OSNews

And the death and beyond Copyright system, and airport (in)security, and the War on Drugs...
Truth is we are ruled by complete incompetents controlled by the big corporate cartels. And people don't care about politics because they are just too damn stupid.

In this case I hope some old mainframe will have prior art. At least IBM has left the dark side and might help.

Edited 2009-02-14 12:01 UTC

You have to understand how my countrymen (and women) think. In our own minds, we will still be "The Greatest and Most Free Country in the World", with heads firmly planted in the sand (or up our asses), long after the rest of the World is just snickering up their sleeves at us.

America: Love it or leave it! We see brain-drain as a good thing.

Edited 2009-02-14 14:28 UTC

You have to understand how my countrymen (and women) think. In our own minds, we will still be "The Greatest and Most Free Country in the World", with heads firmly planted in the sand (or up our asses), long after the rest of the World is just snickering up their sleeves at us.

America: Love it or leave it! We see brain-drain as a good thing. "


This is yet another version of "let the market decide". Let the corporations do what they want, and it will all sort itself out. You know, kind of like the massive bank failures we just saw.

Not hard to believe here... my dad grew up in the US and spent a few years in the army. He still tells stories about people he served with, who had been stationed in dozens of different countries - yet were actually proud of the fact that they had never technically left American soil (the bases they were stationed on were considered US territory, and they made a point of never going off-base).

Of course, the lack of any frame of reference didn't stop them from being convinced that they were citizens of (as you say) The Greatest Country on Earth.

Maybe you should also consider the metric system too!

How many pecks in a bushel, fluid ounces in an oil barrel and rods to the acre again?

This is a real problem. And I think it is a bit like language. Children pick up new languages easily; But for adults, it's hard. I'm not talking about simple resistance to change, which is very real, and what most people in my country suffer from. I'm talking about shifting one's brain from thinking in terms of one set of units to another, after one has decided that he really wants to.

I use SI units all the time, and have since about grade 7. Maybe even earlier. But I *learned* Imperial units first. My brain *understands* imperial units. Oh, not all the ridiculous conversion factors, but the units themselves. I *know* what 70F is. I *know* what a foot and a yard are. And even though I have, for years, conscientiously set the weather applet in my top panel to metric units, I still do a quick "times 9, divided by 5, add 32" (or double it, and add 30, when I'm tired) to get the "real" temperature. The same kind of mental gymnastics go on regarding meters (a little over a yard) and liters (a little over a quart). And it is frustrating, because I *want* to *think in metric*.

I suspect that to make any progress on this, we are really going to need to catch children before their brains are ruined for it.

Edited 2009-02-14 15:05 UTC

New Zealand over 30 years ago moved from Pounds/Shillings/Pence to Dollars and cents, from pounds to kilo's, from miles to km's etc and it was done quickly, promptly, and all the whiners were told to go play with themselves. 30 years later, kids learn about the 'old days' before metric in history books and are happy not having to learn the 12 times table.

The US could do it, but it won't. It would require some gritt and determination, in every case where those qualities are required - the US collapses like a Styrofoam container.

Add to the fact that the education system is a disaster from top to bottom - why isn't the funds allocated on a per-student and the funding follows the child to what ever school they go to? its going to keep getting worse.

Australia introduced metric in 1973. We had a dual labelling system for a few years before - eg rulers and scales had metric and imperial markings. The imperial markings were eventually banned. It is actually now technically illegal (they will be confiscated) to import imperial measuring devices. Virtually everyone seems totally comfortable with the system. Older people still tend to express their height in inches but that is only a very minor problem.

You and Kaiwai have both suggested immersion. I think that is what is missing. Immersion would probably get my brain over the hump. Again, like language.

I would support this. Good luck getting the arrogant ignoramuses around me, my fellow U.S. citizens, to support it though.

Speaking as a child of the 70s who was forced to learn both systems in public school, I can tell you that learning wasn't the major issue, it was the fact that nothing besides the rulers we used t measure things changed. No speed limit signs were changed to reflect mph/kph, no gages were changed to reflect gallons/liters, etc. It was learned, but for all intents and purposes, useless (kind of like the OSI model :-P).

And let's face it, kilograms suck - something that heavy needs to have something larger than a gram as in intermediary - even when we were learning this stuff, being told that something was about 500 grams made no sense at all.

Agreed there. I've often thought the same thing about metric distance measurements - centimetres are too small, metres are too large. Canada standardized on the metric system long ago, but most of us know our height in feet rather than centimetres.

There is the "decimetre" unit (1 decimetere == 10 centimetres), and I assume there is an equivalent for mass (decigrams?) - but they're almost never used outside of elementary school math & science exercises.

That's a Canadian problem. The decimeter is frequently used in other places. I've never heard anyone having problems with meters and grams being too small.
I cant help but wonder how you two can work with computers since, you know, there are just way too many bytes to a kilobyte. Where's the decibyte (or perhaps ounce of bytes) when you need it?

The kg is actually a very convenient measure. A litre of water weighs very close to 1kg. In Australia we simply ask for 1/2kg of chicken or say some one is 1.8m tall.

In Australia (like Britain) we never measured height in just inches but always feet and inches eg 6'1" not 73 inches. Weight of people was always expressed in stones (14 pounds) and pounds not just pounds eg 10st 5lbs not 145 lbs.

Really? Certainly here in Sweden decimeters and hektograms( 100 g ) are used all the time. Hektograms are for example a common unit when buying things like food by weight.

But to be honest I've never seen it as a problem to talk about 400 grams or 170 cm, nor have I ever heard anybody complain about it before.

What's wrong with the US/US economy has very little to do with corner case sue-happy foolishness like this.

Attacks on GPL software are attacks on the users of GPL software. Why not involve the potential victims? The reason for attacks on GPL software is to redirect limited resources from innovation and development to spending time and money in court to prove baseless claims as such. A little googling will show you who provided the capital for SCO's famous FUD attack.

The same measure exists in US law. However, because of US legal culture the bar for an individual to be declared vexatious is very, very high. And it's almost impossible to have a company declared as such.