But without fixing US intellectual property laws, extending them to the world negates any possible good aspects of these trade agreements.
US intellectual property laws are no more broken than those abroad. Much of US intellectual property law is the result of international agreements that were imposed on the US by European publishers (e.g., the Berne convention). A lot of recent US intellectual property law is the result of lobbying by international corporations and foreign governments, both as a way of policy laundering and because the US is such a big and important market.
And finally, the perception that US intellectual property law is particularly broken results from the fact that in the US, people at least complain about these bogus laws, while Europeans don't even know how draconian and oppressive their laws are; much of Europe has no fair use, perpetual intellectual property rights, copyrights on text snippets, and has "copyright societies" with mandatory memberships and fees for many media.
Like all courts, SCOTUS has jurisdiction where it can enforce its rulings. That means on US territory, against people with US bank accounts, against companies doing business on US soil, against people who travel to the US, against nations the US invades, etc. That isn't rocket science, and it has nothing to do with "fascism".
So the implied logic here is Google only copied certain things, but not the whole thing, so it's okay to copy it for free?
Correct. Copyright only protects creative works, and its purpose is to encourage publication of creative works. APIs are not creative works. And even if they were, since the very nature of APIs makes it necessary to publish and document them, there is no need to provide a separate incentive.
Keep in mind that copyright doesn't exist to funnel money to corporations like Oracle, it exists to encourage people to create stuff.
From the brief, I understand that Google took code and changed it (which may or may not be against the terms) and then redistributed it (via the SDK? the Android OS?) for developers to use.
Why not check the web first? Almost the entire case is about API copyrights.
The copyright phase consisted of several distinct claims of infringement: a nine-line rangeCheck function, several test files, the structure, sequence and organization of the Java Application Programming Interface (API), and the API documentation.
It probably wasn't even copied, it was written by the same developer, who happened to use the same variable names for an uncreative piece of boiler plate code.
No one bothers with preproducibility anymore. I caught my colleagues repeatedly at cheating and outright cooking up results. The articles are written in a way that it is impossible to replicate the methods, let alone simulation/experimental results. I know couple of articles in mathematics that contain non-working algorithms. Those were "peer"-reviewed articles in good journals...
None of that is exactly new. Science has always had a large share of fraud, disagreement, feuds, and errors.
Mod parent up - he is right on about science becoming a religion
True, but that's not the fault of scientists, it's the fault of political movements. Both progressivism and socialism have as a central tenet that the world should be run according to rational, scientifically based principles as determined by scientific experts, and then complain when science can't reliably deliver the absolute truths they are seeking.
There is nothing wrong with being rational or using science, the problem arises when a central authority tries to determine scientific truth for everybody; that is the same problem and suffers from the same consequences you get when a central authority tries to determine moral or religious truth for everybody. Like religion, science should influence politics and government through the individual choices of voters, not through committees of religious or scientific experts.
The idea that physics was this pristine area of pure science, rigorously following the scientific method is an illusion. Most science has always been junk; the good stuff gets separated from the bad stuff by people building on it over decades and centuries.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with untestable physical theories; if you don't like to call them physics, call them "physics-inspired applied math". While not useful in themselves, they may lead to better, testable physical theories eventually, or they may simply find applications in entirely unrelated areas.
Problems only arise when people say things like "it's been published in a peer reviewed physics journal and lots of physicists believe it to be true, therefore we must spend lots of money to..."
They aren't "mandating" anything. You buy their product, and they provide some closed source software with it that you need to get some of the functions. It sucks, but it isn't a "mandate".
You might want to consider letting it not bother you too much, though. After all, these chips have been full of proprietary code in the equivalent of ROM for a long time. The fact that some of it is migrating into RAM doesn't really change things very much.
If you really don't like loading proprietary blobs from RAM, use embedded processors; they usually don't do that because it wouldn't work very well in their environment.
If you really want to run a "fully-free, de-blobbed system", you need to get an open source processor and an open source motherboard.
That's not a type error; that is a well-defined operation. Dynamically typed languages frequently extend comparison operators this way because they have heterogeneous lists and want to sort them. You could define C++'s operator< to do the same thing without violating type safety, it just wouldn't be very useful.
(From a language design point of view, it's probably better to reserve "<" for numerical arguments and have a separate "compare" function that works with all objects, but that's not a type safety issue.)
We declare the name and type so that the compiler/interpreter, can let us know if either one is different later on, because we sure didn't mean that.
That is the intent of static typing and static declarations. However, just because that may be a good thing doesn't mean it's the only way to make a language type safe. Dynamically typed languages are (usually) type safe, just like statically typed languages; they simply detect type errors at runtime.
In reality, it's a good thing to have both static and dynamic typing available in your programming language, and that's what programming languages increasingly are doing (C++, Java, C#, Swift, Objective-C, CommonLisp, etc.). The addition of dynamic typing doesn't make a statically typed language type-unsafe. Some of those languages choose dynamic typing as the default for variables without a type, others require dynamic types to be declared explicitly; that, too, doesn't affect type safety.
The fact that people keep on missing the error proves why statically typed languages are so much better.
You mean your misspelled variable name? I'm sorry, I thought that was an error in your example and not the point you wanted to make. It's why I said "your example makes no sense".
Whether you have to declare identifiers to be variables has nothing to do with dynamic typing. Many dynamically typed languages require you to declare identifiers as variables, but don't require you to declare a static type.
And some statically typed languages (e.g., classic Fortran) don't require you declare variables before use either.
The fact that in many scripting languages you don't have to declare identifiers as variables is indeed stupid and a source of errors, but those are not type errors.
Again false. Here's the error that is common to all dynamically typed languages:
Your example makes no sense. I assume what you are trying to get at is the notion that variables in dynamically typed languages can hold objects of different types. They can do the same in languages like C++. That has nothing to do with type safety.
A type-safe language guarantees that operations are either applied to object of the correct type or an error is signaled. That is true in Python, for example: "z = x + y" always and only completes if the operation "+" is defined for the types of the values held by "x" and "y". Languages like C, C++, and many other statically typed languages do not guarantee that.
While one can write good/bad applications in any language, the set of insecure programs in an untyped language is a superset of the set of insecure programs in a typed language of similar syntax.
You're confusing "untyped" with "statically typed". Static typing is about whether type information is available at compile time. C is statically typed, but it has lots of type system loopholes that cause no end of security headaches. In contrast, many dynamically typed languages have no type loopholes at all.
In fact, in practice, even statically typed languages with bullet proof type systems end up being less secure than dynamically typed languages, because programs often need some form of dynamic typing. If all that's available is a static type system, programmers come up with all sorts of home-grown emulations of dynamic typing, which usually end up less secure than if they had used a proper dynamic type system in the first place.
I concede we don't know for certain if he's guilty. However, investigating alleged child molestation still sounds very much like it is - and should be - FBI's business.
But he wasn't investigated for, or charged with, "child molestation". The supposed victim or his parents never managed to get police or prosecutors to start an investigation. 20 years later, there is no way for an accused to defend himself against such charges, and a prosecutor probably couldn't bring a case now either.
The sole purpose of charging him with "structuring" is that he likely can't be charged with anything else because nothing else can be proven. And, frankly, it wouldn't be surprising if the real motivation was political payback by Democrats, exactly the kind of abuse of the legal system that we don't want.
Altogether, this kind of case is exactly why prosecutors should not have a charge of "structuring" and "lying to the FBI" in lieu of bringing actual charges. And, mind you, I said the same thing about Clinton and legal problems from lying to Congress.
(Frankly, I don't believe the charge of "child molestation". I think there is a good chance that Reinboldt or his family made the whole thing up and the payments turned out to be for something like an illegitimate child instead. And even in the unlikely event that there was anything between Hastert and Reinboldt, I suspect it was consensual; that might have been technically illegal in the US, but at 16, guys are old enough to make such decisions. The worst about it is that I think Reinboldt could have done better than that ugly fat slob.)
No, they didin't. Hitler used fear of communism to get businessmen behind him,
That may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant to your original statement: "Using money is wielding power. Wielding large amounts of power requires checks and balances". I maintain: that's the core view of fascist economics.
Hitler accused people who made "unearned income" and who "speculated" as being guilty of "economic sabotage"; since bankers often were Jews, this was one of his major justification for exterminating the Jews. You can find echoes of this ideology and thinking in the demonization of "the 1%" by progressives in the US today.
The idea that Hitler was some kind of agent or friend of big business is a fantasy created by Marxist historians in order to prop up their pet economic theories. Like all totalitarian and progressive governments, his was thoroughly corrupt, so some big businesses won big courtesy of the government, but that certainly wasn't in the interest of "big business" in general.
Our system works by various people presenting evidence and building policy consensus.
That's not how our system works. We live in a representative democracy. In this system a small majority of representatives can enact legislation, and the president can veto it. Decisions are almost never made by consensus among representatives, let alone consensus of the voters. Nor, for that matter, are they intended to be: our system of government was intended to safeguard individual liberty, not to give the majority whatever it wants.
the society broadly agrees on positions and then elects politicians who agree with them.
That's not how it works. First of all, most of "society" doesn't vote at all. The people who do vote pick among a small collection of candidates, none of which represent either their own views, or a consensus, or even a compromise, of political positions of voters.
You may want to consider that you believe others to be uninformed because you don't listen.
You are naive and uninformed not because of the specific positions you take (whatever they may be), but because you believe our political system is intended to achieve goals it isn't intended to achieve, and because you believe it works in ways that it doesn't work. The goal of our system of government is not to achieve the best cost/benefit tradeoffs for society or to achieve "policy consensus". And even if those were the goals, it doesn't actually achieve them. The primary drivers of our system of government, like most systems of government, are the self-interest of politicians, rent seeking, and irrational behavior.
But no matter how good the design, and despite rigorous tests of impact, I have never seen technology systematically overcome the socio-economic divides that exist in education.
If that's a goal, you want to change education so that it improves the performance of students coming from poor backgrounds, while not improving the performance of students who come from middle class and above backgrounds, because otherwise, the "divide" remains. That may fit your political predilections, but it certainly isn't a good measure of improving education.
heard many teachers complain that computers in the classroom doubled their workload. Not only did they have to design lesson plans involving computers, they also had to write low-tech backup plans in case of technology failures, which were frequent.
Ah, so in different words, teachers are apathetic, lack computer skills, are burdened with unreliable technology (Windows), and don't want to change the way things are done. Apparently, the problem isn't with technology in the classroom, it's with teachers and using bad technology.
Law of Amplification: Technology’s primary effect is to amplify human forces. In education, technologies amplify whatever pedagogical capacity is already there.
Ah, so in different words, technology in the classroom does actually help after all!
This is exactly what economists Robert Fairlie and Jonathan Robinson found in a randomized controlled trial of laptops distributed to some California students but not others: Those with laptops saw no improvement “on a host of educational outcomes, including grades, standardized test scores, credits earned, attendance, and disciplinary actions,” though they did use the laptops for social media and video games
Note how Toyama's entire world is built around the idea of public education, narrowing gaps, and giving stuff away for free? Maybe the real problem here is not an intrinsic problem with technology, maybe it is with the context he wants to deliver it in and the wrong goals he sets.
But there is sure one thing this stuff works for well: selling Toyama's books to a technophobic crowd of social science majors who just get off on the message that "pencil and paper" are really all an educated man/woman/other needs.
At the same location as the evidence that it would be "costly" to switch. Nobody has evidence here. It's just common logic. Having to buy twice as many tools is more expensive than buying tools for just one system.
I see. So you actually have no evidence. In any case, regardless of cost, I like the imperial system: it brings out "internationalists" like Chaffee and allows European tourists and commenters to wallow in smug delusions of intellectual superiority, while we can quietly laugh at them. That alone is worth whatever price is may or may not "cost" us.
There are tradeoffs between freedom and crime prevention.
Yes, and you are on the wrong side of it.
Society weighs the plusses and minus and makes choices. Same way most choices are made, you weigh the costs and the benefits.
You are utterly naive if you think that decisions made in Washington are rational cost/benefit tradeoffs for the American people. All they are are rational cost/benefit tradeoffs for the politicians involved, which involves pulling the wool over the eyes of naive and uninformed voters like you.
Not in any way that really matters. Technically what you say is true but pretty much nobody except some engineers actually uses it.
Actually, the US is already metric in the only way that matters: all US measurements are defined with reference to metric standards. Think of an "in" just as an oddball multiplier of a "mm".
Not true at all. They could require all construction documentation and specifications be done in metric
And what would the advantage be? None of the dimensions would actually change, because that would be far too expensive and completely unnecessary. But a 12 ft wall would now end up being a 3.6576 m wall.
The economic benefits are long term and mostly indirect.
No, because other countries can't generate any appreciable political pressure in the US.
What makes you think other countries want the US switch to metric? Europe and Asia, both governments and big corporations, like the trade barriers the current system creates just fine. Even many small and mid-size European companies would probably cease to exist if they had to compete on even terms with their US equivalents.
When it comes to stuff that matters to foreign governments, they lobby extensively. The German government, for example, is one of the biggest lobbyists in DC.
Not in the US - since most of the inhabitants don't even realise there *are* other countries...
Oh, we realize it just fine; they are quaint places to visit and make nice backdrops to Hollywood movies.
Other countries simply aren't that important to our lives. That's one of the benefits of living in the US: it insulates us from the messiness of the rest of the world. That's also why we can ignore what other countries do or want.
"Going Metric" really has nothing to do with measuring in Centimeters and Celsius and never did. It really has to do with retooling industry and parts to new standard sizes. The problem is it is very costly to do so.
Actually, many "metric" standards are already really just US standards expressed in metric units. "Going metric" would likely not result in retooling, it would simply mean that a 1" pipe now becomes a 25.4 mm pipe.
What Chaffee really is saying that we should change our highway signs, supermarket scales, and gas station meters, presumably so that European tourists can feel at home here and believe we are just like them.
US units of measures are already defined in terms of metric units; they just happen to be oddball multiples. So, in that sense, we are already using the metric system. International standards use many different choices of dimensions, some of which are simple numbers in US units, others that are simple numbers in metric. That's not going to change. Nor are US tools, devices, or domestic standards going to change, because that would be too expensive.
As far as I can tell "let's go metric" is mostly political signaling: it is supposed to label a candidate as international and scientific ("become internationalist"). What it means in practice is wasting a whole bunch of money on changing highway signs, supermarket scales, and gas and water meters, plus a huge amount of software development, all for no discernible benefit. Whether you measure gasoline in units of 1 l or units of 3.785411784 l (1 gallon, exactly) makes no difference.
What such suggestions should label a candidate as is "wasteful" and "ignorant".
Slashdot Mirror
US intellectual property laws are no more broken than those abroad. Much of US intellectual property law is the result of international agreements that were imposed on the US by European publishers (e.g., the Berne convention). A lot of recent US intellectual property law is the result of lobbying by international corporations and foreign governments, both as a way of policy laundering and because the US is such a big and important market.
And finally, the perception that US intellectual property law is particularly broken results from the fact that in the US, people at least complain about these bogus laws, while Europeans don't even know how draconian and oppressive their laws are; much of Europe has no fair use, perpetual intellectual property rights, copyrights on text snippets, and has "copyright societies" with mandatory memberships and fees for many media.
Like all courts, SCOTUS has jurisdiction where it can enforce its rulings. That means on US territory, against people with US bank accounts, against companies doing business on US soil, against people who travel to the US, against nations the US invades, etc. That isn't rocket science, and it has nothing to do with "fascism".
Correct. Copyright only protects creative works, and its purpose is to encourage publication of creative works. APIs are not creative works. And even if they were, since the very nature of APIs makes it necessary to publish and document them, there is no need to provide a separate incentive.
Keep in mind that copyright doesn't exist to funnel money to corporations like Oracle, it exists to encourage people to create stuff.
Why not check the web first? Almost the entire case is about API copyrights.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O....
Here is the code Google copied:
https://majadhondt.wordpress.c...
It probably wasn't even copied, it was written by the same developer, who happened to use the same variable names for an uncreative piece of boiler plate code.
None of that is exactly new. Science has always had a large share of fraud, disagreement, feuds, and errors.
True, but that's not the fault of scientists, it's the fault of political movements. Both progressivism and socialism have as a central tenet that the world should be run according to rational, scientifically based principles as determined by scientific experts, and then complain when science can't reliably deliver the absolute truths they are seeking.
There is nothing wrong with being rational or using science, the problem arises when a central authority tries to determine scientific truth for everybody; that is the same problem and suffers from the same consequences you get when a central authority tries to determine moral or religious truth for everybody. Like religion, science should influence politics and government through the individual choices of voters, not through committees of religious or scientific experts.
The idea that physics was this pristine area of pure science, rigorously following the scientific method is an illusion. Most science has always been junk; the good stuff gets separated from the bad stuff by people building on it over decades and centuries.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with untestable physical theories; if you don't like to call them physics, call them "physics-inspired applied math". While not useful in themselves, they may lead to better, testable physical theories eventually, or they may simply find applications in entirely unrelated areas.
Problems only arise when people say things like "it's been published in a peer reviewed physics journal and lots of physicists believe it to be true, therefore we must spend lots of money to..."
They aren't "mandating" anything. You buy their product, and they provide some closed source software with it that you need to get some of the functions. It sucks, but it isn't a "mandate".
You might want to consider letting it not bother you too much, though. After all, these chips have been full of proprietary code in the equivalent of ROM for a long time. The fact that some of it is migrating into RAM doesn't really change things very much.
If you really don't like loading proprietary blobs from RAM, use embedded processors; they usually don't do that because it wouldn't work very well in their environment.
If you really want to run a "fully-free, de-blobbed system", you need to get an open source processor and an open source motherboard.
That's not a type error; that is a well-defined operation. Dynamically typed languages frequently extend comparison operators this way because they have heterogeneous lists and want to sort them. You could define C++'s operator< to do the same thing without violating type safety, it just wouldn't be very useful.
(From a language design point of view, it's probably better to reserve "<" for numerical arguments and have a separate "compare" function that works with all objects, but that's not a type safety issue.)
That is the intent of static typing and static declarations. However, just because that may be a good thing doesn't mean it's the only way to make a language type safe. Dynamically typed languages are (usually) type safe, just like statically typed languages; they simply detect type errors at runtime.
In reality, it's a good thing to have both static and dynamic typing available in your programming language, and that's what programming languages increasingly are doing (C++, Java, C#, Swift, Objective-C, CommonLisp, etc.). The addition of dynamic typing doesn't make a statically typed language type-unsafe. Some of those languages choose dynamic typing as the default for variables without a type, others require dynamic types to be declared explicitly; that, too, doesn't affect type safety.
You mean your misspelled variable name? I'm sorry, I thought that was an error in your example and not the point you wanted to make. It's why I said "your example makes no sense".
Whether you have to declare identifiers to be variables has nothing to do with dynamic typing. Many dynamically typed languages require you to declare identifiers as variables, but don't require you to declare a static type.
And some statically typed languages (e.g., classic Fortran) don't require you declare variables before use either.
The fact that in many scripting languages you don't have to declare identifiers as variables is indeed stupid and a source of errors, but those are not type errors.
Your example makes no sense. I assume what you are trying to get at is the notion that variables in dynamically typed languages can hold objects of different types. They can do the same in languages like C++. That has nothing to do with type safety.
A type-safe language guarantees that operations are either applied to object of the correct type or an error is signaled. That is true in Python, for example: "z = x + y" always and only completes if the operation "+" is defined for the types of the values held by "x" and "y". Languages like C, C++, and many other statically typed languages do not guarantee that.
You're confusing "untyped" with "statically typed". Static typing is about whether type information is available at compile time. C is statically typed, but it has lots of type system loopholes that cause no end of security headaches. In contrast, many dynamically typed languages have no type loopholes at all.
In fact, in practice, even statically typed languages with bullet proof type systems end up being less secure than dynamically typed languages, because programs often need some form of dynamic typing. If all that's available is a static type system, programmers come up with all sorts of home-grown emulations of dynamic typing, which usually end up less secure than if they had used a proper dynamic type system in the first place.
But he wasn't investigated for, or charged with, "child molestation". The supposed victim or his parents never managed to get police or prosecutors to start an investigation. 20 years later, there is no way for an accused to defend himself against such charges, and a prosecutor probably couldn't bring a case now either.
The sole purpose of charging him with "structuring" is that he likely can't be charged with anything else because nothing else can be proven. And, frankly, it wouldn't be surprising if the real motivation was political payback by Democrats, exactly the kind of abuse of the legal system that we don't want.
Altogether, this kind of case is exactly why prosecutors should not have a charge of "structuring" and "lying to the FBI" in lieu of bringing actual charges. And, mind you, I said the same thing about Clinton and legal problems from lying to Congress.
(Frankly, I don't believe the charge of "child molestation". I think there is a good chance that Reinboldt or his family made the whole thing up and the payments turned out to be for something like an illegitimate child instead. And even in the unlikely event that there was anything between Hastert and Reinboldt, I suspect it was consensual; that might have been technically illegal in the US, but at 16, guys are old enough to make such decisions. The worst about it is that I think Reinboldt could have done better than that ugly fat slob.)
That may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant to your original statement: "Using money is wielding power. Wielding large amounts of power requires checks and balances". I maintain: that's the core view of fascist economics.
Hitler accused people who made "unearned income" and who "speculated" as being guilty of "economic sabotage"; since bankers often were Jews, this was one of his major justification for exterminating the Jews. You can find echoes of this ideology and thinking in the demonization of "the 1%" by progressives in the US today.
The idea that Hitler was some kind of agent or friend of big business is a fantasy created by Marxist historians in order to prop up their pet economic theories. Like all totalitarian and progressive governments, his was thoroughly corrupt, so some big businesses won big courtesy of the government, but that certainly wasn't in the interest of "big business" in general.
That's not how our system works. We live in a representative democracy. In this system a small majority of representatives can enact legislation, and the president can veto it. Decisions are almost never made by consensus among representatives, let alone consensus of the voters. Nor, for that matter, are they intended to be: our system of government was intended to safeguard individual liberty, not to give the majority whatever it wants.
That's not how it works. First of all, most of "society" doesn't vote at all. The people who do vote pick among a small collection of candidates, none of which represent either their own views, or a consensus, or even a compromise, of political positions of voters.
You are naive and uninformed not because of the specific positions you take (whatever they may be), but because you believe our political system is intended to achieve goals it isn't intended to achieve, and because you believe it works in ways that it doesn't work. The goal of our system of government is not to achieve the best cost/benefit tradeoffs for society or to achieve "policy consensus". And even if those were the goals, it doesn't actually achieve them. The primary drivers of our system of government, like most systems of government, are the self-interest of politicians, rent seeking, and irrational behavior.
If that's a goal, you want to change education so that it improves the performance of students coming from poor backgrounds, while not improving the performance of students who come from middle class and above backgrounds, because otherwise, the "divide" remains. That may fit your political predilections, but it certainly isn't a good measure of improving education.
Ah, so in different words, teachers are apathetic, lack computer skills, are burdened with unreliable technology (Windows), and don't want to change the way things are done. Apparently, the problem isn't with technology in the classroom, it's with teachers and using bad technology.
Ah, so in different words, technology in the classroom does actually help after all!
Note how Toyama's entire world is built around the idea of public education, narrowing gaps, and giving stuff away for free? Maybe the real problem here is not an intrinsic problem with technology, maybe it is with the context he wants to deliver it in and the wrong goals he sets.
But there is sure one thing this stuff works for well: selling Toyama's books to a technophobic crowd of social science majors who just get off on the message that "pencil and paper" are really all an educated man/woman/other needs.
I see. So you actually have no evidence. In any case, regardless of cost, I like the imperial system: it brings out "internationalists" like Chaffee and allows European tourists and commenters to wallow in smug delusions of intellectual superiority, while we can quietly laugh at them. That alone is worth whatever price is may or may not "cost" us.
Yes, and you are on the wrong side of it.
You are utterly naive if you think that decisions made in Washington are rational cost/benefit tradeoffs for the American people. All they are are rational cost/benefit tradeoffs for the politicians involved, which involves pulling the wool over the eyes of naive and uninformed voters like you.
Actually, the US is already metric in the only way that matters: all US measurements are defined with reference to metric standards. Think of an "in" just as an oddball multiplier of a "mm".
And what would the advantage be? None of the dimensions would actually change, because that would be far too expensive and completely unnecessary. But a 12 ft wall would now end up being a 3.6576 m wall.
What economic benefits?
What makes you think other countries want the US switch to metric? Europe and Asia, both governments and big corporations, like the trade barriers the current system creates just fine. Even many small and mid-size European companies would probably cease to exist if they had to compete on even terms with their US equivalents.
When it comes to stuff that matters to foreign governments, they lobby extensively. The German government, for example, is one of the biggest lobbyists in DC.
Oh, we realize it just fine; they are quaint places to visit and make nice backdrops to Hollywood movies.
Other countries simply aren't that important to our lives. That's one of the benefits of living in the US: it insulates us from the messiness of the rest of the world. That's also why we can ignore what other countries do or want.
Enlighten us: what are the benefits?
(NB: I grew up with metric, and I don't see it.)
Really? Where is the evidence that that is "even costlier"?
Ah, yes, because Democrats and Europeans are all so fond of free trade!
Actually, many "metric" standards are already really just US standards expressed in metric units. "Going metric" would likely not result in retooling, it would simply mean that a 1" pipe now becomes a 25.4 mm pipe.
What Chaffee really is saying that we should change our highway signs, supermarket scales, and gas station meters, presumably so that European tourists can feel at home here and believe we are just like them.
US units of measures are already defined in terms of metric units; they just happen to be oddball multiples. So, in that sense, we are already using the metric system. International standards use many different choices of dimensions, some of which are simple numbers in US units, others that are simple numbers in metric. That's not going to change. Nor are US tools, devices, or domestic standards going to change, because that would be too expensive.
As far as I can tell "let's go metric" is mostly political signaling: it is supposed to label a candidate as international and scientific ("become internationalist"). What it means in practice is wasting a whole bunch of money on changing highway signs, supermarket scales, and gas and water meters, plus a huge amount of software development, all for no discernible benefit. Whether you measure gasoline in units of 1 l or units of 3.785411784 l (1 gallon, exactly) makes no difference.
What such suggestions should label a candidate as is "wasteful" and "ignorant".