Say, for example, I need some sheet metal to function as a structural piece. I can be pretty confident that my initial guess will be pretty close to the final thickness value if specified in imperial units.
In Europe, we have measuring devices. Perhaps you've heard of a micrometer?
However, what do I do more often: need to divide a foot in half, thirds, or quarters (6 inches, 4 inches, and 3 inches), or calculate the water of the pool.
I keep hearing this a lot. How often do you have to divide a foot? Is American full of foot-long objects which just have to be divided into thirds or quarters?
I can imagine Americans talking before going home from work: "Whatta you doin tonight after work?" "Usual, cuttin a foot-long piece a wood into thirds, you?" "Im a cuttin a piece a wood into quarters"
With regards to height, you think in 1.5m - 2.0 meters. Assuming you estimate to 5 centmeters (because people round to 5 and 10), you seem to have 11 increments, but if we notch out 1.5 (people under 5' tall) and 1.95 and 2.0 (people over 6'4) as common adult heights, we have 8 increments for height. In imperial, we have 17.
Then estimate to 2.5 then, or 2 or 1, whatever the hell you want. What's the problem? The main argument for Imperial that I've seen in this thread is that Americans are scared of numbers.
If I take a stick that's one meter long and cut it into four pieces, I have four sticks that are 25 centimeters long. I pick up an extra digit in the result, and I have to do 100/4 in my head instead of 12/4, which means that I have to calculate an extra digit as well.
If you have difficulties dividing a hundred by four, then you should really go back to school.
God help you if you ever have to divide anything by a number other than four. What happens when you get a 9" piece of wood and have to divide it into seven pieces? Your imperial system is useless. Maybe you're scared of decimals as well.
However, if you look at recipes, it may call for 3/4 of a cup (not 6 oz), and if you double, it's easy, 1.5 cups.
A cup? How accurate and specific. So is that a teacup, a standard mug, or an espresso cup? Do you measure weight in 'bricks' also?
Temperature is easier in Centigrade. 0 = freezing, 10 = cool, 20 = room temperature, 30 = warm. Much more user friendly.
Your comments about decimal places also make me laugh. Maybe it's because over in Europe we spend more time learning science than creationism, but we have no problem with decimal places.
The final killer blow to the imperial system is that it's not even consistent within itself. A metre is a metre anywhere in the world. A pint or a gallon is different depending on where you are.
the beer issue is solved by asking "a beer". Or "a small beer" for a 0.33 l glass.
That does not specify which type of beer, or even the volume. Asking for a 'pint of Landlord' for instance leaves nothing unspecified. If you ask for 'a beer' you could get any amount of any old foreign crap.
And it's quite amusing that in all these metric countries around the world, the measurements of a football pitch are still in yards.
Now, the base 10 stuff is nice, but there actually is, especially in construction where the Imperial usage is superior because everything is divisible by 2 w/o fractions. 1/2 of 1 inch is 1/2 inch. Half of that is 1/4 inch. Half of that is 1/8 inch, etc. One inch is 2.54 cm. OK lets round to 2.5 cm. Half of that is 1.25 cm. Half of that is.625 cm.
1/2 of a cm is 1/2 cm. Half of that is 1/4 cm. Half of that is 1/8 cm, etc. One cm is.384". OK let's round to 0.38". Half of that is 0.19". Half of that is.095". This 'imperial' system isn't very intuitive!
You state that in imperial everything is divisible by 2 w/o fractions, then go on to list divisions of inches...in fractions. Genius.
How much is a third of a pound? Or a third of a gallon? Or a third of a furlong? Fortuanately in metric we have decimal places.
In construction carpentry, it is routine to divide lengths of things by half, thirds, and quarters. All of these are simple calculations that can be done in tenths of a second in Imperial
No, they can be done in tenths of a second in feet. It doesn't work for any other imperial measurement.
You didn't specify a level of precision. To 3 s.f., your answers are 3.33 and 1.67. You don't think NASA design spaceships based purely on whole numbers? Otherwise god help them when they need to do something that's a fifth of a foot.
Now using American measurements, what's a gallon divided by three, in pints?
Using this figure, it takes 37 years to pay off the initial investment
Actually it takes 0 years to pay off the investment, as the castle still has its value. As soon as you buy it you're already in profit. You don't lose any money unless the castle decreases in value.
In the middle of the night you'll often see some of the janitors enjoying a game of pool between emptying garbage cans. I have seen bus drivers -- who technically work for the bus company which runs our shuttles -- grabbing dinner in the cafe before going on their route.
I bet they don't get the health care, dental, pensions and all those other things that actually make life liveable. And they don't get the pay so they can live closer than a three hour commute to their job.
But this isn't a slam on Google, it doesn't matter where you work, outside contractors and temps always get the raw end of the deal.
Google is amongst the top places when it comes to benefits, and they're also one of the top players when it comes to productivity.
How do you measure productivity? Considering all the thousands of PHDs they have working for them, and all the money they have to work with, they don't seem to produce an awful lot. All I see few neat apps here and there that could be done by a company a hundredth of the size with a hundredth of the hype.
Either Google are secretly working on some massive project that's going to change the world, or they have more money than they know what to do with so they're just hiring and hiring and hiring and hoping something happens.
So OEMs are allowed to ship Macs with rival operating systems on them? If Apple suddenly got a 90% market share tomorrow would that mean it would suddenly be wrong for them to bundle software? It seems that Microsoft are being punished just for being successful.
It'd odd then how a minimum wage doesn't ever seem to lead to unemployment problems. This supposed demon of 'eliminating jobs for the poor' is a complete red herring. There's no evidence for it at all.
But unemployment there is not as scary as it is in the US. They have protections so that they kick back and eat cheese and wine until something comes up.
And that's a good thing? People sitting back not looking for a job, because their lifestyle is paid for by people breaking their backs day in day out? Sounds like communism gone wrong. If I was a high earner there's no way I'd live in France or start a business there.
Then the solution is to ban imports of things which can be produced domestically. Funny how when the talk is of outsourcing programming jobs to India, driving down the salaries of programmres, Slashdot rails against it, but when it's about lowering the wages for poor people, Slashdot is all for it because it means they can get cheap food!
I think the OP has a point. It's already hard enough to make a decent living as a scientist, bringing in cheap scientists is only going to make the situation worse. How do you expect American schoolkids to get into science when they're more likely to make a decent living unclogging drains?
(I'm talking about the upper end of them -- no doubt you can find lots of bad quality.)
That's the problem: for every good blog there are ten thousand abysmal ones. The value in traditional media is seperating the wheat from the chaff.
Also many blogs are one-trick ponies, writing about the same thing every day. In a newspaper there is a variety of columns on different topics. Newspapers may be on the ropes but they aren't dead yet.
Although for the record I haven't bought a newspaper in years, they're of very low quality in Britain, they're either mindless tabloids aimed at the terminally retarded, or dull broadsheets aimed at the terminally pretentious.
I find it damn funny that a foreign country seems to think that it has power over a US company.
They have power over what countries do in Brazil, and what companies can be accessed over the Internet. It doesn't matter whether they're from the US or the Moon. What makes Americans think they can ignore laws in countries where they do business?
Slashdot Mirror
I can imagine Americans talking before going home from work: "Whatta you doin tonight after work?" "Usual, cuttin a foot-long piece a wood into thirds, you?" "Im a cuttin a piece a wood into quarters"
Then estimate to 2.5 then, or 2 or 1, whatever the hell you want. What's the problem? The main argument for Imperial that I've seen in this thread is that Americans are scared of numbers.
If you have difficulties dividing a hundred by four, then you should really go back to school.
God help you if you ever have to divide anything by a number other than four. What happens when you get a 9" piece of wood and have to divide it into seven pieces? Your imperial system is useless. Maybe you're scared of decimals as well.
Temperature is easier in Centigrade. 0 = freezing, 10 = cool, 20 = room temperature, 30 = warm. Much more user friendly.
Your comments about decimal places also make me laugh. Maybe it's because over in Europe we spend more time learning science than creationism, but we have no problem with decimal places.
The final killer blow to the imperial system is that it's not even consistent within itself. A metre is a metre anywhere in the world. A pint or a gallon is different depending on where you are.
And it's quite amusing that in all these metric countries around the world, the measurements of a football pitch are still in yards.
1/2 of a cm is 1/2 cm. Half of that is 1/4 cm. Half of that is 1/8 cm, etc. One cm is
You state that in imperial everything is divisible by 2 w/o fractions, then go on to list divisions of inches...in fractions. Genius.
No, they can be done in tenths of a second in feet. It doesn't work for any other imperial measurement.
You didn't specify a level of precision. To 3 s.f., your answers are 3.33 and 1.67. You don't think NASA design spaceships based purely on whole numbers? Otherwise god help them when they need to do something that's a fifth of a foot.
Now using American measurements, what's a gallon divided by three, in pints?
What's a third of a pint in fluid ounces?
What's a quarter of a furlong, in feet?
What's a third of seven pounds, in ounces?
I'd imagine that the bottom of the sea is pretty cool this time of year.
But this isn't a slam on Google, it doesn't matter where you work, outside contractors and temps always get the raw end of the deal.
Either Google are secretly working on some massive project that's going to change the world, or they have more money than they know what to do with so they're just hiring and hiring and hiring and hoping something happens.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/624
So 1kg of dry shit contains 56kg of gold? Fetch a fishing net and a pair of rubber gloves, I'm going to make myself a millionaire.
World of Warcraft doesn't cost $15 a month everywhere. In Asia you don't even need to pay monthly.
So OEMs are allowed to ship Macs with rival operating systems on them? If Apple suddenly got a 90% market share tomorrow would that mean it would suddenly be wrong for them to bundle software? It seems that Microsoft are being punished just for being successful.
It'd odd then how a minimum wage doesn't ever seem to lead to unemployment problems. This supposed demon of 'eliminating jobs for the poor' is a complete red herring. There's no evidence for it at all.
Then the solution is to ban imports of things which can be produced domestically. Funny how when the talk is of outsourcing programming jobs to India, driving down the salaries of programmres, Slashdot rails against it, but when it's about lowering the wages for poor people, Slashdot is all for it because it means they can get cheap food!
I think the OP has a point. It's already hard enough to make a decent living as a scientist, bringing in cheap scientists is only going to make the situation worse. How do you expect American schoolkids to get into science when they're more likely to make a decent living unclogging drains?
That's the problem: for every good blog there are ten thousand abysmal ones. The value in traditional media is seperating the wheat from the chaff.
Also many blogs are one-trick ponies, writing about the same thing every day. In a newspaper there is a variety of columns on different topics. Newspapers may be on the ropes but they aren't dead yet.
Although for the record I haven't bought a newspaper in years, they're of very low quality in Britain, they're either mindless tabloids aimed at the terminally retarded, or dull broadsheets aimed at the terminally pretentious.