• Britain's road signs are slowly turning metric
    259 replies, posted
[QUOTE=lazyguy;46439377]As a computer scientist, I don't see how there being 3E8 grammes in a kilogramme is any easier than there being 10 ounces in a pound.[/QUOTE] Please don't program anything that can explode/fall over and crush someone/catch fire
[QUOTE=maxumym;46450995]While we're at it, can we all at least agree MM/DD/YY is a really stupid way to write dates?[/QUOTE] I changed my computer's calender format to yyyy/mm/dd a while back because it makes far more sense that either mm/dd/yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy, especially for archival purposes. I want to see the year first when finding files, then the month, then the day. That's the order of importance of me finding stuff.
[QUOTE=Alice3173;46451245]With how most Americans speak mm/dd does make some sense though. Most people I've met say the month then the day. It'd still just be easier if everyone used a unified system of course. It's confusing as hell when I see something like 12/01/2197 on a website somewhere and have to try and figure out if they mean January or December.[/QUOTE] A lot of things are different written compared to written in semi official dates (there's a reason why a lot of US institutions actually tend to use yyyy/mm/dd in a lot of their stuff) Take the prevalance of AM PM versus 0-24 in Europe. No one really ever says - oh it's going to happen at 18 o'clock over here. But when writing and it's not immediately clear from the context if it means in the evening or morning they switch to the 24hour system. It's a kind of clarity that goes beyond the AM PM system and also a reason why the US military essentially uses the 24 hour clock as well.
[QUOTE=wraithcat;46452916]A lot of things are different written compared to written in semi official dates (there's a reason why a lot of US institutions actually tend to use yyyy/mm/dd in a lot of their stuff) Take the prevalance of AM PM versus 0-24 in Europe. No one really ever says - oh it's going to happen at 18 o'clock over here. But when writing and it's not immediately clear from the context if it means in the evening or morning they switch to the 24hour system. It's a kind of clarity that goes beyond the AM PM system and also a reason why the US military essentially uses the 24 hour clock as well.[/QUOTE] But the Military does speak the 24 hour clock, e.g: "Oh-Eight-Hundred hours" and "Eighteen-Hundred hours".
Can we please kill of PST and all that shit and just use GMT +/- It's so annoying when a company says like "Our huge awesome reveal stream will go live at 3pm PST" Like, fuck you. It's so annoying, i cant just convert it right away, I have to open up an online time conversion thing instead of just go like "Oh it's GMT-8, I am in GMT+1, so its a 9 hour time difference, meaning that the stream will go live 12pm in my local time"
All that time zone shit confuses me. EST, PST, BST, MST GMT, UTC, CST fuck it all! Can't we just have one simple measurement of time? I don't even bother with it anymore, if I see there's something happening at 6PM WTF I just ask someone else when that is.
If anyone didn't know that this is an actual option with the default windows clock. [IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/111996868/2014-2/general/clocks.JPG[/IMG] Only supports two extra but that's good enough for me, I can do most timezone math in my head using the middle clock.
[QUOTE=Thunderbolt;46439382]How does it feel to be wrong about everything ever [img]http://www.craftsmanspace.com/sites/default/files/free-knowledge-articles/standard_prefixes_for_the_si_units_of_measure.png[/img] Absolutely zero confusion about units and conversions here (plus deka-, deci- and hecto- are rarely even used)..... ...... [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/lZL2328.png[/IMG] [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/RDvsfmn.png[/IMG] [/QUOTE] [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/lRs9f0Y.png[/IMG]
Honestly I'd hate if the imperial system was done away with entirely. Call it random and contrived all you want (which it pretty much is), but losing it would feel like losing a part of my childhood. Of course, such a thing probably won't happen in the US for a long time.
[QUOTE=wraithcat;46452916]A lot of things are different written compared to written in semi official dates (there's a reason why a lot of US institutions actually tend to use yyyy/mm/dd in a lot of their stuff) Take the prevalance of AM PM versus 0-24 in Europe. No one really ever says - oh it's going to happen at 18 o'clock over here. But when writing and it's not immediately clear from the context if it means in the evening or morning they switch to the 24hour system. It's a kind of clarity that goes beyond the AM PM system and also a reason why the US military essentially uses the 24 hour clock as well.[/QUOTE] yyyy/mm/dd makes as much sense to me as dd/mm/yyyy but I think it's probably the better choice for someone who's used to mm/dd/yyyy. It's far less confusing since the difference is clear. I didn't realize it was actually a thing in the US though. The only places that I know of that use yyyy/mm/dd are generally countries whose native language is written/read right-to-left instead of left-to-right.
dd/mm/yyyy makes most sense for readability since chances are you already know which month and year it is and only care for day. Order of importance for average person.
Relevant [IMG]http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/iso_8601.png[/IMG]
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;46442825]Actually for cooking, imperial is oftentimes superior. Let's say you have a recipe, and it calls for 1 cup of flour or 2.37 deciliters. If the recipe uses metric, you have to sit there and measure it out precisely, and if you want a larger or smaller recipe you need to perform a bit of math on it to get what you need. Suppose, however, you do a recipe in imperial. Question: How big is a cup? Answer: It doesn't matter! For most baked goods, if you use any size cup the recipe will always work, because it's based on proportions rather than precise measurements. [editline]8th November 2014[/editline] Stephen Fry discussed this briefly on an episode of QI about how clever a system that actually is.[/QUOTE] Why did you put it in decilitres, just say 237 ml or 23.7cl, anyone taught metric can understand that.
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