Some people do indeed live in the past and we should be clear that
whether commerce is interested in standards that applied over 40 years
ago or standards that apply today.

Old building regulations used to permit lead pipes for drinking water.
The modern form of building regulations do not permit lead pipes. When I
tell a builder: "Comply with building regulations", I mean the ones that
apply today. In case of dispute, we can go and look up the ones that
applied on the date in question and the builder has no defence of saying
"I was using the 1960's form of building regulations". 

Thus if I ask for a new bathroom to be built, I do not expect a debate
about whether I want lead or non-lead pipes. Lead pipes did have many
advantages and that is why they were permitted in previous building
regulations. We can debate the advantages of lead piping and previous
building regulations but unless we change current building regulations,
they are not permitted within the modern form of building regulations.

There are, of course, legacy issues. Thus builders can repair existing
lead pipes quite legally in full compliance with building regulations.
Most people remove them where possible, just as I could repair an old
CGS user interface or update it to the current version of the metric
system.

My clients would throw me out of the door if I tried to give them
history lessons. They pay me to tell them what applies today and cite
usable references for their engineers. Since modern form of the metric
system is SI, the terms metric and SI are synonyms for new development
work.

Other people may have different explanations for why the NIST says
metric = SI.



--
Terry Simpson
Human Factors Consultant
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.connected-systems.com
Phone: +44 7850 511794 


> Of Mike Joy
> Some people live in the past and remember when the old cgs measures
were
> defined, hence the other system other than SI.


> From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 9:44 AM
> Subject: [USMA:23314] metric = SI
> 
> 
> | Joseph B. Reid wrote:
> | >Please quote the text where NIST equated "metric" and "SI".
> |
> | [begin quote}
> | NIST wrote that it is confusing and redundant: a) to use the term
"SI
> | metric" system because it implies that there are metric systems
other
> | than the International System of Units (SI),
> |
> | [end quote]
> |
> | http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fpla/basis_jan1994.html

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