choose to impersonate me is beyond the reach of my imagination. And of course there's the possibility that I am who I say, but not who others say. Which is, in fact, more than a possibility -- at least one poster has attributed to me a status which I haven't held for quite some time. Or... maybe I'm me, but only in Imperial/SAE, and in Metric I'm something ever so slightly different than me, due to the inevitable conversion/rounding errors.
Female Robot: It fits, then you must know that I'm...
Calculon: Metric? I've always known, but for you my darling, I'm willing to convert.
"When, or if, you americans actually do adopt the metric system, it's spelled Metre.."
Right. I'm going to go to the tyre centre and have them look under the bonnet.
I'll fill my auto with 40 litres of petrol, much less than my neighbour's red-coloured auto which requires 80 litres of petrol. My auto is awful, though, so it's going to the scrapheap. For now, maybe I can bodge something to make my auto look better. At least the two hundred kilogrammes of scrap aluminium are worth something, according to the recycling programme I watched yesterday.
"Of course, this is just me being a nit-picky bastard."
No, it's you not understanding that American English spells things differently from British English.
The accepted American English spellings are "Meter", "Liter", and "Gram".
*No, really, honest.
I worked at NASA back in the early 90s. They had a big campaign to push the metric system, including posters which read "Metric is a Perfect 10!". So I got out my ruler and measured the posters, and found them to be exactly 2 feet by 3 feet...
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
Aside from the USA, there are only two other countries that don't officially use the metric system: Liberia and Myanmar. Both are dinky little third-world nations that probably have an excuse for not switching.
The USA, on the other hand, is just full of rednecks who want to keep using feet and inches (and getting pennies in their change) 'coz that's how God wants it, dammit!
I have seen pubs selling 1 pound pints before. But they're usually Foster's, which you'd have to pay me to drink.
Coming from a metric country (Japan), I can tell you it's damn scary when you're speeding down the motorway and you see the big road sign that tells you your exit is coming up in 5m!
because it is Google.
You'll get my inches, miles, and gallons when you pry them from my cold dead hands!
Shouldn't that be - "You'll get my inches, miles and gallons when you pry them from my cold dead feet!"
You know, this thread is about 10 times more confusing than the whole meters-to-inches thing.
Hey, 10 times, that's metric!
So 1 inch is 2.54cm. then 1 foot is 25.4 cm ? 1 yard is 254.0 cm ? etc. ?
You can't derive the rest if you don't know the seemingly randomly chosen number of $units in a $biggerunit.
Similar story, over 10 years ago when Ireland went metric (apologies if my attemps at written brogue sound like talk-like-a-pirate-day):
My dad: Good morning, I'd like some quarter inch pipe please
Hardware guy: Ah no surrr, we have the metric system now surr, it's all in millimeters.
My dad: Ok fine, I need some 8mm pipe
Hardware guy: Foine, foine! How many feet would you like?
Not confused enough? http://translate.google.com/translate?u=www.slashdot.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en
Because then we wouldn't waste time laughing at how silly Lockheed Martin and NASA were for losing a probe, so we would get more work done, make more profits and thus be better off. Simple.
We are humbled by the mighty Australian Space Agency...
And don't forget the American perodic table, where "sulfur" comes next to "fosforos". Oh, wait...
I have many times been amazed at the calculating skills that imperial cooks must have.
You should see the calculating skills of the rebel cooks.
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Would you mind awfully just calling it "American"? I'd rather my beautiful native tongue not be sullied by association with that cacophonous pidgin you colonials "speak". There's a good chap.
And we call them cars over here, dear boy. Do try to keep up.
Intellectual Property
Intellectual: of the mind
Property: that over which one has control
There is a fair bit of arrogance renaming someone else's measurements without using them yourself. What are you going to do next rename Bordeaux into Bordo so you can get your heads around other French concepts?
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Funny how everyone took that comment as anti-American. Here I was assuming "*those* people" was meant to be a reference to those "add i-n-c-h-e-s to your manhood" spams...
(Speaking as someone who thinks in inches despite never having set foot on US soil.)
My car gets forty rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
On a related point is a pint 24 or 20 fl. oz? It all depends on which side of the pond you live
It all depends on how cheap the bar is.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world, ...
(We all know what comes next.)
THE LOGICAL MEASURING SYSTEM IS BASED ON 10 (base two, of course)!
....
> * 40 inches, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
and 120 inches according to all the viagra spam I get!
You overlook a significant advantage of metric; weights and measures have a direct relationship.
I can tell you that a litre of water weighs 1kg.
Yes but how long is it?
After I have received the wisdom of good teaching, I will untiringly teach all people. - The Teachings of Buddha
Well I get 31.337, but I'm using an old CPU with the Pentium bug.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I work for a governmental organisation in the UK. I feel duty bound to assure people that we are by no means as well organised as you suggest.
There are 231 cubic inches per gallon.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
Then there are the idiots that want a metric calendar. No kidding, there really is a metric calendar. Our concept of a second would change and the calendar would be off by a lot quickly. Think leap week instead of a leap year. That is because our universe is not base 10.
That is because American units are right. That is why the US is on top, we use the right measuring system. Even Airbus realized that and switched to American units in their planes. Now they are a world competitor. Even the French can make something of themselves when they use correct American measurements. No confusion on if it is 1"(inch) or 1' (foot), is it 10mm or 10cm? No one would make a mistake on the American measure, metric measurements are messed up all the time.
Everyone should dump the failed Metric system and use the correct American measures! Learn the conversions, it will do your brain good.
We call it a ruler. Do you call it a yard meter?
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Then how much does a pentagram weigh?
Carthago delenda est!
We call it a ruler. Do you call it a yard meter?
:)
We call impliments up to about 16 inches a ruler. A 36 inch impliment is usually called a yardstick.
Anything between those ranges is a broken yardstick
Of course, there are folding rulers too, those can be any expanded length, as long as they and up in that 16 inch range when folded. I've never seen a folding yardstick.
"This is pure americanizum[sic] at work."
If, by that, you mean Slashdot, Space Travel, The Internet, and Computers in general, then yes, it is Americanism at work. Hard at work.
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They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
nice try, but somehow I doubt that any of the semiconductor manufacturers are working in survey feet....