OOTS #1024 - The Discussion Thread

[littlebum2002]

What's elitist about Celsius? Too snobby European?

To Americans, everything from Europe is Elitist. We'd rather measure temperature using a scale based off an inaccurate measurement of the human body temperature than to use something that Europe wants us to use.

[DaveMcW]

It turns to dust if taken by force?

That's an excellent idea! Why aren't more things made out of that?

Because governments like to take things by force.

Currently, 10 wrong password tries will make the iPhone’s data inaccessible forever. The FBI would like to lift that restriction, along with the mandatory delays between password attempts that will slow their progress considerably.

[factotum]

Also, while Windows has maintained the 1024-byte steps, the Linux PC I'm using right now uses 1000-byte steps.

My Linux PC definitely does not? It uses 1024 byte kilobytes, as always.

[Jasdoif]

At my current job we use Celsius, Kelvin, and Rankin regularly, but almost never Fahrenheit unless someone has their readings in Fahrenheit (why yes, I have seen a radiosonde that gave temperatures in Fahrenheit, I don't know why they did that).

Rankine is Fahrenheit offset to have 0 be absolute zero, just like Kelvin is Celsius offset to have 0 be absolute zero. If you have a device that can measure in Rankine and also subtract 495.67, you have a device that can measure in Fahrenheit; I presume whoever manufactured that radiosonde figured it'd be an easy way to modify a Rankine device for a different market.

Anyway, there's nothing wrong with any of these four temperature scales. However, the common temperature references I was exposed to as a child were in Fahrenheit, without the word Fahrenheit ("seventy degrees" doesn't strictly need a unit if both parties already know they use the same scale). And I'm sure it didn't help that this was around the same time "Celsius" was slowing supplanting "Centigrade"....So I had a concept of numbers for temperature before I was really aware of what the scales were called, so that's where my mind goes first. As such that's the temperature scale I prefer.

But that's all it is, a personal preference. If someone needs/wants a temperature in Celsius, I subtract 32, then multiply by 5, then divide by 9; and I can apply the appropriate offset to whichever figure if they're looking for Kelvin or Rankine (although I've never had practical cause for using those, personally). As long as we're talking about the same temperature, and know we're talking about the same temperature, the specific units are just an abstraction.

[Reboot]

My Linux PC definitely does not? It uses 1024 byte kilobytes, as always.

*shrugs*



1000204886016 bytes = 0.9097 TiB/Classic TB

[Bulldog Psion]

To Americans, everything from Europe is Elitist. We'd rather measure temperature using a scale based off an inaccurate measurement of the human body temperature than to use something that Europe wants us to use.

Well, I despise metrics for reasons totally unrelated to any perception of elitism; the reason is they're lousy. It's a bad system; it's the Emperor's New Clothes of measurement. They aren't based on anything human, so they either lack granularity, or they have too much.

I can say someone is 5' 4" and know they're pretty short; 5' 10" is about average; 6' 4" is kind of tall.

Those same people are 1.62, 1.77, and 1.93 meters tall. In effect, everyone but some very tiny people and a few giants are more than 1 meter and less than 2 meters tall. Insufficient granularity; you can't picture it intuitively.

Or, you can say they're 162, 177, and 193 centimeters tall, which is too much granularity; again, it gives you no intuitive handle on their size.

With Fahrenheit, there's enough granularity to make it work. In the 30s, I need a coat; in the 40s, a jacket; in the 50s, a sweater; in the 60s, a heavy shirt; in the 70s, a light shirt; in the 80s, a short-sleeved shirt; in the 90s, an air conditioner; and in the 100s, a ticket to northern Alaska.

Centigrade? At 21 Celsius it's mild, at 24 C it's pretty warm, at 26 C it's getting hot, at 29 C it's sweltering. Insufficient granularity to make sense on a human scale; 10 C is a cold autumn day and 19 C is a warm, comfortable room.

I can walk a mile in about 15 minutes; my thumb is about 1 inch wide; my stride is about 3 feet. I can easily pace off a 100-foot length when I'm making a big garden plot; but if ever pace is 0.9144 meters, I don't even know what I'm pacing off.

All those "primitive" non-metric measurements evolved to fit humans naturally. That's why we made them; they're comfortable and intuitive for us as humans. A meter is 1/10,000,000th part of a meridian. Very nice, but totally arbitrary.

Metrics is making an abstract measurement, and then forcing everything to fit it, even when it's an extremely lousy fit for everyday phenomena, which it generally is.

Which is why I fling defiance in the teeth of said measuring system. It's a case of fixing something that wasn't broken. Flagrantly, and annoyingly.

*Puff, pant* Phew.

[DaggerPen]

Well, I despise metrics for reasons totally unrelated to any perception of elitism; the reason is they're lousy. It's a bad system; it's the Emperor's New Clothes of measurement. They aren't based on anything human, so they either lack granularity, or they have too much.

I can say someone is 5' 4" and know they're pretty short; 5' 10" is about average; 6' 4" is kind of tall.

Those same people are 1.62, 1.77, and 1.93 meters tall. In effect, everyone but some very tiny people and a few giants are more than 1 meter and less than 2 meters tall. Insufficient granularity; you can't picture it intuitively.

Or, you can say they're 162, 177, and 193 centimeters tall, which is too much granularity; again, it gives you no intuitive handle on their size.

With Fahrenheit, there's enough granularity to make it work. In the 30s, I need a coat; in the 40s, a jacket; in the 50s, a sweater; in the 60s, a heavy shirt; in the 70s, a light shirt; in the 80s, a short-sleeved shirt; in the 90s, an air conditioner; and in the 100s, a ticket to northern Alaska.

Centigrade? At 21 Celsius it's mild, at 24 C it's pretty warm, at 26 C it's getting hot, at 29 C it's sweltering. Insufficient granularity to make sense on a human scale; 10 C is a cold autumn day and 19 C is a warm, comfortable room.

I can walk a mile in about 15 minutes; my thumb is about 1 inch wide; my stride is about 3 feet. I can easily pace off a 100-foot length when I'm making a big garden plot; but if ever pace is 0.9144 meters, I don't even know what I'm pacing off.

All those "primitive" non-metric measurements evolved to fit humans naturally. That's why we made them; they're comfortable and intuitive for us as humans. A meter is 1/10,000,000th part of a meridian. Very nice, but totally arbitrary.

Metrics is making an abstract measurement, and then forcing everything to fit it, even when it's an extremely lousy fit for everyday phenomena, which it generally is.

Which is why I fling defiance in the teeth of said measuring system. It's a case of fixing something that wasn't broken. Flagrantly, and annoyingly.

*Puff, pant* Phew.

On the one hand, you have an excellent point.

On the other hand, why are there 12 inches in a foot. Why is nothing in powers of 10. Why.

That's the thing about metrics - they're far less granular, but oh lord are they beautifully easy to calculate. Hence why they're so commonly used by people in the sciences, who tend to get grumpy about Imperial units because if everyone used metrics their math would be so much easier.

Also, obligatory XKCD link.

[BannedInSchool]

On the other hand, why are there 12 inches in a foot. Why is nothing in powers of 10. Why.

Twelve is a totally awesome number. You can divide it in half, and thirds, and quarters. Itself it is a fifth of sixty. Then six sixties is three-hundred and sixty. Much better than just being able to divide by only two and five.

[MReav]

SO!

How 'bout that latest comic? Nice to see someone being helpful for a change?

[LastCenturion]

SO!

How 'bout that latest comic? Nice to see someone being helpful for a change?

But are they being helpful is Fahrenheit, liters or gigajoules?

[rahimka]

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0333.html

Doing an archive crawl and, given recent developments, that one got me right in the feels.

Oh Durkon... hes suffered so much (in large part because they didnt just TELL him about the prophecy behind his exile, seriously, explain that logic somebody) and has this last hope tragically twisted against him now. I don't know if he'll get anything like a "happy" ending, but I hope he at least gets some justice when this is wrapped up

[Rogar Demonblud]

I don't remember where I read it, but one story had a special hell just for people who tried to screw with prophecies.

I figure that's where the late Hurak is right now, honorable death rules be damned.

[blunk]

Such infatuation with two. I bet #729 didn't get this sort of attention.

[Vinyadan]

About granularity, you just need to get used to it. It may actually be easier, because most times you only need to care about cm.
About elitism, I think the poster and me have hugely different opinions concerning the meaning of the word and elite in general.

I wonder if Miko is a celsius person or a fahrenheit person.

[Cazero]

Well, I despise metrics for reasons totally unrelated to any perception of elitism; the reason is they're lousy. It's a bad system; it's the Emperor's New Clothes of measurement. They aren't based on anything human, so they either lack granularity, or they have too much.

Not being human based I can understand. The granularity thing doesn't make sense.
The beauty of metrics is that you can adjust granularity to suit your scale in a snap just by changing the prefix, each prefix matching a power of ten.
And as an added bonus, you can naturally use decimals in metrics. Try using foot decimals for your higher accuracy needs. It's just not practical that an inch doesn't map neatly with feet decimals.

I can say someone is 5' 4" and know they're pretty short; 5' 10" is about average; 6' 4" is kind of tall.

Those same people are 1.62, 1.77, and 1.93 meters tall. In effect, everyone but some very tiny people and a few giants are more than 1 meter and less than 2 meters tall. Insufficient granularity; you can't picture it intuitively.

Or, you can say they're 162, 177, and 193 centimeters tall, which is too much granularity; again, it gives you no intuitive handle on their size.

In that case, you would simply not skip the rounding part to adjust that to 1m 60[cm], 1m 80[cm] and 1m 90[cm], wich isn't more complicated than 5' 4", 5' 10" or 6' 4". Then, if you really despise using numbers that aren't integers and don't want to use hundreds for some reason, you swap to decimeter and obtain neat 16dm, 18dm and 19dm.

With Fahrenheit, there's enough granularity to make it work. In the 30s, I need a coat; in the 40s, a jacket; in the 50s, a sweater; in the 60s, a heavy shirt; in the 70s, a light shirt; in the 80s, a short-sleeved shirt; in the 90s, an air conditioner; and in the 100s, a ticket to northern Alaska.

Centigrade? At 21 Celsius it's mild, at 24 C it's pretty warm, at 26 C it's getting hot, at 29 C it's sweltering. Insufficient granularity to make sense on a human scale; 10 C is a cold autumn day and 19 C is a warm, comfortable room.

I just don't understand how granularity plays any role in that. It's just a trained familiarity with the scale. Using your exact examples, I can conclude that the Fahrenheit scale is badly designed for human use since it could serve the same function with bigger units by dividing everything by ten.

I can walk a mile in about 15 minutes; my thumb is about 1 inch wide; my stride is about 3 feet. I can easily pace off a 100-foot length when I'm making a big garden plot; but if ever pace is 0.9144 meters, I don't even know what I'm pacing off.

I can walk 5 kilometers in about one hour; the maximum extent of my footstride (not walking naturaly) is about one meter, etc. That's slightly less intuitive, but I can eyeball it just as accurately. It's all about being used to different arbitrary references, minus the confusion when you explain to kids that their feet are far too short yet and will never be exactly one foot long.

All those "primitive" non-metric measurements evolved to fit humans naturally. That's why we made them; they're comfortable and intuitive for us as humans. A meter is 1/10,000,000th part of a meridian. Very nice, but totally arbitrary.

Metrics is making an abstract measurement, and then forcing everything to fit it, even when it's an extremely lousy fit for everyday phenomena, which it generally is.

You think the average everyday man used the exact official length of a foot when the unit was first made? The point of the unit is that you always have a ruler handy, so they did just that : use their personal rulers to get an approximation. Wich leads to everyone using his personal ruler over any official length. Wich leads to constant measurement inaccuracy to correct the fact there aren't two identical rulers and the inability to measure anything with high accuracy. Wich leads to metric being defined to correct that problem : it's just as arbitrary as an official foot, but at least it's the same brand of arbitrary for everyone.

[Mx56]

It's the norm there because it's illegal to use Fahrenheit.

I'm not going to stray into discussing the rights and wrongs of any of this, but you seem to have some mistaken ideas about how the law on measurements actually works in EU countries. There's legislation on product labeling that requires metric measurements to be given for standardisation purposes, but in no way are imperial units "illegal" and many (most?) products give both sets of units (prices given in both kg and lb in most butchers and milk is sold in pints but usually has the amount in ml somewhere on the label). If you don't believe me, I'll happily go get a pint of milk out of my fridge and post a picture for you. There's a slight wrinkle that measurements should be taken in metric and converted, which, again, is so that it can be shown that scales and the like are properly calibrated and nobody is getting cheated.

The temperature thing is a new one on me, where are you getting that from?

[goodpeople25]

I don't remember where I read it, but one story had a special hell just for people who tried to screw with prophecies.

I figure that's where the late Hurak is right now, honorable death rules be damned.

I don't know about that but what do you mean by honourable death rules? Do you mean you think he's in hel? (Which is a possibilty) Cause if he died honourably(well i think liver failures is more likely but that counts) #737 seems to indicate he would go through the afterlife as normal so if it matched his alignment he would go to hell.

[Mx56]

Also as far as I can tell, society has yet to crumble in those European countries that use metric exclusively (which isn't all of them, really, in the UK most drinks are given ml measurements, temperatures are generally given in C on the news and we use miles for distances on road signs without the non-existent EU measurement army invading and executing our politicians or whatever). It's almost as if all unit standards are ultimately arbitrary and the ones that seem more intuitive are the ones we're used to, with the important thing being that we can all agree on what those units mean for exact measurement purposes.

[factotum]

*shrugs*

1000204886016 bytes = 0.9097 TiB/Classic TB

OK, just checked mine and it does the same for the size of the disk using the Disks tool--but System Monitor displays both RAM and disk sizes using the old scale. So what we have there is an inconsistency, probably because two different people wrote those two tools and they had different ideas about what a kilobyte was!

[Quild]

I can say someone is 5' 4" and know they're pretty short; 5' 10" is about average; 6' 4" is kind of tall.

Those same people are 1.62, 1.77, and 1.93 meters tall. In effect, everyone but some very tiny people and a few giants are more than 1 meter and less than 2 meters tall. Insufficient granularity; you can't picture it intuitively.

Or, you can say they're 162, 177, and 193 centimeters tall, which is too much granularity; again, it gives you no intuitive handle on their size.

When you're used to it, you're used to it.
Your inches looks very imprecise to me. 2,54cm and... wait, you don't have anything smaller? Seriously?
It must be fun to make some precise measurements. While we have millimeters, and if needed, much smaller things. And these prefixes? Well we can use them for pretty much any measurement.
It's really easy for us to put something to scale. Just mutiply it evenly.
Four inches are 10,16centimeters. I want 10 times that? Easy, 101.6cm, or 10.16dm (we don't use dm a lot, dunno why), or 1.016m or 1016mm. The choice is mine. You, it's 40 inches. You'll probably convert it to 3'4". Not very intuitive to me.

I'm reading books in English and often meet feet and inches since... A decade.
Every time I see a measurement, either I read without thinking about how much it does, either I have to reflect on it.
If I'm asked, I can tell without having to check that 1" is roughly 2,5cm, that 1' is roughly 30cm (funny thing, I wasn't aware that it was 12" until today) and that 1 mile is 1,5km and is different from a nautical mile. Yet, I have to convert it. Every time.


I'll end with a quote from Good Omens

NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS:
One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system:

Two Farthings = One Ha'penny. Two Ha'penny = One Penny. Three Pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpence = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Note = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.

The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.

[Rift_Wolf]

It seems the oots discussion threads dovetailed into the xkcd discussion thread. If someone can bring in qwantz then that's all the webcomics I regularly check...

And after spending an afternoon calculating metric volumes and densities, I can say this with some authority;
Imperial is good for measuring humans. Metric is good for measuring everything else. If I'd tried to calculate volume without metrics, it would've taken me days.

But anyway, yeah the comic. I like all the setup, though I'm interested to know what readers who haven't read OtOoPCs make of Durkon's banishment. In-comic, there's no explanation given, as far as I can recall.

[Quibblicious]

It's the norm there because it's illegal to use Fahrenheit.

By definition, something enforced by elites is elitist.

So Fahrenheit was taken by force. Did it crumble to dust?

[kaoskonfety]

So Fahrenheit was taken by force. Did it crumble to dust?

Nothing remains. Only the memory in some tucked away villages where Imperial has been eradicated but Metric has not come marching in unison to replace it. A dim memory of being able to talk about *measurements*, whatever that is.

They are frankly, doing fine without either.
It's not 30f or -4c - it's pretty cold.
He's not 6'4" or 196 cm - he's kinda tall.

[8BitNinja]

Well, I will make my response short, because short responses build character, also, I was sick for four days

Wouldn't a cleric of Thor think to guard that entrance? It only seems logical

[Aerysil]

Hmm, maybe when Durkon finds out he's no longer exiled, that will help him bust our of his brain prison!

(Didn't bother to read the thread...)

[8BitNinja]

Hmm, maybe when Durkon finds out he's no longer exiled, that will help him bust our of his brain prison!

(Didn't bother to read the thread...)

Or they'll just exile him again for being a vampire

I checked, most dwarves are lawful good, that means they probably hate undead, which are almost, if not always, evil aligned

[NerdyKris]

Well, I will make my response short, because short responses build character, also, I was sick for four days

Wouldn't a cleric of Thor think to guard that entrance? It only seems logical

Yes? I thought that was the other purpose of the runestone, to prove that they didn't use some other means of finding the entrance.

[davidbofinger]

They aren't based on anything human, so they either lack granularity, or they have too much.

From a truth point of view: The cubit, yard and fathom are all based on humans, but would obviously fail your granularity criterion. On the other hand the English inch, which you're saying has good granularity, is actually not based on humans but on barleycorns.

From a relevance point of view: Metric users are perfectly happy to round things as they perceive is convenient, but don't necessarily bother. For instance: to most Europeans a standard bottle of wine is 75 centilitres. To Australians the same bottle is 750 millilitres. The factor of ten in granularity doesn't cause any harm, certainly not enough to be worth factoring out even when doing so just requires the use of a different standard prefix. (Basically the Australian government decided in the 1970s not to bother with the centi- prefix in most contexts and nobody cares one way or the other.) You're talking about granularity ratios a good deal smaller than 10, which presumably have even less impact.

So I don't think the statement is true, and if it was true it wouldn't be important.

I can say someone is 5' 4" and know they're pretty short; 5' 10" is about average; 6' 4" is kind of tall.

In Australia height is one of the last bastions of Imperial units. Many people still know heights better in feet and inches than in centimetres, I think police report suspect heights in both systems. But this is just a metastable state, not reflective of an actual advantage to either system.

I knew an English physicist whose graduate students used to state outside temperature in (I think) the reciprocal of the electron-volts per degree of freedom but I'm pretty sure that's unusual.

[davidbofinger]

He's not 6'4" or 196 cm - he's kinda tall.

I recently heard No'-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock Jock say much the same thing.

[littlebum2002]

My Linux PC definitely does not? It uses 1024 byte kilobytes, as always.

*shrugs*

[screenshot from Linux PC]

1000204886016 bytes = 0.9097 TiB/Classic TB

Now, I'm surely missing something here, probably because I don't know much about Linux. Do you guys buy different hard drives from PC users? Because otherwise, wouldn't a Linux 1TB hard drive be the same size as a PC 1TB hard drive? The OS reading the hard drive shouldn't influence the amount of space on that hard drive...should it?

Metric vs imperial

Everything you said here is completely right.

In the very narrow application of "measuring human beings", imperial units are superior to metric.

In literally everything else, metric units are superior.

Now, it is my understanding that the UK has the metric system, but sill uses some imperial units (like Stone, which seems even less useful than kilograms and pounds for measuring the weight of humans, for the exact reasons you mentioned, but I digress). I think it would make total sense for the US to go entirely to metric except for measuring things related to the human body.

It makes no sense to build, say a spacecraft, using feet and inches just because those units correspond to parts on some human bodies. (Yes I'm aware that NASA has recently gone Metric, I'm just using an example). As someone who once worked in manufacturing, I can say unequivocally that trying to build something using imperial units is a nightmare.