The radio here has been brimming with people saying how happy they were with the cars, and how they don't know what will happen next. All of them (that I heard) said they can charge the car at home, and it's only long commutes that are a problem.

Shachar

Assuming your reply was serious, I'll just point out that the question is not what system to use. By all means, do use whatever is most convenient to you. In fact, that is precisely what the article is ridiculing your government for saying. The question is what system should we teach children who have not been indoctrinated to any of the systems.

And, also, do you happen to have any references to the gun claim, or was this some obscure car analogy I didn't get?

Shachar

Actually, I don't see that at all. In fact, this sentence, to me, seemed completely unrelated to anything else discussed here. I suspect you just grew up with these units, got used to them, and therefor, now, think they are somehow better.

Shachar

Neither. I suspect you just fell for the same blunder I originally did.

My bookshelf is 85cm wide, 170cm hi and 33cm deep. That makes it about half a cubic meter in volume. This, however, does not amount to the amount to the volume of books it can contain. Not all depth is used, and the books are not tall enough to fill the gaps between the shelves. All in all, let's assume half of the bookshelf's volume is lost (and I'm being generous to your side of the argument). Let's round the bookshelf's volume up to half a cubic meter (again, making your case easier to make).

So a bookshelf can host around 0.25 cubic meters of books. To make the analogy, we need to suddenly dump 7 new bookshelves worth of books on your apartment, and tell you "yeah, find a place for them".

As for your desk analogy - that just proves my point - people have a hard time of understanding volume. A desk is measured by its surface area. It has plenty of usable volume beneath and above it. If that were a block, you'd speak differently.

At the moment, there are five uninstalled air condition units sitting at the side of my living room. They take about 3 cubic meters. Yes, I can still use the apartment (but it's a really really big one), but they sure as hell stick out.

Oh, and this is algebra, not calculus.

Shachar

When you put soil in water, it changes. In particular, one component is removed from the mix: air.

I have no idea how much air is in the soil. I was working under restrictive assumptions (i.e. - ones that make the weight smaller), just to give a feel for the result.

Shachar

Almost a decade ago, I was in a trip to the USA. I was very surprised to see Liter used for car engine sizes (here they usually use cubic centimeters, which are exactly 1/1000, so not a real problem).

I remember strolling through a supermarket, and looking at the soda bottles, which were bigger than the 1.5L bottles common here. I picked one up to see what size it was. I guess most readers know the answer - it was 2 liters. I remember wondering how come Americans are willing to use a metric unit.

So I asked a vendor. His answer was "This isn't a metric unit. It's liter".
So I asked him how much was a liter, and his answer was something along the lines of "33.8 ounces" (without blinking of stopping to think about it).

Which, of course, got me my answer. The reason Americans are using a metric unit is because they don't know it's metric.

The problem with your proposal is that, if implemented that way, means just adding another unit to the mix, without exposing people to the main advantage that the metric system has to offer. That does not bode well for a "migration path".

You should add to that the fact that volume realization is hard. I'll give a couple of examples. First, bear in mind that the two units people are, more or less, familiar with are a milliliter (1 cubic centimeter = 1/1000 of a liter) and a liter.

The first was when a company I worked for ordered a certain amount of boxes for their product. We were trying to figure out whether we have where to store them. I made the calculation, based on box size, and figured the entire bunch would require a little less than 2 cubic meters (around 1.8). We sort of made a hand gesture estimate and figured it was not that much. Boy, were we wrong. We ended up using up every spare cabinet and space in the office. Lesson learned: a cubic meter is a lot.

The happened just yesterday. I was telling my wife we will have to remove some soil from our garden to make space for extra flooring. She said "we'll be giving that to friends, right?". I told her it was about 500 liters of soil. I then made a quick mental calculation. We'll need about 12 squared meter of flooring, and the base is about half a meter deep. 6000 liters. Assuming soil is half as dense than water (it was while driving, so I couldn't look it up), you get 3 tons of soil. My instinct was off by a factor of 10, and her instinct was off by a factor of 1000.

This doesn't mean this is useless. Can you make this same calculation, off the top of your head, using imperial units? Metric does simplify things quite considerably. It's just that, specifically for volumes, that is a hard problem to solve.

Shachar

I don't think GP was trying to say the Imperial system makes sense today. I think he was saying it made sense at the time it was invented. Back then, the level of accuracy required was much lower (if only because higher levels of accuracy were unobtainable).

He was not saying the US should stick with Imperial. He was saying it had a certain sense behind it that was good for the time in which it was invented.

Shachar

Grandparent is right, and so are you.

The way I dealt with this conflict (back when I was doing contracting work) was twofold:
First, I would try to convince the client to work on a time and material basis, rather than fixed price. To do this, I would point out two things that should have been obvious, but are usually not:

1. Requirements change over time. With time and material, this is not a problem. With a fixed price project, every time this happens the entire project needs to be halted, percentage of execution calculated, payment for work already done given, and a new quote issued. This gives a very strong disincentive to trigger changes, which means the project stagnates for no good reason.
2. When writing a quote for a fixed price project, I take the full risk of the project being bigger than anticipated. To accommodate this risk, I over price the quote. If I think a certain project will take me 50 hours to complete, a fixed price quote will typically bill around 70. Those 20 hours are a premium the client pays for me taking the risk.

Often (not always) these were enough to convince the client that time and material was a better option for them. If not, however, I would define an acceptance test period. The quote would read something like:

This solves both problems. On the one hand, I take responsibility for my own bugs. On the other, I do not have an open ended commitment (which I cannot afford, as a small business) to solve bugs, free of charge, until the rest of eternity. As far as the client goes, it is unlikely that any really serious bugs will not be discovered within a month of testing (unless they order a project, and then never get around to test it once delivered, in which case, screw them).

Shachar

I was under the impression that the consolidation was the good thing you attributed to MS. If that was, indeed, your point, claiming that it would happen without MS means they did not contribute to that end as much as you gave them credit, hence my point. If that was not your point, then I didn't get what was.

I refer you to what "Monopoly" means (hint - mono is Greek for "single"). I am fizzy with anticipation to see your explanation of how two and competing entities might be considered a monopoly.

Juvenile ad hominem insult aside, 2013 minus 1995 gives us almost two decades, while you were trying to claim that my "a decade" statement was too much. If anything, it was too little.

Shachar

Which is precisely why I didn't say "two decades".

I'll also add that I believe that the consolidation would have happened on its own, and might have consolidated on a better platform. The smartphones industry sure seem to go this route without a monopolistic overlord to guide it.

Everything else you describe happened around 1995. This is 2013.

Shachar

I think it is important (though, I would be the first to agree, not common) to read comments in the context in which they are given.

If you steal a billion dollars, and then proceed to do good things with them, then you should be applauded for the good you did, while going to jail for the billion you stole.

Shahcar

I loath a lot of what he's done, but I don't think divorcing "Bill Gate's money" from "Bill Gates" has any merit. I think this is response is just you trying to handle your cognitive dissonance.

The man was a ruthless copycat and a predator who set the computer world back at least a decade. For that he deserves (and, to a certain degree, receives) scorn.

He is also a man who decided that his wealth should go to help make the world a better place for people whose trouble do not, usually, receive funds. For that the man deserves (and, to a certain degree, receives) praise.

Learn to live with these two facts, contradicting though they may seem.

Shachar

To be fair, had I been in his position, I wouldn't want to sing those parts of the song too.

He had other lyrics, about his mission being close to over, which I believe were written specifically for him.

Shachar

And, even when websites use country-specific domains, I see a lot them still using dot com with it -- for example "website.com.au"

That's just ignorance on your part, I'm afraid.

Some countries choose to have only a closed set of second level domain names under the country TLD. You see "com.au" because you cannot register "rudy.au" if you tried (yes, it's available :-). Same goes for "co.il" and "co.uk". Under others, the second level is free for all, such as ".fr" and ".tv". Each country decides for itself how it manages its own domain name.

So when you see "com.au", it's because the company really had no other choice.

Shachar

Will it be wide enough to land a plane on it?

Shachar