5 ms·

Not at all. There's nothing obsolete about it. There's a social aspect to switching because others have done so but that's all. Except for that it's change f

Not at all. There's nothing obsolete about it. There's a social aspect to switching because others have done so but that's all. Except for that it's change for change's sake. An inch, a foot, a yard are all very intuitive measures that have good rough ways of being measured without any tools. I'm not sure what I get from metric that beats this. It's just convention. If anything metric is more arbitrary. Metric is design by committee, as hacker's we should consider that a mark against it.

litewulf 18y ago
You know that if you started off with metric, metric would feel intuitive too right? (Aza Raskin has a video where he basically says that what most people call intuitive they really mean "familiar".)
- laut 18y ago
  Right. I grew up with the metric system. (Just like anyone else outside Britain or their old colonies.) To me gallons and feet are not intuitive. But a meter and a liter and a kg is familiar, so I can roughly tell how much that is without a measuring instrument. The fact that a foot is supposed to be the length as a foot doesn't seem like any useful advantage to me. My foot is not precisely 30.48 cm anyway. Some imperial units are still in use outside of the British world. Inches for TVs and computer monitors and car wheels. Feet is used for boat lengths although meters is also used sometimes. Knots and nautical miles in sailing. Feet is also used in aviation.
trezor 18y ago
Metric is design by committee, as hacker's we should consider that a mark against it. Just like http really. We should all be rolling our own protocols.
alain94040 18y ago
>Metric is design by committee, as hacker's we should consider that a mark against it. Sorry but this is a sign of ignorance. Read the biography of Condorcet. Coming up with the metric system was extremely smart. In hacker terms, think of it as a beautiful, elegant fully rescursive and reentrant function that replaces mountains of ugly legacy code. It's amazing that at the time (1790), each profession used their own measurement system. An ounce for one trade was different from an ounce for another trade. You are somewhat aware of that of course because the difference between the US and British gallon carried to this day. Finding a way to universally cover all measurements (weight, distance, speed, etc.) so that everything is self-consistent is not committee design. It's extremely smart engineering. It removed the need for conversion constants and factors. In hacker terms, it was a major code cleanup effort.
- ewanmcteagle 18y ago
  You've convinced me. I say we renew a push for the decimal time unit as well. Apparently we're just waiting our time with degrees and such. The cleaned up, decimalised version (gon?) is available.
asciilifeform 18y ago
Tell us how much a cubic mile of water weighs in ounces. Then get back to us re: the "arbitrary" Metric system.
- RK 18y ago
  What's the temperature/pressure of the water? :)
- ewanmcteagle 18y ago
  This is exactly the issue. Making it easier to solve some problems that are very rare in the day to day lives of most of the world is not a good reason to force people to switch measurement systems.
  - asciilifeform 18y ago
    Converting between differently sized units of measurement is an everyday problem if anything is. I enjoy being able to do so by shifting a decimal point.

litewulf 18y ago

You know that if you started off with metric, metric would feel intuitive too right? (Aza Raskin has a video where he basically says that what most people call intuitive they really mean "familiar".)

laut 18y ago
Right. I grew up with the metric system. (Just like anyone else outside Britain or their old colonies.) To me gallons and feet are not intuitive. But a meter and a liter and a kg is familiar, so I can roughly tell how much that is without a measuring instrument. The fact that a foot is supposed to be the length as a foot doesn't seem like any useful advantage to me. My foot is not precisely 30.48 cm anyway. Some imperial units are still in use outside of the British world. Inches for TVs and computer monitors and car wheels. Feet is used for boat lengths although meters is also used sometimes. Knots and nautical miles in sailing. Feet is also used in aviation.

trezor 18y ago

Metric is design by committee, as hacker's we should consider that a mark against it. Just like http really. We should all be rolling our own protocols.

alain94040 18y ago

>Metric is design by committee, as hacker's we should consider that a mark against it. Sorry but this is a sign of ignorance. Read the biography of Condorcet. Coming up with the metric system was extremely smart. In hacker terms, think of it as a beautiful, elegant fully rescursive and reentrant function that replaces mountains of ugly legacy code. It's amazing that at the time (1790), each profession used their own measurement system. An ounce for one trade was different from an ounce for another trade. You are somewhat aware of that of course because the difference between the US and British gallon carried to this day. Finding a way to universally cover all measurements (weight, distance, speed, etc.) so that everything is self-consistent is not committee design. It's extremely smart engineering. It removed the need for conversion constants and factors. In hacker terms, it was a major code cleanup effort.

ewanmcteagle 18y ago
You've convinced me. I say we renew a push for the decimal time unit as well. Apparently we're just waiting our time with degrees and such. The cleaned up, decimalised version (gon?) is available.

asciilifeform 18y ago

Tell us how much a cubic mile of water weighs in ounces. Then get back to us re: the "arbitrary" Metric system.

RK 18y ago
What's the temperature/pressure of the water? :)
ewanmcteagle 18y ago
This is exactly the issue. Making it easier to solve some problems that are very rare in the day to day lives of most of the world is not a good reason to force people to switch measurement systems.
- asciilifeform 18y ago
  Converting between differently sized units of measurement is an everyday problem if anything is. I enjoy being able to do so by shifting a decimal point.