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Comment Elementary, my dear Watson (Score 1) 349

Basically, the basis for thin clients making sense is the supposition that computing power is expensive (just as in the old mainframe days, when the premise was that making lots of terminals and then one big machine made economic sense). Guess what? That doesn't hold true anymore. Computing power is cheap. The "nicities" of good graphics support, decent I/O etc is more expensive than the processor. So why not include some decent processing power in the "thin client". In this case, it is just a regular low-end PC (stationary equivalent of a netbook) running terminal software.

Comment Re:If you give up the inch, they'll take the mile (Score 1) 901

WTF? An inch is fine, but a cm is too short? What kind of argument is that? And what's wrong in saying 30 cm rather than a foot? You are just stating this crap because you've been raised on US Standard, anybody raised on metric will find your "arguments" crazy.

Actually,it is OK to call 10 centimeters a decimeter if your brain hurts by having to count farther than ten.

"Artificial contrived distance" is just crap, an inch is no more "natural" than an inch. And if you try to tell me that Imperial is based on body parts, have you noticed that people's thumbs/feet/whatever have very different sizes? My pinky is around 1 cm across, I'm sure you can find something on your body that matches up.

No doubt that metric is based on arbitrary basic measurements, so is Imperial. The difference is that metric is set up so all the units are connected logically, while Imperial is just a mess. For example: 1 liter=1 dm^3=1 kg

Comment Re:There is hidden utility in imperial we overlook (Score 1) 901

I call bull. The only reason you find fractions convenient, is that you are used to them. In the metric world (that's the rest of the world, man) fractions are not used that much. Who says a 1/12 of something is so damn useful? I would rather have 0.08 of something instead (or 8%).

In the rest of the world, we have our 3mm bolts rather than 1/16th inch or something else ridiculous like that. Metric works just fine for everyday measurements.

The really crazy side of imperial-style measurement is that every country had their (slightly different) measurement system. Imagine the chaos which would have reigned in today's global world if metric hadn't come along...

I would rather say that the only valid argument for using US standard system is that you are used to it. At least metric has two advantages.

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