Forgot your password?

typodupeerror

Comment: Re:They'll probably be silenced for national secur (Score 1) 142

by blueg3 (#44045347) Attached to: Google Files First Amendment Challenge Against FISA Gag Order

Pretty much. Everyone heard about Dotcom's arrest, it made big news, and there was significant political fallout. Roughly what would happen if they arrested Page in a similar fashion.

I hear he's back making a new, similar business venture. Sounds like they disappeared him good!

Comment: Re:Why does this sound so strange ? (Score 3, Interesting) 105

by blueg3 (#43862381) Attached to: California Bill Would Mandate Open Access To Publicly Funded Research

Free and unlimited access to publicly funded research should already, without a law to enforce it, be a fact. So it is here in Europe, at least.

Yeah! That's a change the European Union made weeks ago.

The policy change brings the EU in line with the U.S. and Australia, which both recently made open-access publishing mandatory for any papers that received government funding.

Oops.

Comment: Re:Great concept! (Score 3, Informative) 105

by blueg3 (#43862353) Attached to: California Bill Would Mandate Open Access To Publicly Funded Research

Useful tip: Once you find the abstract (usually on a pay site), search Google for the paper title and authors. Google Scholar is particularly useful here. Find the preprint copy of the paper, which is usually hosted on an author's Web site or on a site like arXiv. Download that.

If you really want to read a paper and can't find a preprint, e-mail one of the authors and ask for a preprint PDF.

Comment: Re:Speak metric at home (Score 1) 1145

by blueg3 (#43819443) Attached to: White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care

You can't actually convert between volume and weight in a general fashion. Products with oz and fl-oz would just be products with mL and g and equally uncovertable. (Unless, you foolishly "remember" that 1 mL = 1 g.)

Oz and lb are different by a factor of 16. Should be able to multiple by 2 in your head 4 times, really.

Comment: Re:English system is fine (Score 1) 1145

by blueg3 (#43819411) Attached to: White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care

Quick, you have a transaction that uses 3 CPU-seconds, you have to do 5 million such transactions per day, how many CPU do you need? Have fun calculating 24x60x60 in your head. Now, instead, there are 5M per month, have more fun multiplying by 30, er... no, 31, er... no! 28 so your system won't fall over in Feb. But then you are calculating storage requirements, remember to multiply by 31 this time so your storage can hold in Jan/Mar/May/etc. Do you get a WTF yet?

This is why this is such a contentious issue -- people *this bad* at math have an opinion about units. You should not be frightened by simple problems!

Oh, BTW, how many days are there between 4th August and 3rd November (3 months), and how about 4th June to 3rd Sept (another 3 months)? Notice that the answers are different? How many days are there in 1st/2nd/3rd/4th quarters of a year? Notice the day counts are different, but businesses still report financials on quarterly basis, thus creating seasonal fluctuations even when there is none in the underlying business? WTF?

A business quarter is 13 weeks so that the number of days is the same in each quarter.

Incidentally, you can't have a metric calendar because the year isn't easily divisible. Hell, you can't have an integral calendar. (Hence leap objects.) Welcome to the level of calendar complexity that the Romans figured out. (You could have a calendar with 13 4-week months. We don't.)

Comment: Re:Start here (Score 1) 1145

by blueg3 (#43819357) Attached to: White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care

When they post nutritional information in ounces, they mean weight. I hope you can appreciate that there's no such thing as "fixing" the fact that you can't easily convert volumetric to weight measurements.

Here's a helpful tip for volumetric measurements.
1 cup = 8 oz
1 oz = 2 T
1 T = 3 t
There. Now do math.

Better yet, stop buying cookbooks that list measurements in volume. It's not an accurate way to measure. Hell, if you can't remember the conversions, if they list it in volume, it's so low-accuracy you should just take a stab at it. 2 tsp salt? That's "some". 1 Tbsp sugar? Slightly more that "some". 1/4 tsp cayeene? "A little bit".

Comment: Re:Start here (Score 1) 1145

by blueg3 (#43819331) Attached to: White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care

Beer and water generally use fluid ounces. (In fact, water could use floz or ml depending on how you get it -- beer uses oz and wine uses ml, so it'll be one of those.)

Did you know if you're measuring things for yourself, you can choose to use whatever units you want? And you can even convert between units!

Comment: Re:It is a broken system (Score 1) 1145

by blueg3 (#43819319) Attached to: White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care

For a start there is no agreed upon standard for several of the units e.g. fluid ounce for which the Imperial unit is not the same as the US unit...

Hopefully you can see that there are, in fact, two agreed-upon standards. The US Imperial system and UK Imperial system are not the same. That shouldn't be too confusing, since according to you, the UK doesn't use the Imperial system any more. So clearly fluid ounces is always in US Imperial units.

Comment: Re:Start here (Score 1) 1145

by blueg3 (#43819293) Attached to: White House: Use Metric If You Want, We Don't Care

However, while the metric system is many things, 'awkward and unnatural' isn't one of them. You look up 'awkward' in the dictionary and there's the Imperial system. 5280 feet in a mile? 16 ounces in a pound? Water freezes at 32 degrees?

The units you actually need to convert between tend to be related by either powers of 2 or multiples of 12, which are extremely convenient when working with fractions. The SI system is designed instead to be convenient when working with decimal numbers.

In science and engineering, decimals are more common and SI is more useful. But then, SI is more useful in science and engineering anyway because the scientific units in SI are sane, as opposed to the Imperial scientific units -- where they exist. Don't complain about 5280 feet in a mile. Nobody really converts feet to miles. But units like horsepower are just a headache. Fortunately, scientists have it easy -- they just use SI. (Engineers are boned. Sorry.) And being familiar with Imperial units doesn't hurt them -- scientists work mostly in weird units that you don't develop familiarity with anyway.

Now, in construction and manufacturing, it's common to use fractions, and they use Imperial. This is where the real cost of any kind of "switch" to metric comes in -- there's a whole set of manufacturing standards that are specified in Imperial units. You can't just convert them to "metric equivalents" with any reasonable degree of accuracy. And transitioning to metric manufacturing is pointless, expensive, and downright stupid.

Water freezes at 32 degrees?

It doesn't really matter what number water freezes at. It's arbitrary. Most users of Imperial units remember that 32 is freezing. If they're clever, they also remember that 37 is roughly the air temperature where there could be ice on the ground. But the freezing and boiling points of water rarely are useful in real life. Do you know the freezing and boiling points of other substances in Celcius?

Really, the stupid temperature systems are the ones that don't have 0 as absolute zero.

What the world *really* needs is a good Automatic Bicycle Sharpener.

Working...