Because you're misinterpreting the word "free." We're living in the land of the free-as-in-beer. We're free to sit on our asses all day and let Mother Washington take care of all our worries for us.
What's the phrase I'm looking for here... ah, yes: self-inflicted. If the crowned heads of Europe didn't start their little inbred family feud in 1913, you likely wouldn't have had these problems.
"By making all the countries depend on each other in trade,"
Yeah yeah, the very same trade links that made war obsolete with the dawn of the Twentieth Century? There's no way the kaiser and the king would make war on each other!
"Now with the addition of eastern Europe, the EU can help the poorer countries of Europe create better living situation for their citizens"
That's another old tune. Much of that Twentieth Century bloodshed you refer to came about from Western Europe and Russia trying to "help their backwards brethren."
"How about the fact that virtually the entire world uses the metric system?"
A lot of people around the world speak English. Does this mean governments should work to actively suppress indigneous langauges in favor of it?
"And with today's shrinking village of a planet every year that the U.S. sticks to the imperial system is costing tons of money in conversions, separate sets of tools and machine parts,"
The same can be said for instruction manuals in six or seven different languages, if not more so; the relationship between inches and milimeters is defined and exact, unlike the vagrancies of language. The fact that the relationship between the two units is exact means there is little problem in finding tools in both sets of units. Metric-only China has no problem manufacturing inch wrenches and sockets once you give them the CAD/CAM file.
And as for the people that use those tools you mentioned, can't find a 1/2 in socket? Try the 13 mm. Anybody in the US that actually uses those tools on a daily basis knows things like that, and finding a mechanic that speaks both inches and milimeters is a lot easier than, say, finding a mechanic that speaks both English and Spanish.
"Finally let me give you a simple example of how convenient the metric system is:"
What you describe isn't "the metric system" and it sure as heck ain't SI. It is, instead, metric(ation) mythology which is, to be blunt, flat-out wrong.
"One liter of water at sea level and room temperature weighs 1 kilogram."
Using the current definition of 1 L = 1 dm^3, you cannot, in any way, shape or form, get pure, liquid water to be 1 kg/L at 101.325 kPa (CGPM's definition of "1 atmosphere"), ever. It is physically impossible. At it's absolute densest at around 277.1 K, you can get it to 0.999972 kg/L, but that's it. Under an older definition of 1 kg, you could get 1 kg/L, but that hasn't been true since 1901.
On the other hand, at approximately 372.8 K (a few dK shy of boiling), you can get liquid water to be 1 ounce per US fluid ounce. Meanwhile, the only people who win on the whole 1/1 ratio for the density of liquid water at anywhere near room temperature are the British, who get 1 oz/(fl oz) at around 294.2 K, while the generally accepted number for "room temperature" is 298.15 K.
"Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius"
At 101.325 kPa, water boils at 373.124 K, which, while close, is not the same as 373.15 K.
The degrees Celsius temperature scale is closely related to the degrees centigrade scale, but they are not the same. The boiling point of water at 101.325 kPa "just happens" to be near 373.15 K, just as the freezing point "just happens" to be near 273.15 K, but those numbers are not incorporated in the definition of the modern degrees Celsius temperature scale. The only property of pure H2O set in stone is the triple point, defined to be 273.16 K (or 0.01 degrees Cellsius, if you will). Everything else is a series of arbitrary decisions to try to make the measurements fit the model.
"Now you tell me, quickly, exactly and off the top of your head, how many inches in a foot? How many inches in a yard? How many yards in a mile?"
12, 36 and 1760. Also, off the top of my head, I can tell you that there are 220 yards in a furlong. Moving on to what I'd have to use math for...
"How many inches in a mile?"
Of what possible utility is that conversion? My car's odometer may measure in miles and there may be an exact integer number of inches in a mile, but that doesn't mean my odometer will tell me how many inches (or feet or yards) my car has driven to any meaningful accuracy, just as a metric odometer won't tell you if your car has moved 1 m since you last read it. Measurement isn't about conversions, it's about accuracy and signifigant digits, and decimal conversion rules is a substitute for neither; it can actually be a problem if it gives you the illusion of ha
You missed the "over the past century" part. From 1901 to 1964, the liter was defined as "1 kg of water at X, Y temperature and pressure" During this time, 1 L was about 1.000028 dm^3 (where dm = 10 cm = 0.1 m). Before 1901, it was, as you said, 1 L = 1 dm^3 exactly.
"I would say it makes more sense than a random 231 quantity,"
It was originally defined by the volume of a cylinder of given dimentions, but Congress decided to round off to the nearest cubic inch in the 1800's or so. It may be a relatively arbitrary number, but it is far simpler to realize (if not more realistic) than trying to recreate a sample of water of acceptable purity while trying to juggle the related qualities of temperature and pressure while trying to account for differences in gravitational acceleration on an inconsisten, spinning globe*, which is what both the liter (1 kg H2O) and the UK gallon (10 lb H2O) used to be defined as. There are reasons why that idea was dropped like the bad habit it was, and both are now defined with respect to the meter, just like the US gallon has been since the 1890's.
The only real change to the US gallon came when the US inch itself was changed, from 100/3937 m to 0.0254 m. Cube the difference between those two numbers and you'll see that the change in the US gallon is downright negligible, especially when compared to the change in the liter from 1 dm^3 to 1.000028 dm^3 and back. With the liter, in a technical capacity, you need to worry about what year the measurement was taken. There's no such problem with the US gallon.
* The atmosphere is a fluid. If you're not comparing your sample of water to your metal mass definition in a complete vacuum (which, since we're talking liquid water, would be more or less impossible), you have to take into account that the water is more buoyant (weighs less) in the atmosphere than X/Y ratio platinum-iridium alloy. Not to mention, buoyancy is affected by weight while pressure is affected by mass, so you need to worry about differences in local gravitational acceleration. This episode of Sesame Street is brought to you by the numbers 101.325, 277.13 and 9.80665.
(BTW, because I have absolutely no life, I sat down once with some steam tables and played with the original definition of the UK gallon before they, too, went metric and pegged it to the meter. At the temperature and pressure the water was supposed to be measured at, the volume they came up with is just flat-out wrong. There are reasons why the US was among the first to jump ship from UK standards, and the only problem it caused is that, because we were the first to abandon the shrinking yard, our yards/feet/inches were a little longer than the yards/feet/inches everybody used until we all standardized on a metric yard in 1959.)
"As far as I know, one litre is 1000 cm^3. How did you think it is defined? Perhaps you are thinking of the old definition of a kilogram?"
Originally, the liter was defined, as you said, as 1 dm^3 ("one cubic decimeter"), and the kilogram was defined as 1 L of water at X, Y, Z temperature, pressure and gravitational acceleration. Then, things were swapped: when the current iridium-platinum kilogram definition was introduced, the definition of the liter changed to "1 kg of water at X, Y, Z temperature, pressure and gravitational acceleration." This worked out to be around 1 L = 1.000028 dm^3 or so. It was only in the Twentieth Century that it was changed back to 1 L = 1 dm^3.
Depends how you look at it. We call the things we use "pounds" and "feet," but we abandoned the flawed British standards in the 1890's (their yard shrank, their pound leaked), instead basing them on the SI standards. A pound is defined as 0.45359237 kg and a foot is 0.3048 m.*
Also, we were the only ones sane enough to base our unit of volume/capacity on the cube of our linear standard (1 gal US = 231 in^3, as it's been since the 1800's or so). Both the British gallon and the SI liter both had ugly/cumbersome definitions involving a sample of perfect water at a given temperature, pressure and local gravitational acceleration (the French got the litre right from the first, but then they broke it, and then it was fixed again, meaning the definition of "liter" has changed by tens of microleters over the past century).
* These are actually numbers agreed upon by the foot/pound using world in 1959. Before that, in the US, the number of kilograms in a pound had more digits and a foot was 1200/3937 m.
"what ends up happening is that the folks with the least informed opinions do much of the talking, whereas the ones with a more enlightened view say very little?"
That's because the people doing all the talking have their ego firmly married to their opinions and opening your mouth in order to contradict them in any way, shape or form will do nothing more than draw fire. It's actually easier to grin and bear it and vent later, when you won't be the catalyst to a "scene."
The wage-earner may or may not be putting your credit card information in a database. The online retailer is, as a course of business, definately putting your information into a database.
Also we're not just talking about financial security, we're also talking about collecting demographics on you as well as your personal contact information and selling it off. The only possible analogy is if the waiter also insists on taking your driver's license back there with him, and then he copies everything on it to sell to the highest bidder. After all, that's not fraud, that's marketing.
" This is because the use of social security numbers as an authenticator is fundamentally flawed and insecure."
For me, the issue isn't so much that using SSNs is a flawed authenticator, but the fact that we're using such authenticators to begin with. It's bad enough to have a unique name, I don't want to make it any easier for my personal information to be bought and sold like some commodity.
The only other people that need to know your social are your employers, and that's only because the IRS, in their infinite wisdom*, has decided to make your SSN your taxpayer ID. Other than that, everybody else only wants the info to make it easier to classify you in their own databases.
* How nice that corporate taxpayers and the like have a new, unique taxpayer ID generated for them but individual taxpayers don't have that option.
"The government needs to step up and institute a new secure way to authenticate people,"
There is no government solution here; if anything, we're currently living in the government solution, which obviously is making things worse. The only true solution is for people to actually give a damn about what happens to their information after they apply for their grocery store's shopper monitoring program, but instead the people of the US continue to wait for Mother Washington to take care of everything.
Slashdot Mirror
" I said earlier also that it was "their money".
No, you didn't; the word "their" did not appear anywhere in your original post. You instead referred to it as "this money."
"I have no idea what these "doners" spend thier other money on, and it is not my business either."
So you wrote that post because... ?
"because the information is sent into everyones homes without any kind of subscription."
Thanks to the Beloved Congress, my television has a V-Chip in it. So that argument no longer stands, right?
Because you're misinterpreting the word "free." We're living in the land of the free-as-in-beer. We're free to sit on our asses all day and let Mother Washington take care of all our worries for us.
"but having the largest, most important software company in the world in your country is priceless."
Keep your damned software and your hubris, I'd rather have integrity and character.
"I'm an innocent girl"
This is Slashdot: nobody here is particularly innocent, or a girl.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some gay midget kiddie goat porn to download.
"Magellan actually sailed around it,"
No, a few of his ships and a handful of their crewmembers did. Most everybody on the journey, including Magellan, died nasty, horrible deaths.
OTOH, Columbus survived, and even did his trip more than once.
"I am the honor medal candidate for the linguistics department at my college."
Then what in God's name are you doing here?!? Shouldn't this site make your eyes bleed or something?
Yes, but how many Libraries of Congress is that?
What, you actually read the article?
"whereas software is, in source form, a free expression of ideas,"
If it's so much about "free expression," why does my compiler bitch so much when I miss a single lousy semicolon?
"suffered the most from wars in the last century"
What's the phrase I'm looking for here... ah, yes: self-inflicted. If the crowned heads of Europe didn't start their little inbred family feud in 1913, you likely wouldn't have had these problems.
"By making all the countries depend on each other in trade,"
Yeah yeah, the very same trade links that made war obsolete with the dawn of the Twentieth Century? There's no way the kaiser and the king would make war on each other!
"Now with the addition of eastern Europe, the EU can help the poorer countries of Europe create better living situation for their citizens"
That's another old tune. Much of that Twentieth Century bloodshed you refer to came about from Western Europe and Russia trying to "help their backwards brethren."
"A customer of ours is still running their heavily used website on a SUN from 1999. They have no plans to upgrade."
What's the URL? Slashdot can fix that!
They outsorced their evil-doing at around the same time they outsourced their PC OS software, to the same company.
"but psychologically 99-cents seems negligable. Above a dollar? That's real money."
Dude, your dollar is a coin. Your $2 denomination is even a coin. Coins aren't real money. :
"Holding hands? That has to be the lamest feature ever."
Whassamatta? Can't find someone to hold your hand?
"Coming Soon: Unreal 2K5! We've replaced running with skipping,"
They do that anyway with their constant jumping.
No, it means you're doing her homework for her.
"How about the fact that virtually the entire world uses the metric system?"
A lot of people around the world speak English. Does this mean governments should work to actively suppress indigneous langauges in favor of it?
"And with today's shrinking village of a planet every year that the U.S. sticks to the imperial system is costing tons of money in conversions, separate sets of tools and machine parts,"
The same can be said for instruction manuals in six or seven different languages, if not more so; the relationship between inches and milimeters is defined and exact, unlike the vagrancies of language. The fact that the relationship between the two units is exact means there is little problem in finding tools in both sets of units. Metric-only China has no problem manufacturing inch wrenches and sockets once you give them the CAD/CAM file.
And as for the people that use those tools you mentioned, can't find a 1/2 in socket? Try the 13 mm. Anybody in the US that actually uses those tools on a daily basis knows things like that, and finding a mechanic that speaks both inches and milimeters is a lot easier than, say, finding a mechanic that speaks both English and Spanish.
"Finally let me give you a simple example of how convenient the metric system is:"
What you describe isn't "the metric system" and it sure as heck ain't SI. It is, instead, metric(ation) mythology which is, to be blunt, flat-out wrong.
"One liter of water at sea level and room temperature weighs 1 kilogram."
Using the current definition of 1 L = 1 dm^3, you cannot, in any way, shape or form, get pure, liquid water to be 1 kg/L at 101.325 kPa (CGPM's definition of "1 atmosphere"), ever. It is physically impossible. At it's absolute densest at around 277.1 K, you can get it to 0.999972 kg/L, but that's it. Under an older definition of 1 kg, you could get 1 kg/L, but that hasn't been true since 1901.
On the other hand, at approximately 372.8 K (a few dK shy of boiling), you can get liquid water to be 1 ounce per US fluid ounce. Meanwhile, the only people who win on the whole 1/1 ratio for the density of liquid water at anywhere near room temperature are the British, who get 1 oz/(fl oz) at around 294.2 K, while the generally accepted number for "room temperature" is 298.15 K.
"Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius"
At 101.325 kPa, water boils at 373.124 K, which, while close, is not the same as 373.15 K.
The degrees Celsius temperature scale is closely related to the degrees centigrade scale, but they are not the same. The boiling point of water at 101.325 kPa "just happens" to be near 373.15 K, just as the freezing point "just happens" to be near 273.15 K, but those numbers are not incorporated in the definition of the modern degrees Celsius temperature scale. The only property of pure H2O set in stone is the triple point, defined to be 273.16 K (or 0.01 degrees Cellsius, if you will). Everything else is a series of arbitrary decisions to try to make the measurements fit the model.
"Now you tell me, quickly, exactly and off the top of your head, how many inches in a foot? How many inches in a yard? How many yards in a mile?"
12, 36 and 1760. Also, off the top of my head, I can tell you that there are 220 yards in a furlong. Moving on to what I'd have to use math for...
"How many inches in a mile?"
Of what possible utility is that conversion? My car's odometer may measure in miles and there may be an exact integer number of inches in a mile, but that doesn't mean my odometer will tell me how many inches (or feet or yards) my car has driven to any meaningful accuracy, just as a metric odometer won't tell you if your car has moved 1 m since you last read it. Measurement isn't about conversions, it's about accuracy and signifigant digits, and decimal conversion rules is a substitute for neither; it can actually be a problem if it gives you the illusion of ha
"Wrong, since 1964, a SI liter is:"
You missed the "over the past century" part. From 1901 to 1964, the liter was defined as "1 kg of water at X, Y temperature and pressure" During this time, 1 L was about 1.000028 dm^3 (where dm = 10 cm = 0.1 m). Before 1901, it was, as you said, 1 L = 1 dm^3 exactly.
"I would say it makes more sense than a random 231 quantity,"
It was originally defined by the volume of a cylinder of given dimentions, but Congress decided to round off to the nearest cubic inch in the 1800's or so. It may be a relatively arbitrary number, but it is far simpler to realize (if not more realistic) than trying to recreate a sample of water of acceptable purity while trying to juggle the related qualities of temperature and pressure while trying to account for differences in gravitational acceleration on an inconsisten, spinning globe*, which is what both the liter (1 kg H2O) and the UK gallon (10 lb H2O) used to be defined as. There are reasons why that idea was dropped like the bad habit it was, and both are now defined with respect to the meter, just like the US gallon has been since the 1890's.
The only real change to the US gallon came when the US inch itself was changed, from 100/3937 m to 0.0254 m. Cube the difference between those two numbers and you'll see that the change in the US gallon is downright negligible, especially when compared to the change in the liter from 1 dm^3 to 1.000028 dm^3 and back. With the liter, in a technical capacity, you need to worry about what year the measurement was taken. There's no such problem with the US gallon.
* The atmosphere is a fluid. If you're not comparing your sample of water to your metal mass definition in a complete vacuum (which, since we're talking liquid water, would be more or less impossible), you have to take into account that the water is more buoyant (weighs less) in the atmosphere than X/Y ratio platinum-iridium alloy. Not to mention, buoyancy is affected by weight while pressure is affected by mass, so you need to worry about differences in local gravitational acceleration. This episode of Sesame Street is brought to you by the numbers 101.325, 277.13 and 9.80665.
(BTW, because I have absolutely no life, I sat down once with some steam tables and played with the original definition of the UK gallon before they, too, went metric and pegged it to the meter. At the temperature and pressure the water was supposed to be measured at, the volume they came up with is just flat-out wrong. There are reasons why the US was among the first to jump ship from UK standards, and the only problem it caused is that, because we were the first to abandon the shrinking yard, our yards/feet/inches were a little longer than the yards/feet/inches everybody used until we all standardized on a metric yard in 1959.)
"As far as I know, one litre is 1000 cm^3. How did you think it is defined? Perhaps you are thinking of the old definition of a kilogram?"
Originally, the liter was defined, as you said, as 1 dm^3 ("one cubic decimeter"), and the kilogram was defined as 1 L of water at X, Y, Z temperature, pressure and gravitational acceleration. Then, things were swapped: when the current iridium-platinum kilogram definition was introduced, the definition of the liter changed to "1 kg of water at X, Y, Z temperature, pressure and gravitational acceleration." This worked out to be around 1 L = 1.000028 dm^3 or so. It was only in the Twentieth Century that it was changed back to 1 L = 1 dm^3.
Depends how you look at it. We call the things we use "pounds" and "feet," but we abandoned the flawed British standards in the 1890's (their yard shrank, their pound leaked), instead basing them on the SI standards. A pound is defined as 0.45359237 kg and a foot is 0.3048 m.*
Also, we were the only ones sane enough to base our unit of volume/capacity on the cube of our linear standard (1 gal US = 231 in^3, as it's been since the 1800's or so). Both the British gallon and the SI liter both had ugly/cumbersome definitions involving a sample of perfect water at a given temperature, pressure and local gravitational acceleration (the French got the litre right from the first, but then they broke it, and then it was fixed again, meaning the definition of "liter" has changed by tens of microleters over the past century).
* These are actually numbers agreed upon by the foot/pound using world in 1959. Before that, in the US, the number of kilograms in a pound had more digits and a foot was 1200/3937 m.
"what ends up happening is that the folks with the least informed opinions do much of the talking, whereas the ones with a more enlightened view say very little?"
That's because the people doing all the talking have their ego firmly married to their opinions and opening your mouth in order to contradict them in any way, shape or form will do nothing more than draw fire. It's actually easier to grin and bear it and vent later, when you won't be the catalyst to a "scene."
"It's just a medium, which, I'll admit, doesn't yet have its Anne Frank."
Personally, I'd like to keep it that way.
The wage-earner may or may not be putting your credit card information in a database. The online retailer is, as a course of business, definately putting your information into a database.
Also we're not just talking about financial security, we're also talking about collecting demographics on you as well as your personal contact information and selling it off. The only possible analogy is if the waiter also insists on taking your driver's license back there with him, and then he copies everything on it to sell to the highest bidder. After all, that's not fraud, that's marketing.
" Neither the IEEE nor ANSI is American."
And what does the "A" in "ANSI" stand for again?
" This is because the use of social security numbers as an authenticator is fundamentally flawed and insecure."
For me, the issue isn't so much that using SSNs is a flawed authenticator, but the fact that we're using such authenticators to begin with. It's bad enough to have a unique name, I don't want to make it any easier for my personal information to be bought and sold like some commodity.
The only other people that need to know your social are your employers, and that's only because the IRS, in their infinite wisdom*, has decided to make your SSN your taxpayer ID. Other than that, everybody else only wants the info to make it easier to classify you in their own databases.
* How nice that corporate taxpayers and the like have a new, unique taxpayer ID generated for them but individual taxpayers don't have that option.
"The government needs to step up and institute a new secure way to authenticate people,"
There is no government solution here; if anything, we're currently living in the government solution, which obviously is making things worse. The only true solution is for people to actually give a damn about what happens to their information after they apply for their grocery store's shopper monitoring program, but instead the people of the US continue to wait for Mother Washington to take care of everything.