What makes the metric system much more sophisticated than the imperial system is (a) All conversions are multiples of 10, which is the base that the bulk of humanity counts in, and (b) you only ever use one unit, whereas with imperial you always use two.
One final note: I prefer the imperial system for cooking, as an engineer I prefer the metric system (SI) units.
Why?
It's easier since most recipies deal with halves, quarters and eigths of units. One fluid ounce is 116 of a U.S. pint, 132 of a U.S. quart, and 1128 of a U.S. gallon.
It feels easier to scale on orders of 2x and 4x with recipies than it is to scale on an order of 10x with metric.
Now quickly tell me how many inches does it take to span 892360213452 feet
Ok, now tell me what the volume of a sphere with a radius of 7 meters.
Orders of magnitude really don't matter that much. In a way, I like not using metric because I DO refrain from making arbitrary conversions of magnitude when it has nothing to do with calculations if you don't try to change them around in the first place.
So I might end up with a number that is 1231277545 feet. Are those two extra digits really that cumbersome if you wanted to say 1233747755.230 km instead of 1233747755230 m?
When working in metric or not, I just don't mess with the units until I absolutely have to, that includes orders of magnitude since any event where you can make a mistake should be reduced to the absolute minimum.
Every house sold in perhaps the last 30 years (perhaps not in the US?) has had a quality antenna and has required no fiddling or maintenance. Every tv since at least the late 80's has had the capability to be tuned for usually at least 100 channels of analog.
Remember this was about when CABLE really started to penetrate into the market. In the US that took place over the 70s and 80s. The televisions which were in the majority of homes during that period did NOT have the capabilities you describe. Nor was there any guarantee of having clear LOS to the station.
I think you are just looking at the wrong time period. If digital tuners and electronics were in the 80s, like they were in the 90s, cable might not have done nearly as well.
Modern DVB sets even auto-tune it for you in the space of five minutes after initial setup, I get around 10 channels flawlessly.
Again, that has nothing to do with the point of how cable was sold to people using aerials when cable first came onto the market as a viable option.
It's the broken window principal and has been demonstrated to work,/i>
It works if you ignore that the money could be spent elsewhere.
And it fails spectacularly if you are BREAKING the window intentionally under the misguided notion that it will somehow generate a net gain.
Leave the signs alone if they work, replace them with the 'standard' as they need replacing, and spend the money on something that is actually NOT working right now.
Nothing is free? Bullshit. The thing most important to your life is free, the one thing you can't survive two minutes without -- air. Sunsets and sunrises are free, if beauty is worthless why do people pay millions for paintings? Linux is free, Open Office is free, FOSS is free, public domain literature is free, GPL books are free, my journals are free, rain will water your grass for free, unsecured wifi is free, most music is free, and most of all... America is the land of the free!
Money is simply a tool. Only a fool worships his tools, fool. Now go take your MBA and get the hell off this nerd site and go to Business Week or some other site that caters to your religion, because greedheads like you really piss me off.
Ever wonder why some people want to control what you do with your body? It comes pre-installed with some of the best ways to pass the time!
Actually, if there's 22 minutes of commercials per hour, you only have to wait 11 minutes before starting your 30-minute program to ensure you can skip all the commercials. Actually, seeing as some of those 11 minutes of commercials will come right at the end of the 30-minute segment, you could start a bit earlier.
If I can start watching Caprica 38 minutes sooner (1-hour show), then I'll do it!:)
My wife watches Vampire Diaries (Hey, I can't tease her, since it is split screened with WoW. She gets her brief TV time 1-hr/wk and I get my brief uninterrupted WoW time).
She was in a conference call for the first 15 minutes, and I had it paused. I don't know how many damned commercials were there, but we ran out of buffer. Absolutely amazing.
Of course, that show also had a ford commercial built INTO the show in a rather obnoxious way.
"Oh what song is playing... Uses the voice control to look up song. I love that song." Absolutely pointless to the progression of the show. It DID remind me not to buy a Ford though.
The whole commercial thing goes back a long way. Television used to be free, over the air. Consumers were promised that paying for cable would keep the content commercial-free.
No we weren't. This is looking at the past with rose tinted lenses. A few channels may have been SOLD as commercial free, but that's not why we bought it.
My TV had 13 buttons on it, I could program them and tune them to 13 radio frequencies. What cable offered was 32 channels, all without snow/noise and I wouldn't have to maintain an aerial on top of my house. I was USED to commercials on most of those stations I received (not 13, I think I could receive about 3 on a good day) But I was sold on the fact that I wouldn't have to bother with an antenna, it would always be clear, and I'd get a lot more. Prism and HBO were big selling points.
(As an aside, boy I miss that TV. After it was 13 or so years old, My little sister once tried to get the cartoon characters out and tossed a rock at it. Slight crack in the center we got used to. 13 years after THAT it finally gave up the ghost in a rather ghostlike fashion by shooting blue plasma out the back)
But back on topic, I don't ever remember being sold on no commercials except on channels like HBO.
His response: "Sorry dad. You're right, I'll stay home.". You then respond with "Good. You're still grounded for a month just for bringing it up!".
I disagree. It wasn't that they brought it up that was the problem, it was that it was such a horrible idea that we literally wondered if this company was actively trying to 'be evil.'
To continue your analogy, it wouldn't be like going over to watch an R-rated film and then being grounded for bringing it up, it would be like going over to watch Faces of Death and scat films.
The response should be your suggested "If you do that you're going to be grounded", AND I think on Thursdays we are going to be meeting with a psychologist because something is SERIOUSLY wrong and needs to be addressed.
And I'll leave you with one final bit of food for thought: Imagine what's going to happen if something like WoW were to adopt that platform... An immersive MMO that you can play online at home with your friends, or play with friends at somebody's house, or just play on your own anywhere you like...
Please no more warning labels. They are applied in non-removable paint on my car visor, my child's safety seat, and other rather annoying places.
Why the hell do I as a driver need to be warned about the dangers of... well I don't know what dangers they are warning me about anymore because they are so damned ubiquitous. Removable stickers are fine. Resale of the item means they won't have the warning? Make a website http://warnings.gov/
You go there, pull your product type from a dropdown list and it will have every warning you could possibly want to have on your product, all there in a singular location and available in any language you want, updated instantly.
Oddly enough, I think it was Jay Leno (could be wrong) complaining about how car manuals are nothing but 80 pages of warnings rather than content which you could use to operate/repair your vehicle. Please please please, no more warning labels. I've become immune and now only see them as a bright yellow stain on my upholstry.
Sure they could. Now outline your evidence that this stat is right but the ones about Linux are wrong.
Why should HE? Didn't you talk about 'some users' or 'them'? You know, the vague other that is always used when trying to prove your point. Where were THEY when that guy was doing this, why are THEY so angry now that it's this guy.
Of course, you could be the lone gem in the world of the internet where people can just toss out accusations against tangentially related non-present people and thus tarnish the person you wish to debate.
Oh wait, I just did it too, didn't I?
Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine when people attempt to debate a leaderless crowd.
The lack of notification was a big problem for me as well. I was real surprised when I found out that my real name was being used in my conversations. I never signed up for it, I never 'enabled' it. It just started happening.
The real problem is that I would like a feature similar to this, but not even close to the way they implemented it.
Four indepenent motors and two turbines menas we have redundancy on top of that.
Redundancy in a power system for a vehicle isn't that important from a consumer perspective.
We have redundancy in our brakes, or redundancy in our headlights, and even some newer engines can operate on 3/4 cylinders. However, I highly doubt you would want to drive a vehicle in which one of the motors wasn't functioning. Even if it let you continue, you would probably put uneven stresses on the vehicle and wear out the other engines at an accelerated rate.
How about we just ditch the cars period? Build our homes close to where we work and play, walk a bit more... man up some as a society. I dunno, just a thought!
My wife and I currently drive 10 miles to work. So I decided to Man-up and move across the street from my place of employment. Granted I now will pay $4,000/month ($1500 more) for the same house, but I'm saving $20/day driving and parking. But it's cool, since I'm saving $400/month. I'm now at a net -$1100/month.
My wife however, now drives 20 miles to work (What, you thought that we both worked for the same company right next to each other?), and in DC traffic, that equates to an addition hour of driving time each way.
So, I moved closer to work and look what I got out of the deal!
-$1,100/month and -40 hours/month I get to spend with my family. Your new society rocks!
Don't outlaw adjusting the radio(though I think it's dumb), but make it an extra fine if you get in an accident, are speeding, etc. due to adjusting the radio.
Attempt to counter argument by stating that a more severe activity is already illegal, so the less severe activity should also be illegal.
So because B (drunk driving) is worse than A, A should be punished in a manner similar to B?
Or did you mean: Because you advocate A should not be prosecuted in this manner, B should also not be prosecuted in this manner?
Texting is not drunk driving. Drunk driving is not insurance fraud. What does insurance fraud have to do with this? Nothing, just like Drunk Driving.
If you were in a fender bender, you'd probably have time to delete your messages before the cops got there, though they could probably subpoena the records from the phone company.
That's the problem. I don't care about deleting the messages. What I care about is that it will be a normal occurance for the police to subpoena my phone records for something that normally would not involve them.
I don't even have to be texting for that to happen, all that I would need to have happen is be in an accident and now my phone records have somehow become relevant.
short? the average height of women in the USA is 5'4".
You will have people talking about 'short' guys who are average or above average height. As a result, if you fall near average, you have to state your height as exaggerated in order to avoid being labeled 'short'.
I think there is also a disconnect in referring to height in a numeric manner. It's interesting when you look at it from a statistical standpoint, I've seen people refer to guys who were 5'9" and 5'10" as short.
You will hear people refer to women below 5'6" as being short, which doesn't make sense when looking at the statistical data.
Name one sci-fi film where the characters aren't one-dimensional? It's pretty much a requirement for the genre.
Being able to describe a character doesn't mean they are 'one-dimensional'. What does that even mean anyway? Single motivation? Single personality (And how do you have a single personality).
If you want to talk shifting motivations, I'd say Han Solo isn't a bad character to pick. And Lando seemed a bit interesting of a character in that he was a 'good guy' but certainly willing to go where the wind was blowing if he couldn't see a way out.
Luke's character from the film perspective changed a hell of a lot from basic whiney kid to buddist warrior enligtenment.
The only thing missing is his reviews of Episodes 4, 5 and 6
From a film perspective, they were fairly well presented. I think you are assuming that his critique is a nerdrage, which it is not.
He does evaluate 4,5,6 in one point as to showcase one of the failures of episode 1. Primarily he goes into the details of the danger of splitting the plot/story into multiple lines and trying to keep it coherent for an audience viewing it for the first time.
In short, he shows that 4's ending worked VERY well because you had all plots converge into one single ending (Yavin), then 5 had 2 plots going on, and 6 had 3 (Luke line, endor surface, space battle)
It showed a progression from a clear concise story in which everything split for a reason, and came back together for a reason, as opposed to Episode 1's approach of 'Everyone split up and go do your thing!"
Slashdot Mirror
What makes the metric system much more sophisticated than the imperial system is (a) All conversions are multiples of 10, which is the base that the bulk of humanity counts in, and (b) you only ever use one unit, whereas with imperial you always use two.
One final note: I prefer the imperial system for cooking, as an engineer I prefer the metric system (SI) units.
Why?
It's easier since most recipies deal with halves, quarters and eigths of units. One fluid ounce is 116 of a U.S. pint, 132 of a U.S. quart, and 1128 of a U.S. gallon.
It feels easier to scale on orders of 2x and 4x with recipies than it is to scale on an order of 10x with metric.
Could all be perception, but that's how it is.
A wall is 373cm x 713cm 0.5 litre of paint will cover 2 sq meters. How many dl will I need.
Most painters won't even care about that, they will look at a room and say, 10'x12'x9' that's about 3 gallons.
Such exact measurements aren't necessary, and when they are necessary, you aren't going to be doing them in your head.
Now quickly tell me how many inches does it take to span 892360213452 feet
Ok, now tell me what the volume of a sphere with a radius of 7 meters.
Orders of magnitude really don't matter that much. In a way, I like not using metric because I DO refrain from making arbitrary conversions of magnitude when it has nothing to do with calculations if you don't try to change them around in the first place.
So I might end up with a number that is 1231277545 feet. Are those two extra digits really that cumbersome if you wanted to say 1233747755.230 km instead of 1233747755230 m?
When working in metric or not, I just don't mess with the units until I absolutely have to, that includes orders of magnitude since any event where you can make a mistake should be reduced to the absolute minimum.
Every house sold in perhaps the last 30 years (perhaps not in the US?) has had a quality antenna and has required no fiddling or maintenance. Every tv since at least the late 80's has had the capability to be tuned for usually at least 100 channels of analog.
Remember this was about when CABLE really started to penetrate into the market. In the US that took place over the 70s and 80s. The televisions which were in the majority of homes during that period did NOT have the capabilities you describe. Nor was there any guarantee of having clear LOS to the station.
I think you are just looking at the wrong time period. If digital tuners and electronics were in the 80s, like they were in the 90s, cable might not have done nearly as well.
Modern DVB sets even auto-tune it for you in the space of five minutes after initial setup, I get around 10 channels flawlessly.
Again, that has nothing to do with the point of how cable was sold to people using aerials when cable first came onto the market as a viable option.
It's the broken window principal and has been demonstrated to work,/i>
It works if you ignore that the money could be spent elsewhere.
And it fails spectacularly if you are BREAKING the window intentionally under the misguided notion that it will somehow generate a net gain.
Leave the signs alone if they work, replace them with the 'standard' as they need replacing, and spend the money on something that is actually NOT working right now.
Why did you get yourself upholstered?
Seems strange to me.
Ever try to run long distances commando-style? Fabric which can supply some Up Holding is a godsend.
Nothing is free? Bullshit. The thing most important to your life is free, the one thing you can't survive two minutes without -- air. Sunsets and sunrises are free, if beauty is worthless why do people pay millions for paintings? Linux is free, Open Office is free, FOSS is free, public domain literature is free, GPL books are free, my journals are free, rain will water your grass for free, unsecured wifi is free, most music is free, and most of all... America is the land of the free!
Money is simply a tool. Only a fool worships his tools, fool. Now go take your MBA and get the hell off this nerd site and go to Business Week or some other site that caters to your religion, because greedheads like you really piss me off.
Ever wonder why some people want to control what you do with your body? It comes pre-installed with some of the best ways to pass the time!
Actually, if there's 22 minutes of commercials per hour, you only have to wait 11 minutes before starting your 30-minute program to ensure you can skip all the commercials. Actually, seeing as some of those 11 minutes of commercials will come right at the end of the 30-minute segment, you could start a bit earlier.
If I can start watching Caprica 38 minutes sooner (1-hour show), then I'll do it! :)
My wife watches Vampire Diaries (Hey, I can't tease her, since it is split screened with WoW. She gets her brief TV time 1-hr/wk and I get my brief uninterrupted WoW time).
She was in a conference call for the first 15 minutes, and I had it paused. I don't know how many damned commercials were there, but we ran out of buffer. Absolutely amazing.
Of course, that show also had a ford commercial built INTO the show in a rather obnoxious way.
"Oh what song is playing... Uses the voice control to look up song. I love that song." Absolutely pointless to the progression of the show. It DID remind me not to buy a Ford though.
The whole commercial thing goes back a long way. Television used to be free, over the air. Consumers were promised that paying for cable would keep the content commercial-free.
No we weren't. This is looking at the past with rose tinted lenses. A few channels may have been SOLD as commercial free, but that's not why we bought it.
My TV had 13 buttons on it, I could program them and tune them to 13 radio frequencies. What cable offered was 32 channels, all without snow/noise and I wouldn't have to maintain an aerial on top of my house. I was USED to commercials on most of those stations I received (not 13, I think I could receive about 3 on a good day) But I was sold on the fact that I wouldn't have to bother with an antenna, it would always be clear, and I'd get a lot more. Prism and HBO were big selling points.
(As an aside, boy I miss that TV. After it was 13 or so years old, My little sister once tried to get the cartoon characters out and tossed a rock at it. Slight crack in the center we got used to. 13 years after THAT it finally gave up the ghost in a rather ghostlike fashion by shooting blue plasma out the back)
But back on topic, I don't ever remember being sold on no commercials except on channels like HBO.
His response: "Sorry dad. You're right, I'll stay home.". You then respond with "Good. You're still grounded for a month just for bringing it up!".
I disagree. It wasn't that they brought it up that was the problem, it was that it was such a horrible idea that we literally wondered if this company was actively trying to 'be evil.'
To continue your analogy, it wouldn't be like going over to watch an R-rated film and then being grounded for bringing it up, it would be like going over to watch Faces of Death and scat films.
The response should be your suggested "If you do that you're going to be grounded", AND I think on Thursdays we are going to be meeting with a psychologist because something is SERIOUSLY wrong and needs to be addressed.
And I'll leave you with one final bit of food for thought: Imagine what's going to happen if something like WoW were to adopt that platform... An immersive MMO that you can play online at home with your friends, or play with friends at somebody's house, or just play on your own anywhere you like...
You mean like a laptop?
Please no more warning labels. They are applied in non-removable paint on my car visor, my child's safety seat, and other rather annoying places.
Why the hell do I as a driver need to be warned about the dangers of... well I don't know what dangers they are warning me about anymore because they are so damned ubiquitous. Removable stickers are fine. Resale of the item means they won't have the warning? Make a website http://warnings.gov/
You go there, pull your product type from a dropdown list and it will have every warning you could possibly want to have on your product, all there in a singular location and available in any language you want, updated instantly.
Oddly enough, I think it was Jay Leno (could be wrong) complaining about how car manuals are nothing but 80 pages of warnings rather than content which you could use to operate/repair your vehicle. Please please please, no more warning labels. I've become immune and now only see them as a bright yellow stain on my upholstry.
Sure they could. Now outline your evidence that this stat is right but the ones about Linux are wrong.
Why should HE? Didn't you talk about 'some users' or 'them'? You know, the vague other that is always used when trying to prove your point. Where were THEY when that guy was doing this, why are THEY so angry now that it's this guy.
Of course, you could be the lone gem in the world of the internet where people can just toss out accusations against tangentially related non-present people and thus tarnish the person you wish to debate.
Oh wait, I just did it too, didn't I?
Sorry, it's a pet peeve of mine when people attempt to debate a leaderless crowd.
Or I could just play Team Fortress 2, which I got as part of a 5-game pack for $50 that has no monthly fee*.
I'm not allowed to play both?
The result is quite a mess. The original principles are sound but what the debate morphed into no longer bears much resemblence to them.
Kind of like every political movement ever.
The lack of notification was a big problem for me as well. I was real surprised when I found out that my real name was being used in my conversations. I never signed up for it, I never 'enabled' it. It just started happening.
The real problem is that I would like a feature similar to this, but not even close to the way they implemented it.
Oh and Opt-In should be required by freaking law.
Four indepenent motors and two turbines menas we have redundancy on top of that.
Redundancy in a power system for a vehicle isn't that important from a consumer perspective.
We have redundancy in our brakes, or redundancy in our headlights, and even some newer engines can operate on 3/4 cylinders. However, I highly doubt you would want to drive a vehicle in which one of the motors wasn't functioning. Even if it let you continue, you would probably put uneven stresses on the vehicle and wear out the other engines at an accelerated rate.
How about we just ditch the cars period? Build our homes close to where we work and play, walk a bit more... man up some as a society. I dunno, just a thought!
My wife and I currently drive 10 miles to work. So I decided to Man-up and move across the street from my place of employment. Granted I now will pay $4,000/month ($1500 more) for the same house, but I'm saving $20/day driving and parking. But it's cool, since I'm saving $400/month. I'm now at a net -$1100/month.
My wife however, now drives 20 miles to work (What, you thought that we both worked for the same company right next to each other?), and in DC traffic, that equates to an addition hour of driving time each way.
So, I moved closer to work and look what I got out of the deal!
-$1,100/month and -40 hours/month I get to spend with my family. Your new society rocks!
Don't outlaw adjusting the radio(though I think it's dumb), but make it an extra fine if you get in an accident, are speeding, etc. due to adjusting the radio.
Attempt to counter argument by stating that a more severe activity is already illegal, so the less severe activity should also be illegal.
So because B (drunk driving) is worse than A, A should be punished in a manner similar to B?
Or did you mean: Because you advocate A should not be prosecuted in this manner, B should also not be prosecuted in this manner?
Texting is not drunk driving. Drunk driving is not insurance fraud. What does insurance fraud have to do with this? Nothing, just like Drunk Driving.
and Hard Disk space *is* memory, its not RAM, but it is memory.
Even more confusing:
Couldn't a Flash Hard drive be a hard disk that is also RAM?
If you were in a fender bender, you'd probably have time to delete your messages before the cops got there, though they could probably subpoena the records from the phone company.
That's the problem. I don't care about deleting the messages. What I care about is that it will be a normal occurance for the police to subpoena my phone records for something that normally would not involve them.
I don't even have to be texting for that to happen, all that I would need to have happen is be in an accident and now my phone records have somehow become relevant.
short? the average height of women in the USA is 5'4".
You will have people talking about 'short' guys who are average or above average height. As a result, if you fall near average, you have to state your height as exaggerated in order to avoid being labeled 'short'.
I think there is also a disconnect in referring to height in a numeric manner. It's interesting when you look at it from a statistical standpoint, I've seen people refer to guys who were 5'9" and 5'10" as short.
You will hear people refer to women below 5'6" as being short, which doesn't make sense when looking at the statistical data.
Don't outlaw texting (though I think it's dumb), but make it an extra fine if you get in an accident, are speeding, etc. due to texting.
Great, so if I'm in a fender bender, the first thing the police will do is pull down my messages. You know, just in case he was texting.
Name one sci-fi film where the characters aren't one-dimensional? It's pretty much a requirement for the genre.
Being able to describe a character doesn't mean they are 'one-dimensional'. What does that even mean anyway? Single motivation? Single personality (And how do you have a single personality).
If you want to talk shifting motivations, I'd say Han Solo isn't a bad character to pick. And Lando seemed a bit interesting of a character in that he was a 'good guy' but certainly willing to go where the wind was blowing if he couldn't see a way out.
Luke's character from the film perspective changed a hell of a lot from basic whiney kid to buddist warrior enligtenment.
The only thing missing is his reviews of Episodes 4, 5 and 6
From a film perspective, they were fairly well presented. I think you are assuming that his critique is a nerdrage, which it is not.
He does evaluate 4,5,6 in one point as to showcase one of the failures of episode 1. Primarily he goes into the details of the danger of splitting the plot/story into multiple lines and trying to keep it coherent for an audience viewing it for the first time.
In short, he shows that 4's ending worked VERY well because you had all plots converge into one single ending (Yavin), then 5 had 2 plots going on, and 6 had 3 (Luke line, endor surface, space battle)
It showed a progression from a clear concise story in which everything split for a reason, and came back together for a reason, as opposed to Episode 1's approach of 'Everyone split up and go do your thing!"
He presents it in a much better way than I can.