Go ahead
I think the metric system makes a lot of sense. Just don't take my pint away, that's all. Every time I go home to visit, I get beer in measly 0.5l portions, and it is quite frankly an inferior way of serving beer.
Register SPB hacks mull chopping off feet
Weary special-projects-bureau operatives at El Reg have decided the time has come to consider exclusively adopting the International System of Units (aka SI Units), and ditching the mile, pound and related measurements. It's a royal pain in the backside working with two systems, which results in sentences such as "Baumgartner …
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:57 GMT ChrisBoy
Re: Go ahead
Unless you like Guinness 'Original' (the non-widgety version), which has been sold almost universally as '500ml' but with '13% extra free' for the past few years...
Makes me wonder if maybe there's a loophole that can be exploited... sell half a pint of beer at full rates of duty, but put it into full-pint glasses that must be 'rented' at, say, 25p per drink... you get your half-pint at full price, pay 25p on top to rent the glass, and have it filled to the brim with 50% extra 'free'!
Everybody wins, except George Osborne... so everybody wins!
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Tuesday 9th October 2012 17:50 GMT kwhitefoot
Re: SI señor
All the Americans I know say Imperial units but what they really mean is US Customary.
The volume measures differ even when they have the same name.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems
And a message to our hosts: why don't URLs turn into links?
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:37 GMT Marco van de Voort
Re: Yes please!
I think Imperial unit standardization already went a step to far, let alone the even more radical SI.
Every town should have its own measurements again! It's like insane that a mile in London is the same as a mile in Brighton! Reverting to the old tried and tested practice from before all this standardization nonsense will encourage thinking local again !
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Monday 8th October 2012 13:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
Americans...
My brother-in-law's father is an American physics teacher, he was very clear on the subject when I asked him, he words were along the lines of:
"The metric system is the only sensible way forward, any engineering or physics which uses the imperial system is a nightmare. It's just not fit for modern use, we need to change over to metric."
I tend to argee.
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:14 GMT richardcox13
Re: Americans...
Arguably for much of physics even the SI units are a RPITA. So many things would be easier with "natural" units. For example in particle physics using Planck Units, however these are not exactly practical outside their specialisms (time in units of approximately 5.4e-44s and distance of 1.6e-35m).
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Monday 8th October 2012 13:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: What about the Universal Engineering Standard?
i used to work in the digital printing world and it was pretty normal to define an inch as 25.2mm so that a 600dpi spacing was 42 microns rather than 42 1/3 microns. Then you simply had the difficulty of remembering when you needed to convert from "real inches" to "internal metric inches" ...
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: What about the Universal Engineering Standard?
"i used to work in the digital printing world and it was pretty normal to define an inch as 25.2mm"
It's 25.4mm.
So glad that your not machining and fitting my bearings, slides, seals, washers, gaskets, and all the other nit picky shit that goes "Hiss / leak / catch fire / bang / scrape / seize / etc." because 0.2mm tightness or looseness was enough to cause more problems than I care to mention.
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Monday 8th October 2012 13:49 GMT Colin Brett
Re: <repost>
"Look, everyone knows what happens if you keep switching units: you'll crash into Mars"
I was trying to work out the best way of saying this but it appears, AdamT, that you have hit the hit the proverbial nail on the head. Well done, sir!
Now. What's the volume of the head of a nail as expressed in SI or El Reg units? It's got to be an awful lot smaller than a walnut (0.16gf in Reg units).
Colin
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Monday 8th October 2012 13:51 GMT Colin Brett
Re: penalty for non-compliance
"Metric martyrs should be made to sit Victorian applied maths exams, with poundals and bushels and British Thermal Units and all the other ridiculous ones that I can't remember."
In the US, however, wouldn't this be "cruel and unusual punishment" and against the Constitution?
Colin
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Tuesday 9th October 2012 06:04 GMT Michael Dunn
Re: penalty for non-compliance
I did Physics at Higher Crrtificate level (the exam at 18 after Matric) in 1950, and many of the questions required working in mixed units: cgs and imperial, using a slide-rule as calculator More time doing arithmetic than actual physics! The slide-rule had markings for pi and "e" and the HP/kw equivalence factor to make calculations "easier".
My old slide-rule still in the pocket.
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Tuesday 9th October 2012 09:47 GMT Kobus Botes
Re: penalty for non-compliance
Here in sunny South Africa we converted to the metric system in the early sixties (took about ten years to do the job, mind).
This story reminds me of the joke about the farmer who bitterly complained about the negative effect that the new system had on him (just to explain - the conversion rate for money was two Rands to the Pound):
His complaint was that it had become impossible to farm anymore, as
"My farm is now sixty percent further from town and my land was halved. I now use almost five times as much fuel and fuel consumption has taken a terrible dip, whilst my lorries and trailers can only carry half as much as before. The cost of everything doubled whilst my yield was halved. My labourers now demand twice as much as before and then they tell me it will make things a lot easier!"
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Monday 8th October 2012 13:23 GMT Pete 2
Converting to old fashioned units
If you do decide to keep the old, imperial units, could you at least stop converting to (or even bothering with) multiple decimal places. For example in the article, does it matter that the dude in question reached a speed of 586.92 km/hr or that 1,315kg is 2,899 pounds.
Although I appreciate a bit more than "in a pressurised rather heavy capsule", I doubt it matters to anyone reading whether the capsule's weight is given to 4 digits of accuracy when 1.3 tonnes (or tons, the difference is slight and immaterial - just please god: not metric tonnes) would tell us all we need to know. Though informing us what that is in olympic swimming pools-full of linguini is obviously a definite requirement.
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Monday 8th October 2012 13:31 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Converting to old fashioned units
Notwithstanding the issues of meaningless accuracy its probably best to err on the side of the metric the subject is used to being described in. i.e. aircraft altitue in feet, ship speed in knots, horse prices in guineas and yes, leave me with my pint of beer.
Leave SI units to the supermarkets.
Perhaps the SPB should invent their own units?
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Tuesday 9th October 2012 06:18 GMT Michael Dunn
Re: Converting to old fashioned units
3 was good enough for God, so why man feels it needs decimals is beyond me.
Ah, was Hiram inspired when designing/building his tank, or was Satan whispering in his ear? Satan has a certain history of interfering in human history: eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge _should_ have settled the matter of the existence of the Higgs Boson once and for all. One also remembers the modern answer to Pope's complimentary couplet:
Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said "Let Newton be!" and all was light.
to which the response was:
This could not last, the Devil shouting "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
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Monday 8th October 2012 19:31 GMT Pete 2
Re: Converting to old fashioned units
> How do you feel about PI?
Many answers depending on circumstances.
3 is generally good enough
sqrt(10) is often handy. Pi**2 comes up a lot in physics.
Also 78.5% is far more useful if you're working out areas (the percentage of the largest circle that fits in a given square)
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Monday 8th October 2012 15:45 GMT Alan Brown
Re: Converting to old fashioned units
"Every fucking thing should be METRIC tons by now, or KKg's (Hey I just invented that - fancy that a new ISO standard - KKg's - I Said it Orrite.)"
Already exists - Mg :p
When God said to Moses "Take 2 tablets and call me in the morning", his pharmacist misread the prescription.
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Monday 8th October 2012 21:07 GMT Primus Secundus Tertius
Re: Converting to old fashioned units
Everyone knows that a temperature of 20 degrees centigrade is 68 Fahrenheit. But differences in temperature convert differently, though the average newspaper hack or subeditor is unaware of that. So deltaT of 20C is 36F, not 68F as often reported.
There is much to be said for a policy of euthanasia for anyone over 21 without O-level maths. Especially for those who judge railway company bidding.
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Tuesday 9th October 2012 06:14 GMT Concrete Gannet
Re: Converting to old fashioned units
Hear, hear.
"Baumgartner jumped from an altitude of 29,455m (96,640ft), hitting 586.92km/h (364.69mph)" and "in a pressurised 1,315kg (2,899lb) capsule".
No. Nobody measured the height to a precision of a metre, or speed to a precision of .01 km/h. If you quote two significant figures for a number, you're within one percent. Stop there. Expressing a round number in one system of units as a number with many significant figures in another implies a level of precision that almost certainly wasn't there in the original measurement.
There's the old joke about the curator in the museum who was asked how old the dinosaur skeleton was, and said "66 million and 4 years". When the visitor expressed surprise they knew the age that precisely, the curator said, "Well, when I started here they said it was 66 million years old, and I've been working here four years now."
I am always amazed in debates about metrication in Britain and the US that nobody looks at what happened in Australia. The sky didn't fall in, people. Really it didn't.
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Monday 8th October 2012 13:28 GMT mccp
Simply use the correct unit for the subject
I've never understood why anyone bothers providing an amount in more than one unit. Just stick to a rule that says you can only use one unit and it should be appropriate to the subject. I.e.:
Beer - pints, obv.
Distance - KM, miles, light years, parsecs, etc. according to subject.
Length, height, girth, etc.: feet, metres, microns, linguine...
The most annoying use of dual units is when some imbecile provides a currency amount in the currency relevant to the story and then converted to a precise sterling amount - clearly the conversion will never be accurate.
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Simply use the correct unit for the subject
"The most annoying use of dual units is when some imbecile provides a currency amount in the currency relevant to the story and then converted to a precise sterling amount - clearly the conversion will never be accurate."
Doesn't help that the conversion factor changes all the time.
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Monday 8th October 2012 15:55 GMT Lars
Re: SI units all the way
SI for me too, and Celsius.
Copied this from the Wikipedia.
"For example meter and liter are used in the United States whereas metre and litre are used in other English-speaking countries."
"The usage of the metric system varies around the world. According to the US Central Intelligence Agency's Factbook, the International System of Units has been adopted as the official system of weights and measures by all nations in the world except for Burma, Liberia and the United States,[55] while NIST has claimed that the United States is the only industrialized country where the metric system is not the official system of units.[56] Some sources, though, suggest that this information is out of date.[57] An Agence France-Presse report from 2010 stated that Sierra Leone, not Liberia, had continued to use the Imperial system, but had passed a law to enact metrication, in line with its Mano River Union (MRU) neighbours Guinea and Liberia.[58] Reports from Burma suggest that that country is planning to adopt the metric system also.[59]
In the United States, where the use of metric units was authorised by Congress in 1866,[60] such units are widely used in science, military, and partially in industry."
Still I would have nothing against a pint of beer right now, but I wonder if this glass is really a pint.
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:05 GMT DragonLord
Slight addition/change (after re-reading the article)
Why not do altitude in feet, air speed in knots, long distances and ground speed in the most convenient format with a translation to the nearest convenient figure. Short distances in m/cm/mm and area in m2 or whatever is convenient.
Volume should be done in litres (except drinks which should be done in pints)
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Monday 8th October 2012 13:35 GMT Daedalus
Fond of Fahrenheit
While I agree about weights and measures, I've never liked Celsius as a scale for ambient temperature. Herr Fahrenheit was dead right about avoiding negative temperature values. What does Celsius give us except a 0 to 100 scale between freezing and boiling water? When was the last time anybody cared that there were exactly 100 degrees between those two points? It's not as if you ever need to divide by 10 to get some other temperature unit. Zero Fahrenheit is about as cold as you ever want it to get outside (trust me, we see that here upstate NY). Calling it -17C isn't the same. And 100 F is about as hot as you ever want it to get outside (rare here, not so rare in the nation's capital).
Sadly, the Celsius degree got adopted for the Kelvin scale, so science is on the side of big fat degrees with freezing point as zero. But there's really no reason for it to be in any way superior to good old deg F. Reet!
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Monday 8th October 2012 13:57 GMT Captain Hogwash
Re: Fond of Fahrenheit
I couldn't disagree more. 20 degrees Celsius is room temperature. Anything from there up to 26 is pleasant. Anything 27 and above is too hot. The range 18 to 20 can be managed by adding layers of clothing and anything below 18 requires some form of room heating. Zero or below outside means watch out for ice on the roads and pavements (sidewalks to you Daedalus.) Fahrenheit is completely impenetrable.
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:16 GMT Schultz
Zero Fahrenheit is about as cold as you ever want it
Sounds like you didn't get out of the neighborhood very much. I fondly remember Canada where thermometers went from -50 to +50 °C (and they did so for a good reason). -18 °C, or 0 F was that kind of pleasant winter night with mini-skirted girls waiting in line at the club.
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Monday 8th October 2012 13:36 GMT Dave 126
SPB operates in Spain, no?
So I would have thought that Metric would be the way to go.
Personally, I use Imperial for estimates (the numbers suit it better) and I use SI for measurements and calculations. "So, we need a piece of wood about four inches wide by three foot. Exactly? Well, lets see... [gets out measure tape and pen] I make it 112 mil by 1027".
But that's just me.
Reg, I'm still waiting for your unit conversion App... though thought needs to be given on notation, since a Double Decker Bus can be a unit of length and of volume (I'm thinking DDBl, and DDBa, maybe)... likewise, brontosaurs.
But as reporting normal stories, just use the unit that the source provides.
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Monday 8th October 2012 13:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
A brilliant idea
Not only because proper units with a preponderance of base ten are neater and easier to work with, but it would really, really annoy the more eye-bulgy Americans. Win all round.
I do remember standing in the kitchen making soup to the dulcet tones of Gardener's Question Time (god damnit, I am so rock and roll), when one of the experts was trying to describe a pest to one of the questioners, saying it was "about 1.5mm long". The questioner replied smugly and self-righteously that "I don't do inches". The expert took a deep breath and very politely explained that it might be a good idea to do so, as measuring something like that in inches was a bit of a lost cause.
For me, that distilled the generational issues inherent in this sort of debate. Kids in this country have been taught proper SI units for years (I'm an old or at least middle-aged git, and I was). It's about time that people let it go. Yeah, ok, so the Colonials are cleaving firmly to what they fondly imagine that we also regard as useful units, but screw them, really.
The only proper units are double decker buses, princes of whales and the like, obviously, but failing that, SI units will do the trick nicely.
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Dynamic content
Agreed. Just use XHTML - define a namespace for the Reg, annotate all values, use Javascript to tweak the DOM as needed.
Give them <TheReg:distance value=".0254">an inch</TheReg:distance> and they'll take <TheReg:distance="1609.344">a mile</TheReg:distance>.
Then we can see SI, Imperial, TheReg, Planck, Potrzebie, or whatever.
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Monday 8th October 2012 13:53 GMT Barely registers
Kill it with fire
Yes, god yes. Consign these unholy Imperial abominations to the darkest of the depths. Lead the way, and maybe, just maybe, we can drag the rest of the world kicking and screaming out of the mire and into the light.
And while we're at it changing the road signs from miles to km, let's drive on the right hand side of the road too.
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Monday 8th October 2012 13:57 GMT rurwin
Miles, miles per hour, all else metric. Just like the good old UK itself. -- Well apart from gallons of course, but the yanks have messed up our liquid measures so much that we're probably best to stay away from that.
(I could understand making a pint a fluid pound, and keeping a gallon at eight pints is understandable pedance, but why change the size of a fluid ounce?)
...((and yes, the chances are that it was us that changed, in which case I'm sure there was a damned good reason.))
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Monday 8th October 2012 13:57 GMT DrXym
If it annoys the Americans
Do it.
Anyway on a more practical note, I assume it would be possible insert tags into whatever raw format articles are submitted in, e.g. @{s,20000,mph}, @{w,25,kg), @{v,100,usg} or similar and for the output to appear in whatever measurement a user chooses as their default. A !{} notation might force the output but still provide hover text which provides alternatives and so on. Combine it with a microformat tagging scheme and the conversion information could even be delegated to browser plugin.
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Monday 8th October 2012 15:08 GMT Dave 126
Re: To quote Abe
@DJO
He was quoting a fictional character who is is very old and reactionary, and prone to exaggeration when giving "When I was young.."-type accounts. Whilst I applaud your doing the sums, I call fail on your fail.
Homer Simpson, in another episode, gave a list of Springfield's virtues: "...And we we were the first town in America to abandon the Metric system!"
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:04 GMT Prof Yaffle
Go For It
It never ceases to amaze me when Radio 4 goes blathering on about ounces, inches, Farenheit, bushels, grains or similarly archaic measures. I'm 44 - firmly on the edges of "middle aged fogeyism" - and was brought up with SI right here on these shores, and have never really used anything else beyond the colloqualisms of "it's a few inches", "that's a few feet". Reach for a tape measure, though, and it's metric all the way. And don't get me started on road signs in yards, or my sat nav telling me to turn left in 200 feet... wot?
And yes, I weight myself in kilos as well, before you ask. But I recognise that this is a little unusual!
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Wednesday 10th October 2012 09:29 GMT Steve Hosgood
Re: Go For It
My Garmin does that too. That's why I run the thing in metric. "In 300 metres, turn left" - yeah, that's at least comprehensible even if the matching roadsign says 330yds.
But of course there almost never is a matching roadsign, so I just go with metres and ignore the Department of Transport's insistence on hanging on to useless old units on their signs.
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:51 GMT Grikath
Re: SI only, please!
aeroplane flight levels are also expressed in meters, as long as you fly with an airline that is not frmo a country that's not still mired in Imperial measurements.
Face it. lads and lasses, worldview aside, imperial is a minority system that's never used by anyone doing something approaching real boffinry, or even spin-cycling, unless from the US.
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Monday 8th October 2012 18:06 GMT SkippyBing
Re: SI only, please!
Actually the unit to measure flight levels is defined by the air space the aircraft it's in, not where it's from, it tends to avoid the inevitable carnage of your system. I think China and the former Soviet Union are the only places to use metric flight levels and since 2011 Russia uses flight levels that are the equivalent of the Imperial ones, so they use 10350m which is 34000' or FL 340.
The aircraft themselves are free to measure altitude and flight levels in whatever manner they desire, but for certification purposes airliners have to have an altimeter that reads in feet or meters and I suspect the larger ones can display in either.
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:08 GMT b166er
I have the solution to the pint problem.
Measure them out as 500ml (or half-litre (yes that's another argument entirely, litre or liter)) servings, but call them pints (Imperial ones, natch (another argument, sheesh)) and outlaw anyone from filing a legal complaint that their 'pint' is actually only 500ml.
In fact, if anyone ever complains that their 'pint' is only 500ml, have them taken away to the stocks (in the beer garden) and publicly humiliated.
Let it therefore pass into the lexicon that a pint is in fact 500ml; problem solved.
Oh and the price must also drop accordingly. (I know, i know, porcine aviators, frozen wastes of Hades)
Whatever would we do with all the pint glasses?
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:31 GMT Dr. Mouse
"Whatever would we do with all the pint glasses?"
Keep them. Then we could actually get the beer we pay for with a head, rather than having to sacrifice beer for the head.
I love it at beer festivals. Get half pints in a pint glass, and they give you half a pint of beer plus a head on top. A nice, large, frothy head is great to drink the beer through, and you don't mind because you are getting what you paid for. Similarly, when I drink my own homebrew, there's no "topping up". Plenty of froth, leave it to settle a bit and drink.
IMHO all beer should be served in oversized glasses with a measurement mark. Otherwise, you always get less than you pay for (either the head is taking up beer space, or the beer is flat: Either way it's not what you are paying for).
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:32 GMT Edmund Green
SI all the way
If you're going to bite the bullet and go with SI units then you should go all the way and not have any exceptions - the site title says "Sci/Tech News" so hopefully most of us reading it are familier enough with units to be able to convert to something else in those more stubborn scenarios that have been mentioned and maybe even encourage others to use the SI units in these cases.
re: altitude - I'm sure I've heard a pilot announce the altitude in km before now - about 10km seems typical? and OS maps switched their contour lines to metric intervals sometimes around the 1970s I think.
Speed is a tricky one - should you use km per hour or metres per second ....
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:38 GMT I ain't Spartacus
I blame the parents!
The problem is that while I was taught metric at school, my Dad was a far bigger influence on me than any of my teachers. So despite the fact that I'm just about to hit 40, and had a 'proper' education in the 'correct' scientific units, I mostly think in imperial. Although there's a lot to be said for a 'horses for courses' approach. As our French, SI creating, 'friends' would agree. Although in their case, it's usually horses for main courses...
As someone above said, I often find myself estimating in imperial, but working in metric. So I've been putting up curtains recently, and while that window may be about 4 foot wide, when it comes to actually buying the curtain pole it's 1140mm. I don't know if that's because feet'n'inches are a more 'friendly', 'human scale' measure, of if it's just the way my brain's programmed. But I doubt it's a habit I'll ever break.
When I make a stew, I want about1/4 lb of meat per person. OK, that's near enough 125g, but even after all this time I still often go through the mental process of, 'there's 2.2 lb to the kg, so half a kilo's about a pound, and a quarter of that is 125g'. I guess that's my Dad's training 1 - my brain 0.
When it comes to work, drinking water systems, then it's mostly metric. Why mess about with gallons and pounds, when 1L of water = 1kg and 1,000 L = 1 tonne = 1m³. Even if pipe sizes are an unholy mess of a horrific bodge between 3 or 4 systems.
I worked for my Dad for a few years before he died, and we whiled many a happy hour away insulting each other. From the poor quality of handwriting to his obsession with gallons, when clearly litres is the only acceptable measure for water. Beer comes in pints, by the way, and always will!
I even went to the point of working out water tank sizes in bushels, to prove my point. He just saw it as a challenge, to try and get that size written into someone's building spec.
Anyway, the result of all that rambling is that I propose a proper British compromise. None of this nasty Continental absolutism!
1. Where's there's an accepted standard that almost everyone agrees on, use that. So altitude should be in feet. These are the easy ones.
2. Where we're working with proper science, then we're almost certainly going to be using SI. Anyone who wants to read that should be used to it by now. Give the figures the scientists do, don't bother translating, people can work it out if they want to.
3. Similarly, if you're doing calculations, use the most logical (almost always SI).
4. However this is a mainly British + various Colonials site, so I think a bit of pandering to the prejudices of us grumpy old gits can be allowed. Pints is pints (for beer and milk). I prefer miles, and would prefer you stick to them, but converting from km won't kill me. However people are mostly imperial. I still think most people in the UK give height in feet, and weight in stone. We could compromise on pounds for weight, because Johnny-Foreigner probably doesn't know stone, but can convert from pounds easily, although once we make that compromise, we're all converting except the Americans, so kg is probably acceptable.
Then you only need give both where things are unclear, or you've gone under your word-count, and want to spend extra time in the pub, but are paid by the word and don't want to lose out.
Hope that helps. Sorry for blithering on so long.
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:55 GMT Richard Gray 1
Its obvious..
mm for small stuff up to a few cm, then change to inches upto about a foot and a half,
then change to Metres upto about 2000M when we change back to miles.
with liquids, a drop, teaspoon, a splash, tablespoon, glug, a nip, a glass (the standard for a night out I only had a glass of wine one glass multiple fills), a half (for the girls) a pint followed by bottles (wine \spirits) litres for the soft drinks, then to gallons
for weight, grams, from a half a pound to a couple of pounds, then to Kg, followed by heavy, Bugger me and finally F*** ME!
any other weights and measures are irrelevent
I don't see what all the fuss is about..
I do remember selling 80m rolls of 4inch photographic paper so maybe that explains it.
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Monday 8th October 2012 15:35 GMT Matthew 3
RE: Closer, close, quite far, very far, a long long way.
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:56 GMT bill 36
just go for it
The conversions are easy to remember and a little bit of mental arithmetic( who remembers that?)
80km =50mph
1600 metres= 1 mile
4.5 litres= 1 Brit gallon
10C = 50F, 40C = fuckin hot
1 litre = 1 & 3/4 pints
5 litres = pissed
So some of these are approximate but do you really care?
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:57 GMT ChrisBoy
What about the Wales?
Isn't Wales the simplest standard of measurement? As in "would fit 100 times into Wales" or "is three times the size of Wales"... just re-adapt to "is four times as long as the word 'Wales' printed in 12pt Times or "is six times faster than an object that could reach Cardiff from Swansea in the time it takes the average tourist to learn how to pronounce that place that ends with gogogoth".
Much simpler, and no different between UK and US units because there's (luckily) only one Wales.
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Monday 8th October 2012 14:58 GMT burrhall
Way to go
Time to ditch the old except where common usage really is common and unambiguous e.g. Pints & thousands of feet
... and it will also fix the nonsense of US & Imperial measures ( gallons, pounds, ... ) being different and therefore uncertain even though they have the same name.
It's time for a bit of sanity.
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Monday 8th October 2012 15:19 GMT Dan Paul
Any more American Bashers need to vent your spleens? Create your own topic!
Lester, is it really necessary to let the American bashing to continue unmoderated?
When I make comments in any forum, I try to make an effort to be reasonably respectful (unless I am personally attacked). Seems like any time anyone posts here with any Americanized spelling, topic, unit of measurement, etc. somebody feels the need to go on the offensive and bash away.
As far as Fahrenheit versus Centigrade/Celcius, I prefer Fahrenheit and all imperial style (Americanized) measurements. I was told by a professor once that what makes a meausrement accurate is the number of dvisions in the scale
IMHO Screw Metric anything. The original reason for it's formal adoption in Europe was to create barriers to trade with the US, just like ISO ratings were. There is no compelling reason to change. Metric serves no better purpose than English/Imperial measurement.
Let the downvotes begin......
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Monday 8th October 2012 23:33 GMT Daniel 18
Re: Any more American Bashers need to vent your spleens? Create your own topic!
The reason the metric system was adopted in Europe was that it made no sense for each country to have its own measurement system, all different. It was adopted by the French in 1795, and by virtue of its obvious advantages, gradually spread through Euorpe.
By 1875 two thirds of Europe had adopted the metric system. At that time it is extremely unlikely that trade with the United States was a significant consideration. At that point, the only major European countries not using metric measurement were Britain and Russia.
There are now only three coutries that don't (visibly) use metric, and of them, the US is the only highly industrialized one. Most US industry is, of course, converted to metric, but they don't mention the fact to consumers. Given growing global trade, metric measurement continues to be the best way to go.
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Monday 8th October 2012 15:25 GMT Alan Esworthy
Meh
I grew up with English units and learned Metric as well at an early age. I work with both and can think in either. If I were uncharitable I'd say that caring deeply about this question is a symptom of mental deficiency. But I am charitable so I'll say that caring deeply about this question simply a likely error in prioritisation.
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Monday 8th October 2012 15:39 GMT Steve Hosgood
Metric all the way please
As many others have commented - S.I makes far more sense for a tech-orientated website such as this. Don't bother with silly exceptions either like pints of beer or miles.
And certainly not stones for body weight - I mean, really, is anyone who's actually keeping note of their weight still doing that in stones? Weighing machines in the gyms and leisure centres of the UK have been in kilos for years, likewise the ones in hospitals and doctors' surgeries.
I agree with the poster above who pointed out that we ought to switch to having the line on our beer glasses redrawn at 500mL, but to keep the size of the glassware the same. A proper head on our real ale without being short-measured would be a pleasure. I hear that certain pub chains teach their staff how to game the beer "top up" law so as to try and serve deliberate short measures wherever possible (to the pub chain's profit of course).
But - hey - this is getting off topic since it's not common for El. Reg stories to be about beer anyway.
So I chuck my vote in with the "just do it in S.I metric units" brigade.
Oh, 53 yrs old, 1.72 m tall, 66 kg in case you were wondering.
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Monday 8th October 2012 15:41 GMT Big_Boomer
SI for Science, whatever you like for everything else
LOHAN should be entirely SI as it's Science. The same should go for any other Scientific articles on The Reg. But, if the article is about exploding Bulgarian Airbags then any appropriate (or even inappropriate) measure is fine. Oh, and ASU (American Standard Units) are not the same as Imperial. Some are the same, some are not.
Me I quite happily work in whatever units are needed. If I need to convert, I convert. It's kinda like the EU where lots of different languages just makes it more interesting. Efficiency is VASTLY overrated.
As for NASA, well they measure everything based on the width of 2 horses arses. <LOL>
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Monday 8th October 2012 16:54 GMT oceanhippie
yes, know more
Knots/Nautical Miles, and especially the Beaufort scale, yes.
In the pub any unit, providing the sig figs and errors are smaller than the jesticulations of the speaker, are not only acceptable but preferred.
But for anything that matters, SI or interchageble eqivs, kg for weight, Celsius for Kelvin are just fine - nobody will mess them up.
Pints, just as soon as a self cooling pint glass, of comparable price and Northern Territories proof. In fact Territorian proof is
created, I will gladly revert to my Pinty instincts but till then I'll keep to smaller ones that stay cold longer.
Oh dear did I mention the mass/weight thing oops..
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Monday 8th October 2012 19:43 GMT Jonathon Desmond
Use the standard units as internationally agreed....
I think I'm with those who say use the units that are internationally agreed for measurement in that field.
That is:
NM and Knots for nautical measures (two of the few non-SI units of measurement that make perfect sense)
Flight Levels for Civil Aircraft altitudes
SI for everything else.. Even rocketry.... after all space begins at 100km. Anyone else notice that SpaceX announce in SI? No NASA cock-ups for them!
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Monday 8th October 2012 22:59 GMT Daniel 18
Good measurement is metric.
Every time you see something that is about ships or planes that mentions miles, you have to ask yourself 'is that a statute mile or nautical mile?'. The same goes for aircraft. And there are at least seven or eight defintions of 'ton', more than that of 'barrel', two common sizes of fluid ounce, pint, quart, and gallon; several definitions of non-fluid ounce, and the mess goes on and on.
And the mental 'clunk' you get by having extraneous, ambigous measurements thrown into any account is just annoying, not to mention the wrong numbers trying to settle into your brain.
SI, only, all the way.
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Tuesday 9th October 2012 09:52 GMT l353a1
Use of SI units
I would love to see SI units used in The Register. Imperial units are not fit for purpose and the sooner we eliminate them the better. If you want a good example of how it works in practice see New Scientist, who have been using them in a British publication for decades.
I would add that if you do use SI PLEASE get the typography right.
1. There should be a space between the number and the unit, e.g. 50 km or 20 kg not 50km and 20kg.
2. Use spaces (ideally a printer's thin space) as the digit grouping symbol, not commas.
3. You can have 4 digits before you need a digit grouping symbol, which occurs after every third digit, e.g. it is OK to write 5000 km instead of 5 000 km.
4. Note that there is nothing wrong with using centimetres. They are NOT deprecated!
5. Note that there are two symbols for the litre, so it's best to pick one and use it consistently. The original one is the lower case l but the upper case L is also allowed. In my view the upper case L is less likely to be confused with the digit 1.
There is a useful style guide on the NIST site at http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html
It's intended as a checklist for technical articles so it's on the picky side but it covers all the issues.
Regards, Blaise F Egan
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Tuesday 9th October 2012 11:40 GMT Michael Dunn
SI
I'm all for SI, makes everyday matters easier to deal with. Now that I'm retired, and do a bit of cooking, would it be possible to ban the use of the "cup" as a measure in recipes.
These Merkin recipes quite commonly mix cups, or portions of cups, of both materials with voids (chickpeas, for instance) with liquids; but I ask you, how do you measure one third of a cup of butter? Just do it all in grams, with ccs for the liquids.
Right, I'll get my chef's apron.
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Tuesday 9th October 2012 15:27 GMT Dalek Dave
We do not live in a metric world.
24 hours a day, seven days a week, we turn 360 degrees and still know what a pint should be.
The metric system was invented by unemployed French coiffures after the revolution, so is obviously crap.
You only know a man when you have walked 1.609 km in his moccasins.
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Wednesday 10th October 2012 09:15 GMT Steve Hosgood
How many times do we hear this tabloid rubbish being churned out?
It's not French - how many times does it have to be pointed out? Only the Daily Mail thinks it was French, or forced on Europe by Napoleon or various other crap.
Metric as a recognisable concept was first promoted the Royal Society in London in the 1680s. Over a hundred years later French king Louis XVI ruled that it should become the official system of France to replace the ridiculous hodge-podge of systems being used in his kingdom at the time (every town had its own variant).
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Wednesday 10th October 2012 09:22 GMT Steve Hosgood
Neither natural nor God-given
This *is* science! The inflation of the early 1970s was nothing to do with Britain switching to decimal currency - that's why everyone else suffered it too. It was mostly caused by the "Oil Crisis".
£sd was a hideous mess consisting of a mutated form of a heathen currency forced upon the oppressed masses by the iron heel of the Roman Empire 2000 years earlier. That it took us all that time to decide to get rid of it should be a matter of national shame.
LSD on the other hand was much more fun......
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