Imperial is pretty simple, especially after switching to the 25.4 mm inch. A gallon has 10 lbs of water in it (at 50F or such) which of course translates to 160 fl oz, just like 10 lbs has 160 ounces in it. The problem is America doesn't use Imperial, but rather the old English measures. At least you did switch inches back in the '50's, just keeping the American inch for surveying.
We're metric in Canada and you can still buy a foot long hotdog, as well as quarter pounders etc. Just the receipts (if measured and not just sold as an unit) have to show metric. So if you buy 10 feet of rope, it'll actually be rung up as 3 meters or so of rope.
But the definition of an inch is 25.4 mm or 2.54 cm, even America switched over to the modern inch back in the fifties and only kept their old weird inch for surveying. As for things like the quarter pounder. We've been metric in Canada since the mid '70's, McDonalds still sells the quarter pounder, hammers are still measured in ounces, we still buy lumber such as 2x4's or 4x8 sheets of plywood, the grocery stores advertise prices in pounds (with kg in small print) though the receipt does show the metric measure that the scales actually use.. The biggest weirdness is the shortage of Imperial fluid measures. Containers used to be generally 1 litre or 4 litres or originally 4.54 litres etc but now they're often weird sizes such as 3.78 litres or 941 ml and sometimes they even call it a gallon but it only has 128 fl oz in it and they're weird ounces. An imperial gallon is 10 lbs of water (at 50F IIRC) and contains 160 fl oz which each weigh an ounce if pure water at the right temp. Reading this page, it is funny how many Americans think they use Imperial measures when they use English measures (or Canadian in the case of the inch)
Well around here it is the religious who keep pushing the war on drugs and get really irate when anything is suggested to decrease the number of deaths, often basically saying they deserve it for not being Christian. But staying away from the war on drugs, there are the residential schools here in Canada where the last one was shut down less then 20 years back. All run by the churches, responsible for the deaths of thousands of native children, even more torture and sex abuse, all in the name of beating Christian values into the heathens.
It's the far right Christians who keep the war on drugs going. Where I am, this is leading to a lot of deaths, deaths that would be preventable by simply making drugs legally available. This doesn't even mention all the people who have had their lives ruined in other ways by the war on freedom/drugs led by the religious right.
There's been studies on this. Seems when someone pays with cash, both a pleasure center and a disgust center light up in peoples brains. When paying with plastic, only the pleasure part of the brain lights up. This means that people are more likely to spend money using plastic and one of the main drivers of businesses encouraging plastic.
Originally to get copyright, you had to register your work and deposit a copy in a famous library, Oxford or Cambridge in the UK, Library of Congress in the States. Going back to that seems a good solution, especially if, in the case of software, it is the original source code. The registration process would also weed out the stuff that doesn't need copyright as well.
Without the power of government to enforce copyright, everything published is public domain. Simplest is to just eliminate copyright as it is just more government regulations. If you don't want your works entering the public domain, keep them secret.
How do you get a signal back from a thumbnail sized chip? Even getting a signal across 4.4 light years from a full sized spaceship seems to be quite the challenge.
Wishful thinking? There's also that some people seem to be wired to believe things were better in the past, possibly this goes by nationality to some degree. For former communist countries, those on the bottom may well have been better off. Crappy state housing, food and medical can be better then living on the street. It sure seems like things have got worse here in Canada for those on the bottom of the social scale, at least all the homeless I see standing around in -5C temperatures don't look very happy whereas 50 years back, I don't think there was any homeless, at least in the winter. Wages also stopped raising for the bottom quintuple of those who work about 30 years back. The top quintuple have done very well in those 30 years.
For much of the world, things were measurably worse 50 years ago. Vietnam seems to lead the list, 50 years ago there was war there. India, more people starving then now, Europe was still recovering from the war and it seems most of them think things have improved. Corrupt nations such as Venezuela have seen things get much worse.
I'm thinking more of booting a protected mode OS, where the computer is in real mode upon being turned on and a single process (I believe) sets things up and then switches to protected mode or perhaps chains to another process that switches to protected mode.
Much is similar here, my friend got in quick as he had lost a lot of blood, so was triaged quick, it was a quiet night which really helped. Go to some hospitals on the weekend and they're busy and if you have a minor problem , the wait can be long. The part we don't have is the bullshit about billing. Give them your health card (looks like a drivers license now as we've had a lot of problems with Americans faking being Canadians and you used to just need your number), put some stuff in the computer, mostly just double checking in my friends case as he'd been there before and you're' in. We do have problems with people going to emergency who shouldn't and the government has been expanding the number of clinics to combat it but every time I've been in emergency, there always seems to be people there who should have just seen a doctor. In a way a small user fee, perhaps $10, would help there as when stuff seems to be free, some people take advantage of it.
It was partially luck, a quiet night, would have been worse on the weekend or on welfare day and partially the triaging. Last time I went, for a nasty cut, it took a while due to a stream of people showing up in worse shape.
Meanwhile, here in BC, I took a friend to emergency last week as he was puking and shitting blood. It was slow, at least 20 minutes to get in and almost an hour before he was in a bed in a room though most of that time was spent trying to get an IV into him. He just got out, after a week and surgery, total cost to him, zero, without hassle. There were clear signs that without coverage, it was about $350 for Canadian residents and $750 for non-residents for an emergency room visit. When I go to the doctors, there are clear signs how much certain things cost such as about a $100 for a full exam (not covered when it is for work related stuff, like truck drivers or airplane pilots who need regular exams). Everything is transparent and the only shocks are the prices of medications, which are high in Canada and only covered in some cases (varies by Province as medical is a Provincial responsibility with the Feds just setting minimal care levels).
It would be nice to see an unbiased study on nuclear safety vs everything else. The studies I've seen have been very biased. They count construction deaths in wind and solar but not nuclear (I'd assume there's been a few construction worker deaths in construction of nuclear plants rather then zero), they count mining deaths in coal mining without counting deaths in uranium mining and count dams built for flood protection that failed as hydro failures. Now I'm willing to believe that currently nuclear is safer, if only due to less construction and fewer miners but such biased studies reflect badly on the studies that people always cite.
And look at what happened to the Knights Templar. As soon as someone owed them enough money, they were framed and burned and that was the end of the Knights Templar. The Jews ran into the same problems repeatedly due to being in the same business, though they did seem to survive.
I'm in Canada, most businesses happily accept American money (at least small bills, there's a risk with large bills due to lack of security features meaning it's hard to know if they're genuine) and generally I have an American coin in among my change. Never had a problem the other way either, at least close to the border where most businesses happily accept Canadian money.
It can be lost, which is basically the same thing. Start using gold as currency and it will wear and shrink due to loses. Used to be a real problem, money had to be minted slightly overweight and removed from circulation when it get worn and shopkeepers and such would weigh that money and refuse to honour worn money or more likely, discount it. Did make for a nice industry in scales though.
only way it's price can be manipulated is through it's purchase or sale.
You can pretend there is more gold then exists, such as today when there is at least twice as much gold owned as in existence due to so much of it being represented by pieces of paper. Gold, only being practical for certain sizes of transactions, lends itself to pieces of paper to represent it, especially in large quantities and pieces of other metals to represent small amounts. There's always a motivation to put out more paper/small coins then the amount of gold to cover it and as long as the issuer doesn't get too greedy, they can get away with it.
I live about 40 miles out of Vancouver (used to be able to get downtown in under an hour before the traffic got bad) and only just got cell service last month. Now instead of dial-up, I have a 4G connection which seems to give me just over 10/1 Mbps with a 250 GB cap. Seems wonderful after dial-up and I understand that lots of small communities get the same deal.
It makes more sense in a base 60 numbering system (12 hours in a day), along with 360 degrees in a circle. Somehow we've gone backwards by using a base 10 numbering system. Babylon used base 60, some primitive tribes, who counted using the gaps between fingers, used base 8.
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Imperial is pretty simple, especially after switching to the 25.4 mm inch. A gallon has 10 lbs of water in it (at 50F or such) which of course translates to 160 fl oz, just like 10 lbs has 160 ounces in it.
The problem is America doesn't use Imperial, but rather the old English measures. At least you did switch inches back in the '50's, just keeping the American inch for surveying.
We're metric in Canada and you can still buy a foot long hotdog, as well as quarter pounders etc. Just the receipts (if measured and not just sold as an unit) have to show metric. So if you buy 10 feet of rope, it'll actually be rung up as 3 meters or so of rope.
But the definition of an inch is 25.4 mm or 2.54 cm, even America switched over to the modern inch back in the fifties and only kept their old weird inch for surveying.
As for things like the quarter pounder. We've been metric in Canada since the mid '70's, McDonalds still sells the quarter pounder, hammers are still measured in ounces, we still buy lumber such as 2x4's or 4x8 sheets of plywood, the grocery stores advertise prices in pounds (with kg in small print) though the receipt does show the metric measure that the scales actually use..
The biggest weirdness is the shortage of Imperial fluid measures. Containers used to be generally 1 litre or 4 litres or originally 4.54 litres etc but now they're often weird sizes such as 3.78 litres or 941 ml and sometimes they even call it a gallon but it only has 128 fl oz in it and they're weird ounces. An imperial gallon is 10 lbs of water (at 50F IIRC) and contains 160 fl oz which each weigh an ounce if pure water at the right temp.
Reading this page, it is funny how many Americans think they use Imperial measures when they use English measures (or Canadian in the case of the inch)
Well around here it is the religious who keep pushing the war on drugs and get really irate when anything is suggested to decrease the number of deaths, often basically saying they deserve it for not being Christian.
But staying away from the war on drugs, there are the residential schools here in Canada where the last one was shut down less then 20 years back. All run by the churches, responsible for the deaths of thousands of native children, even more torture and sex abuse, all in the name of beating Christian values into the heathens.
It's the far right Christians who keep the war on drugs going. Where I am, this is leading to a lot of deaths, deaths that would be preventable by simply making drugs legally available. This doesn't even mention all the people who have had their lives ruined in other ways by the war on freedom/drugs led by the religious right.
There's been studies on this. Seems when someone pays with cash, both a pleasure center and a disgust center light up in peoples brains. When paying with plastic, only the pleasure part of the brain lights up. This means that people are more likely to spend money using plastic and one of the main drivers of businesses encouraging plastic.
Originally to get copyright, you had to register your work and deposit a copy in a famous library, Oxford or Cambridge in the UK, Library of Congress in the States. Going back to that seems a good solution, especially if, in the case of software, it is the original source code.
The registration process would also weed out the stuff that doesn't need copyright as well.
Without the power of government to enforce copyright, everything published is public domain. Simplest is to just eliminate copyright as it is just more government regulations. If you don't want your works entering the public domain, keep them secret.
And they abused their monopoly power leading to the common carrier regulations needing to be implemented.
There are small private businesses that do things altruistically. but it's not a winning strategy and once a company goes public...
How do you get a signal back from a thumbnail sized chip? Even getting a signal across 4.4 light years from a full sized spaceship seems to be quite the challenge.
Wishful thinking? There's also that some people seem to be wired to believe things were better in the past, possibly this goes by nationality to some degree.
For former communist countries, those on the bottom may well have been better off. Crappy state housing, food and medical can be better then living on the street. It sure seems like things have got worse here in Canada for those on the bottom of the social scale, at least all the homeless I see standing around in -5C temperatures don't look very happy whereas 50 years back, I don't think there was any homeless, at least in the winter. Wages also stopped raising for the bottom quintuple of those who work about 30 years back. The top quintuple have done very well in those 30 years.
For much of the world, things were measurably worse 50 years ago. Vietnam seems to lead the list, 50 years ago there was war there. India, more people starving then now, Europe was still recovering from the war and it seems most of them think things have improved. Corrupt nations such as Venezuela have seen things get much worse.
I'm thinking more of booting a protected mode OS, where the computer is in real mode upon being turned on and a single process (I believe) sets things up and then switches to protected mode or perhaps chains to another process that switches to protected mode.
Isn't there usually only one process before switching to protected mode?
Much is similar here, my friend got in quick as he had lost a lot of blood, so was triaged quick, it was a quiet night which really helped. Go to some hospitals on the weekend and they're busy and if you have a minor problem , the wait can be long.
The part we don't have is the bullshit about billing. Give them your health card (looks like a drivers license now as we've had a lot of problems with Americans faking being Canadians and you used to just need your number), put some stuff in the computer, mostly just double checking in my friends case as he'd been there before and you're' in.
We do have problems with people going to emergency who shouldn't and the government has been expanding the number of clinics to combat it but every time I've been in emergency, there always seems to be people there who should have just seen a doctor. In a way a small user fee, perhaps $10, would help there as when stuff seems to be free, some people take advantage of it.
It was partially luck, a quiet night, would have been worse on the weekend or on welfare day and partially the triaging. Last time I went, for a nasty cut, it took a while due to a stream of people showing up in worse shape.
Meanwhile, here in BC, I took a friend to emergency last week as he was puking and shitting blood. It was slow, at least 20 minutes to get in and almost an hour before he was in a bed in a room though most of that time was spent trying to get an IV into him. He just got out, after a week and surgery, total cost to him, zero, without hassle.
There were clear signs that without coverage, it was about $350 for Canadian residents and $750 for non-residents for an emergency room visit. When I go to the doctors, there are clear signs how much certain things cost such as about a $100 for a full exam (not covered when it is for work related stuff, like truck drivers or airplane pilots who need regular exams). Everything is transparent and the only shocks are the prices of medications, which are high in Canada and only covered in some cases (varies by Province as medical is a Provincial responsibility with the Feds just setting minimal care levels).
It would be nice to see an unbiased study on nuclear safety vs everything else. The studies I've seen have been very biased. They count construction deaths in wind and solar but not nuclear (I'd assume there's been a few construction worker deaths in construction of nuclear plants rather then zero), they count mining deaths in coal mining without counting deaths in uranium mining and count dams built for flood protection that failed as hydro failures.
Now I'm willing to believe that currently nuclear is safer, if only due to less construction and fewer miners but such biased studies reflect badly on the studies that people always cite.
And look at what happened to the Knights Templar. As soon as someone owed them enough money, they were framed and burned and that was the end of the Knights Templar. The Jews ran into the same problems repeatedly due to being in the same business, though they did seem to survive.
I'm in Canada, most businesses happily accept American money (at least small bills, there's a risk with large bills due to lack of security features meaning it's hard to know if they're genuine) and generally I have an American coin in among my change.
Never had a problem the other way either, at least close to the border where most businesses happily accept Canadian money.
cannot be destroyed
It can be lost, which is basically the same thing. Start using gold as currency and it will wear and shrink due to loses. Used to be a real problem, money had to be minted slightly overweight and removed from circulation when it get worn and shopkeepers and such would weigh that money and refuse to honour worn money or more likely, discount it. Did make for a nice industry in scales though.
only way it's price can be manipulated is through it's purchase or sale.
You can pretend there is more gold then exists, such as today when there is at least twice as much gold owned as in existence due to so much of it being represented by pieces of paper. Gold, only being practical for certain sizes of transactions, lends itself to pieces of paper to represent it, especially in large quantities and pieces of other metals to represent small amounts. There's always a motivation to put out more paper/small coins then the amount of gold to cover it and as long as the issuer doesn't get too greedy, they can get away with it.
I live about 40 miles out of Vancouver (used to be able to get downtown in under an hour before the traffic got bad) and only just got cell service last month. Now instead of dial-up, I have a 4G connection which seems to give me just over 10/1 Mbps with a 250 GB cap. Seems wonderful after dial-up and I understand that lots of small communities get the same deal.
The problem with that idea is how do communicate with the Earth and without the capability of communicating any findings, what's the point?
It makes more sense in a base 60 numbering system (12 hours in a day), along with 360 degrees in a circle. Somehow we've gone backwards by using a base 10 numbering system. Babylon used base 60, some primitive tribes, who counted using the gaps between fingers, used base 8.