This discussion could possibly be as silly as arguing over spelling. Liter or Litre?
A fortnight in France is known as a "quinze jours", which translates back as "15 days". (So how many furlongs per fortnight would you get in France?) I was taught the imperial system at school, but now largely use the metric system. But then I find I have to work in binary and hex as well. So the concept of base changing is well-known to me. Also travelling in the US I find that a US gallon is 6 pints whereas an imperial gallon is 8 pints. Makes the mpg figures pretty incomparable. I guess the real answer is rule 1 "Know what you are talking about". I don't claim to always follow that one;-) Lennie Dymoke-Bradshaw MBCS CITP Accredited Senior I/T Specialist, System z, Security and Cryptography, IBM Software Group Mail: Lennie J Dymoke-Bradshaw/UK/IBM@IBMGB or [email protected] From: Steve Smith <[email protected]> To: [email protected], Date: 07/01/2014 22:38 Subject: Re: OT: SI units and precision Sent by: IBM Mainframe Assembler List <[email protected]> This American colleague personally has no use for the metric system. It's a completely arbitrary system that has no real advantage over our ancient and traditional measurements. It makes no more sense than the ten-day week. While France has given us many great things, their preoccupation with multiples of ten is a rather silly one. An inch, a cup, a pound, a foot, a pint and a grain all have a relationship to the practical world that is much more useful than units based on the circumference of the earth. And while it was once somewhat difficult to convert miles per hour to feet per second (or furlongs per fortnight), we have calculators and Google now. sas On 1/4/2014 7:20, Dougie Lawson wrote: > Rob, > > The biggest stumbling block is getting our American colleagues to stop > using their Imperial (and modified Imperial) measures, AF screw threads & > cups in the kitchen and switch everything to SI units. > > At the same time we need the Gov't here in the UK to switch from miles, > miles per hour, miles per gallon and pints to Km, Km/h, Litres / 100Km and > half litres (it's only 68ml short of a pint). > > I'm old enough to know pounds & ounces, inches & feet, grammes, > kilogrammes, centimetres and metres so a switch to the full Metric system > won't bother me. > > After we achieve that we can then consider the millis vs centis vs kilo vs > mega order of magnitude problems. But it's a minor problem when we have the > Luddites who won't use the nice weights and measures that the French > invented for us. > > Regards, Dougie > Unless stated otherwise above: IBM United Kingdom Limited - Registered in England and Wales with number 741598. Registered office: PO Box 41, North Harbour, Portsmouth, Hampshire PO6 3AU
