*I* can't by an act of will, the definition will evolve over time regardless of what *I* do.
Borrow is a word with a definition.
A definition derived from how people use it. If people use it differently. It has a new definition.
"Phat" is not a real word.
Talk to Shakespeare. He'll agree with you. He'll also probably tell you that "laser", "graphene", "nanotube", "ramjet", "telephone", "fridge", "cellphone", "videogame", "email", "plutonium", "kilogram", aren't real words either.
Oh, and he thinks a 'fag' is a bundle of wood, that there is no sexual orientation connotation to telling someone he's gay. And when he exclaims "You whoreson cullionly barbermonger" you are supposed to be deeply offended not burst out laughing.
If I start using a word's opposite as if it were the word, and six hundred other people near me start doing it too, that makes it colloquial (in our area), but that doesn't make it right.
six thousand? still colloquial? six hundred thousand? still colloquial? six million?
At some point, yes, it does make it "right". borrow isn't there yet, at least in the eyes of 'dictionary.reference.com', but I expect it will be sooner or later.
dictionary.reference.com doesn't decide what usage is right and wrong, it merely reports how we use use them. If enough people use borrow for lend, they'll eventually add it as a definition of the word, first as colloqial, and if it gets widespread enough, as standard usage.
in short: google uses open standards for their services, so you can still use the service if you don't use google microsoft uses their own protocols, so you cannot go completely without their technology
Using the google service via a standard protocol isn't abandoning google in any meaningful way.
Especially because google is a services company that doesn't derive revenue from the actual software any way. If you want to stop feeding google you have to stop using their services. Using their services with different software is meaningless.
Further the fact that the microsoft protocols are proprietary is essentially meaningless. Pidgin speaks 'msn'. And that's all that really matters to the end user. And while exchange has its own mapi/rpc thing (that Evolution largely implements anyway), and Exchange also provides access via the standard POP, IMAP and HTTP too, so really its the same thing.
Borrow is only used to refer to the act of receiving something.
Actually Lots of people who are native english speakers use borrow interchangeably with lend. It might even be a regional thing... as people in some regions have practically accepted it as normal usage.
"borrow" = borrow - "Can I borrow a pencil?" "borrow you" = lend - "Sure I'll borrow you a pencil."
GTalk uses Jabber, a stardard protocol NOT developed by them, and has a pagee dedicated to other clients that can use Jabber and talk to GTalk users.
-facepalm-
Hint: If you are talking to other gtalk users, you are connecting to googles server with your google username and password. How does that constitute 'abandoning google'?
As for GMail, I would say... IMAP! Again, a stardard protocol.
Sure you access your gmail via IMAP. So what? You lose out on a lot of the nifty gmail features that make people like gmail in the first place. And you again haven't abandoned google if you are still connecting to their services, whether its via IMAP or something else.
By your logic abandoning microsoft is just as easy. Download linux and setup pidgin with your msn account... and yee haw... no more microsoft. Oh... your on exchange too? No problem, just fire up firefox and connect to exchange's outlook web access. Or you could fool around with imap (exchange supports imap too) or you could fool around with evolution's mapi/rpc support too. But at the end of the day you still haven't meaningfully abandoned microsoft. You still depend on them.
Same as your google 'solutions'.
FAIL.
At least you accurately graded your own post. You deserve credit for that I guess.
Anyone can leave Google in an hour if they wanted.
I call bullshit. Find someone who is heavily invested in google... with gmail, gapps, gearth, gtalk, gvoice... and get them to switch in an hour.
Hell, get them to switch at all. Its harder than you think. And in some cases its not really possible. How do you abandon gtalk if you have others you need to interface with who use it. How do you abandon g-apps if you are collaborating with someone else using g-apps.... your shared calenders.
gmail and gapps etc is nearly as a sticky as exchange and sharepoint.
Even though I use Linux daily, I still have to use Windows at work
And if your work used gmail and gapps you'd have to use google at work. I fail to see your point.
It's just business -- you can't walk into a BMW dealership and demand they give you a new car for $1,000. The seller sets the price, and if you don't like it, don't buy it.
But if you do walk into a BWM dealership and ask them for the best price on a BMW complete with a navigation system that lets you see where you've driven, how fast, what your fuel efficience was, etc, etc, etc.
They turn around and sell you a car; but it turns out it was below their cost.
They can't turn then around and say that all the data produced by the navigation system actually belongs to them and that you need to pay copyright license fees in order to see the data your navigation system has been collecting for you... (er for them??).
But the problem may be manageable in countries that are sufficiently rich and have sufficiently strong democratic traditions.
I disagree. In practice the elections in Canada would not really be adversely affected by online voting provided reasonable precautions were in place now. But sooner or later we'll have our own Ahmadinejad... or Bush v Gore... and it'll explode in our faces.
Voting and elections in general are the fundamental expression of democracy, they should always be run low-tech, readily available to the public for scrutiny by the parties, and manual recount.
Remember, an election is essentially a peaceful overthrowing of the government, and the installation of a replacement. The governments role in the process should really be to facilitate the public conducting the election as at arms length as is practical.
As I recall, Windows 95 was the last one to be distributed on floppy. I remember installing it, and it was a ridiculous number of floppies. Upwards of 20 I think.
I swear, a psychologist would probably declare hibernating bear an extreme case of SAD. Clearly its depressed -- it won't get out of bed, it won't eat...
I mean for fucks sake, do you look out the window on a weekend, see rain clouds, experience disappointment that its not going to be a good beach day, and then decide to sleep in instead. Oh noes... you've got an effing mental disorder.
Did it ever occur that it might just be normal to be perceptibly less enegetic in winter? That its not actually a disorder??
Sure there are people out there who are genuinely severely depressed when they don't see blue skies for a week or whatever, and what not. But I personally think SAD is mostly a bullshit disorder grossly over applied to people.
But hey, if we define normal narrowly enough, we can give everyone a disorder, and prescribe them something right? Even better if we can define normal phenomna as a disorder.
Do you feel lethargic after stuffing your face? You must have Food Overeating Onset Disorder or FOOD?
2) The guy's from the UK, a place famous for its depressing weather. Unless he moves to a latitude where the sun simply doesn't rise for a month at a time he'll be fine.
If everyone waits for great games to come out for a console before they buy it...
That's why launch games are so important. For example, I knew I'd get my money's worth out of the Wii based on Metroid 3, Zelda TP, Rayman Rabbids, and the Sports pack in.
Yeah. Microsoft paid me to agree with the parent poster that the Vista Ultimate extra's were a complete sham. And to take a shot at their OEM licensing restrictions. Not to mention how I talked about the double install trick to work around the idiotic restriction in the upgrade disk without having to shell out for the over priced full version.
Never saw ANY of the benefits/Ultimate Content that was promised.
I however knew what I was getting:
1) Disk encryption -- in ultimate only (and enterprise which is only by VLA) 2) licensed dvd codecs -- in home prem and ultimate but not in business 3) ability to connect to a domain, IIS, etc -- business and ultimate but not home etc
But if you only bought Vista ultimate based on the handful of exclusive ultimate freebies that came at launch, and the half hearted promise that theird be some more cool stuff... that was idiotic. You should have just bought home premium or business as applicable, and then done an in place key upgrade if / when they ever released a bonus feature that made the ultimate upgrade price worth it to you.
For me, ultimate was the right choice right out of the gate. The features I wanted to play with were in the box, and I could only get everything i wanted in ultimate.
That will teach me for buying a boxed, non-OEM version of Windows I guess.
Meh, I did that so I'd have I'd have a legit key, 32 and 64 bit disks, and no grey area about whether I could move it from machine to machine, run it in a VM, etc, etc. Of course I bought the 'upgrade' so it cost the same as the oem version, and I knew about the double install trick for doing clean installs. (And I have multiple licenses for XP to legitimize the Vista upgrade.)
But the lesson that you should be learning is to buy products for what they have today, not to buy them on some vague promise of what they might one day have. That lesson will serve you will in general. For example, if you buy a game console when there are enough games for it out already that you can justify the cost even if no other game ever comes out, then you'll never be disappointed with it.
transmitter is using a phased array, and the locking phase is a reflection of the signal [...] And the beam can *only* be aimed at something with an appropriate reflector, so even a mad scientist cannot redirect the beam...
Well, that's the fancy star trek answer. Now we just need a simple analogy to explain it to the audience... "Its like walking a tight rope. If the line breaks, you can't cross."
You know, I'm not going to disagree with what you've said. You make a good point.
However even if you need to look up the conversions, actually doing the calculations are easier, you know before you start what the digits are, the only thing that changes is the decimal point or exponent (in scientific notation).
But ultimately the best reason to switch to SI, is that the rest of the world has switched to SI. And the sooner the US switches the sooner the legacy imperial system becomes a legacy.
I didn't think you realized just how artificial it was though.
1760 is the conversion from yards to miles.
right, that's what I meant of course.
I can't say I've ever had to do that, so it really doesn't concern me.
But you are regularly asked to cut a gallon down to a fluid oz using unmarked jugs?;) That was sort of my issue with your example. As you say, "I can't say I've ever had to do that, so it really doesn't concern me."
So even the fact that a dummy off the street could divide in half repeatedly if told is rather unimportant; its not something we're likely to ask him to do.
Imagine cutting a cake:...
Precisely. In the real world, with real world problems, where it matters how easy it is to physically divide things, the choice of units really isn't that important. You aren't tasked with coming up with specific units anyway.
I am tasked with dividing a cake between 5 people. I'm not asked for 100mL of coke. I'm asked either for a 'glass of coke' or tasked with dividing a bottle of coke between n people. Both are unit agnostic. If I have 40oz of milk, the fact that the units break down by factors of 2's doesn't really matter if I'm trying to split it between 7 people.
The only place where the actual units matter is in cooking, and extracting 3/4 cup of flour from a 10lb bag is the same as extracting 325mL from a 4kg bag. You stick in a measuring cup.
Decimal is easier? On paper, maybe.
No maybe about it.
On a computer, absolutely not. Binary can't express decimals very well anyway. I see no reason that a base 10 system would be better, on a computer, than a base 12 system.
The point about computers was that there is no advantage whatsoever to imperial on a computer. It can divide by tenths, halves, 3rds,... or 1103rds with equal facility.
"How many 4.19cm pieces of wood can you cut from a length of wood that is 6m long?" I'll bet you can't do THAT in your head either and it's just as valid of a math example as your own that involves miles to inches.
Sorry to double reply, but lets look at this actual problem. Because it actually highlights my point.
6m / 4.19cm
Its two problems. First Its a unit conversion problem, second its a division. step one: 6m ->6mx100cm/m = 600cm : 600cm / 4.19cm step two: 600cm / 4.19cm : 143 pieces with a small scrap left over (well assuming my blade is infinitely thin and consumes no material doing the cut)
step one was trivial because it was SI units.
How many 4.19in lengths can be cut from 6y ?
step one: 6y -> 6y x 3ft/y x 12ft/in = 6x3x12 = 216in/4.19in step two: 216in/4.19in = 51 pieces with some scrap, making the same assumptions
step two the arbitrary division is the same difficulty in both, but step one the unit conversion is harder with imperial units. I did it in my head for the SI conversion effortlessly. 6x3x12 was a challenge. (And I converted the easy way... converting 4.19in to yards.. I'd require a calculator -- 4.19cm to m is 0.0419m without even trying.)
I'll bet you can't do THAT in your head either and it's just as valid of a math example as your own that involves miles to inches.
No it isn't. These are two different classes of problem. Your problem is a division of two arbitrary lengths. That's not going to be inherently simpler in any system.
However converting from cm to m is a UNIT CONVERSION. The design of the UNIT SYSTEM directly impacts on how difficult this is, from trivial to needlessly complex.
4.19cm is 0.0419m is 41.9mm. -- SI unit conversions are trivial
humans find it much easier to divide into halves than into tenths [...] Give me a gallon of liquid and a set of unmarked jugs and I'll probably have pretty darn close to 1 fl. oz. long before you can cut 1 L down to 1 mL.
a) Wow. Ok. Is that a problem you encounter frequently? This seems a bit artificial.:)
b) Yeah, I'll grant you that dividing something physically in half is easier. But while YOU might be able to pull a fluid ounce from a gallon using unmarked jugs, lets be honest most people would still really struggle with that.
c) Next, people like you and I who could solve this problem are also smart enough to realize that they don't have to physically divide into 10ths, but halves and fifths. So to cut 1L down to 1mL they need to divide by 1000... or 2x2x2x5x5x5. Fifths is harder than halves but not THAT hard.
d) Further its bit of an unfair problem. The SI problem is a 1000th cut, your imperial problem is considerably less. Its only a 128th cut. A closer problem (both in difficulty, and in the actual amounts of liquid involved would be: 4L to 50mL, which 2x2x2x2x5.
e) Further you are cherry picking imperial units. Tablespoon to Teaspoon is 3rds. Feet to inches is 12ths (2x2x3). Yards to feet is 3rds. And from yards to feet is 1760ths... and 1760 factors to 2x2x2x2x2x5x11. Yeah there's an 11 in that one. How many people do you know who are facile at 11ths? I suppose we could dig through rods and chains etc but I'd have to look up what those actually are...
f) decimal is easier for any serious work, where you have paper and calculators and computers instead of sets of unmarked jugs and cherry picked problems.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't change that definition.
*I* can't by an act of will, the definition will evolve over time regardless of what *I* do.
Borrow is a word with a definition.
A definition derived from how people use it. If people use it differently. It has a new definition.
"Phat" is not a real word.
Talk to Shakespeare. He'll agree with you. He'll also probably tell you that "laser", "graphene", "nanotube", "ramjet", "telephone", "fridge", "cellphone", "videogame", "email", "plutonium", "kilogram", aren't real words either.
Oh, and he thinks a 'fag' is a bundle of wood, that there is no sexual orientation connotation to telling someone he's gay. And when he exclaims "You whoreson cullionly barbermonger" you are supposed to be deeply offended not burst out laughing.
If I start using a word's opposite as if it were the word, and six hundred other people near me start doing it too, that makes it colloquial (in our area), but that doesn't make it right.
six thousand? still colloquial?
six hundred thousand? still colloquial?
six million?
At some point, yes, it does make it "right". borrow isn't there yet, at least in the eyes of 'dictionary.reference.com', but I expect it will be sooner or later.
dictionary.reference.com doesn't decide what usage is right and wrong, it merely reports how we use use them. If enough people use borrow for lend, they'll eventually add it as a definition of the word, first as colloqial, and if it gets widespread enough, as standard usage.
'phat' didn't used to be in the dictionary at all.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/phat
The average user isn't going to use more than 4 or 8 cores and maybe 4GB of RAM.
True. But the average user still has a Celeron 1.4 with 512MB.
in short:
google uses open standards for their services, so you can still use the service if you don't use google
microsoft uses their own protocols, so you cannot go completely without their technology
Using the google service via a standard protocol isn't abandoning google in any meaningful way.
Especially because google is a services company that doesn't derive revenue from the actual software any way. If you want to stop feeding google you have to stop using their services. Using their services with different software is meaningless.
Further the fact that the microsoft protocols are proprietary is essentially meaningless. Pidgin speaks 'msn'. And that's all that really matters to the end user. And while exchange has its own mapi/rpc thing (that Evolution largely implements anyway), and Exchange also provides access via the standard POP, IMAP and HTTP too, so really its the same thing.
Borrow is only used to refer to the act of receiving something.
Actually Lots of people who are native english speakers use borrow interchangeably with lend. It might even be a regional thing... as people in some regions have practically accepted it as normal usage.
"borrow" = borrow - "Can I borrow a pencil?"
"borrow you" = lend - "Sure I'll borrow you a pencil."
I'm not making this up.
GTalk uses Jabber, a stardard protocol NOT developed by them, and has a pagee dedicated to other clients that can use Jabber and talk to GTalk users.
-facepalm-
Hint: If you are talking to other gtalk users, you are connecting to googles server with your google username and password. How does that constitute 'abandoning google'?
As for GMail, I would say... IMAP! Again, a stardard protocol.
Sure you access your gmail via IMAP. So what? You lose out on a lot of the nifty gmail features that make people like gmail in the first place. And you again haven't abandoned google if you are still connecting to their services, whether its via IMAP or something else.
By your logic abandoning microsoft is just as easy. Download linux and setup pidgin with your msn account... and yee haw... no more microsoft. Oh... your on exchange too? No problem, just fire up firefox and connect to exchange's outlook web access. Or you could fool around with imap (exchange supports imap too) or you could fool around with evolution's mapi/rpc support too. But at the end of the day you still haven't meaningfully abandoned microsoft. You still depend on them.
Same as your google 'solutions'.
FAIL.
At least you accurately graded your own post. You deserve credit for that I guess.
..I can go to any of 50 video sites..
Uness the video you need to see is on google.
Anyone can leave Google in an hour if they wanted.
I call bullshit. Find someone who is heavily invested in google... with gmail, gapps, gearth, gtalk, gvoice... and get them to switch in an hour.
Hell, get them to switch at all. Its harder than you think. And in some cases its not really possible. How do you abandon gtalk if you have others you need to interface with who use it. How do you abandon g-apps if you are collaborating with someone else using g-apps.... your shared calenders.
gmail and gapps etc is nearly as a sticky as exchange and sharepoint.
Even though I use Linux daily, I still have to use Windows at work
And if your work used gmail and gapps you'd have to use google at work. I fail to see your point.
It's just business -- you can't walk into a BMW dealership and demand they give you a new car for $1,000. The seller sets the price, and if you don't like it, don't buy it.
But if you do walk into a BWM dealership and ask them for the best price on a BMW complete with a navigation system that lets you see where you've driven, how fast, what your fuel efficience was, etc, etc, etc.
They turn around and sell you a car; but it turns out it was below their cost.
They can't turn then around and say that all the data produced by the navigation system actually belongs to them and that you need to pay copyright license fees in order to see the data your navigation system has been collecting for you... (er for them??).
But the problem may be manageable in countries that are sufficiently rich and have sufficiently strong democratic traditions.
I disagree. In practice the elections in Canada would not really be adversely affected by online voting provided reasonable precautions were in place now. But sooner or later we'll have our own Ahmadinejad ... or Bush v Gore ... and it'll explode in our faces.
Voting and elections in general are the fundamental expression of democracy, they should always be run low-tech, readily available to the public for scrutiny by the parties, and manual recount.
Remember, an election is essentially a peaceful overthrowing of the government, and the installation of a replacement. The governments role in the process should really be to facilitate the public conducting the election as at arms length as is practical.
As I recall, Windows 95 was the last one to be distributed on floppy. I remember installing it, and it was a ridiculous number of floppies. Upwards of 20 I think.
Nope only 13. Windows NT 3.1 came on 22 though.
seasonal affective disorder
1)
I swear, a psychologist would probably declare hibernating bear an extreme case of SAD. Clearly its depressed -- it won't get out of bed, it won't eat...
I mean for fucks sake, do you look out the window on a weekend, see rain clouds, experience disappointment that its not going to be a good beach day, and then decide to sleep in instead. Oh noes... you've got an effing mental disorder.
Did it ever occur that it might just be normal to be perceptibly less enegetic in winter? That its not actually a disorder??
Sure there are people out there who are genuinely severely depressed when they don't see blue skies for a week or whatever, and what not. But I personally think SAD is mostly a bullshit disorder grossly over applied to people.
But hey, if we define normal narrowly enough, we can give everyone a disorder, and prescribe them something right? Even better if we can define normal phenomna as a disorder.
Do you feel lethargic after stuffing your face? You must have Food Overeating Onset Disorder or FOOD?
2) The guy's from the UK, a place famous for its depressing weather. Unless he moves to a latitude where the sun simply doesn't rise for a month at a time he'll be fine.
repeating the test in a vacuum would test this hypothesis pretty easily.
And if you'd read the full article you'd know that they did test in a vacuum. And they still formed droplets.
More like a bunch of defective Lego that was rejected by the factory and doesn't quite fit together properly.
You mean megabloks?
Five-year olds would generally find adult content yucky and boring. Or else hilarious. They wouldn't be 'harmed' by it.
Depends on the 'adult content' and what the child takes away from it. Some full frontal nudity -- sure 'boring' or 'funny', but 'hardcore porn'...
"Daddy, why are those 2 men hurting that woman?"
That could make a long lasting impression a five year old. And not the 'good kind' of impression.
Thanks. I'm not a facebook user. I didn't know to what extent they'd implemented targeted advertising.
That he can't either afford custom solutions or spend the money buying more servers?
Tell me again what Facebook's revenue model is...??
If everyone waits for great games to come out for a console before they buy it...
That's why launch games are so important. For example, I knew I'd get my money's worth out of the Wii based on Metroid 3, Zelda TP, Rayman Rabbids, and the Sports pack in.
And how much did Microsoft pay you to write that?
Yeah. Microsoft paid me to agree with the parent poster that the Vista Ultimate extra's were a complete sham. And to take a shot at their OEM licensing restrictions. Not to mention how I talked about the double install trick to work around the idiotic restriction in the upgrade disk without having to shell out for the over priced full version.
Yeah, Microsoft paid me handsomely for all that.
I ended up getting Vista Ultimate.
Me too.
Never saw ANY of the benefits/Ultimate Content that was promised.
I however knew what I was getting:
1) Disk encryption -- in ultimate only (and enterprise which is only by VLA)
2) licensed dvd codecs -- in home prem and ultimate but not in business
3) ability to connect to a domain, IIS, etc -- business and ultimate but not home
etc
But if you only bought Vista ultimate based on the handful of exclusive ultimate freebies that came at launch, and the half hearted promise that theird be some more cool stuff... that was idiotic. You should have just bought home premium or business as applicable, and then done an in place key upgrade if / when they ever released a bonus feature that made the ultimate upgrade price worth it to you.
For me, ultimate was the right choice right out of the gate. The features I wanted to play with were in the box, and I could only get everything i wanted in ultimate.
That will teach me for buying a boxed, non-OEM version of Windows I guess.
Meh, I did that so I'd have I'd have a legit key, 32 and 64 bit disks, and no grey area about whether I could move it from machine to machine, run it in a VM, etc, etc. Of course I bought the 'upgrade' so it cost the same as the oem version, and I knew about the double install trick for doing clean installs. (And I have multiple licenses for XP to legitimize the Vista upgrade.)
But the lesson that you should be learning is to buy products for what they have today, not to buy them on some vague promise of what they might one day have. That lesson will serve you will in general. For example, if you buy a game console when there are enough games for it out already that you can justify the cost even if no other game ever comes out, then you'll never be disappointed with it.
transmitter is using a phased array, and the locking phase is a reflection of the signal [...] And the beam can *only* be aimed at something with an appropriate reflector, so even a mad scientist cannot redirect the beam ...
Well, that's the fancy star trek answer. Now we just need a simple analogy to explain it to the audience... "Its like walking a tight rope. If the line breaks, you can't cross."
You know, I'm not going to disagree with what you've said. You make a good point.
However even if you need to look up the conversions, actually doing the calculations are easier, you know before you start what the digits are, the only thing that changes is the decimal point or exponent (in scientific notation).
But ultimately the best reason to switch to SI, is that the rest of the world has switched to SI. And the sooner the US switches the sooner the legacy imperial system becomes a legacy.
Yes, it's an artificial example
I didn't think you realized just how artificial it was though.
1760 is the conversion from yards to miles.
right, that's what I meant of course.
I can't say I've ever had to do that, so it really doesn't concern me.
But you are regularly asked to cut a gallon down to a fluid oz using unmarked jugs? ;) That was sort of my issue with your example. As you say, "I can't say I've ever had to do that, so it really doesn't concern me."
So even the fact that a dummy off the street could divide in half repeatedly if told is rather unimportant; its not something we're likely to ask him to do.
Imagine cutting a cake:...
Precisely. In the real world, with real world problems, where it matters how easy it is to physically divide things, the choice of units really isn't that important. You aren't tasked with coming up with specific units anyway.
I am tasked with dividing a cake between 5 people. I'm not asked for 100mL of coke. I'm asked either for a 'glass of coke' or tasked with dividing a bottle of coke between n people. Both are unit agnostic. If I have 40oz of milk, the fact that the units break down by factors of 2's doesn't really matter if I'm trying to split it between 7 people.
The only place where the actual units matter is in cooking, and extracting 3/4 cup of flour from a 10lb bag is the same as extracting 325mL from a 4kg bag. You stick in a measuring cup.
Decimal is easier? On paper, maybe.
No maybe about it.
On a computer, absolutely not. Binary can't express decimals very well anyway. I see no reason that a base 10 system would be better, on a computer, than a base 12 system.
The point about computers was that there is no advantage whatsoever to imperial on a computer. It can divide by tenths, halves, 3rds, ... or 1103rds with equal facility.
"How many 4.19cm pieces of wood can you cut from a length of wood that is 6m long?"
I'll bet you can't do THAT in your head either and it's just as valid of a math example as your own that involves miles to inches.
Sorry to double reply, but lets look at this actual problem. Because it actually highlights my point.
6m / 4.19cm
Its two problems. First Its a unit conversion problem, second its a division.
step one: 6m ->6mx100cm/m = 600cm : 600cm / 4.19cm
step two: 600cm / 4.19cm : 143 pieces with a small scrap left over (well assuming my blade is infinitely thin and consumes no material doing the cut)
step one was trivial because it was SI units.
How many 4.19in lengths can be cut from 6y ?
step one: 6y -> 6y x 3ft/y x 12ft/in = 6x3x12 = 216in/4.19in
step two: 216in/4.19in = 51 pieces with some scrap, making the same assumptions
step two the arbitrary division is the same difficulty in both, but step one the unit conversion is harder with imperial units. I did it in my head for the SI conversion effortlessly. 6x3x12 was a challenge. (And I converted the easy way... converting 4.19in to yards.. I'd require a calculator -- 4.19cm to m is 0.0419m without even trying.)
Bottom line, the imperial problem is harder.
I'll bet you can't do THAT in your head either and it's just as valid of a math example as your own that involves miles to inches.
No it isn't. These are two different classes of problem. Your problem is a division of two arbitrary lengths. That's not going to be inherently simpler in any system.
However converting from cm to m is a UNIT CONVERSION. The design of the UNIT SYSTEM directly impacts on how difficult this is, from trivial to needlessly complex.
4.19cm is 0.0419m is 41.9mm. -- SI unit conversions are trivial
The same is not true for the imperial system.
humans find it much easier to divide into halves than into tenths [...] Give me a gallon of liquid and a set of unmarked jugs and I'll probably have pretty darn close to 1 fl. oz. long before you can cut 1 L down to 1 mL.
a) Wow. Ok. Is that a problem you encounter frequently? This seems a bit artificial. :)
b) Yeah, I'll grant you that dividing something physically in half is easier. But while YOU might be able to pull a fluid ounce from a gallon using unmarked jugs, lets be honest most people would still really struggle with that.
c) Next, people like you and I who could solve this problem are also smart enough to realize that they don't have to physically divide into 10ths, but halves and fifths. So to cut 1L down to 1mL they need to divide by 1000... or 2x2x2x5x5x5. Fifths is harder than halves but not THAT hard.
d) Further its bit of an unfair problem. The SI problem is a 1000th cut, your imperial problem is considerably less. Its only a 128th cut. A closer problem (both in difficulty, and in the actual amounts of liquid involved would be: 4L to 50mL, which 2x2x2x2x5.
e) Further you are cherry picking imperial units. Tablespoon to Teaspoon is 3rds. Feet to inches is 12ths (2x2x3). Yards to feet is 3rds. And from yards to feet is 1760ths... and 1760 factors to 2x2x2x2x2x5x11. Yeah there's an 11 in that one. How many people do you know who are facile at 11ths? I suppose we could dig through rods and chains etc but I'd have to look up what those actually are...
f) decimal is easier for any serious work, where you have paper and calculators and computers instead of sets of unmarked jugs and cherry picked problems.