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ATTN: Americans: Bend over!

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celticgeek:
Come on, use real units.  My automobile gets 3DAB16 furlongs per firkin.  Or 11110110101112 furlongs per firkin, if you prefer. 

ViolentDove:
Apparently a mutckin is 3/4s of an imperial pint.

Nodaisho:

--- Quote from: imagist42 on 15 Sep 2008, 22:34 ---
--- Quote from: Nodaisho on 15 Sep 2008, 22:28 ---Why should we? If base 10 is so awesome, why do computers use base 16? Base 10 is only used due to humans having 10 fingers.

--- End quote ---

Computers use base 2. As in, binary. And that is only because of the nature of the electrical components, which are either "on" or "off." Does that mean it is any less convenient?

Also, our non-metric systems of measurement aren't base anything. They're completely arbitrary, and therefore completely confusing. How many ounces in a pound again?...

--- End quote ---
Computers use base two like our brains use... I don't know enough neurology to finish the metaphor, someone help me out here? The very basic of how our brains work, I would say our brains use binary, in that either a connection has electricity travelling on it or it doesn't, but for all I know, that is bull. Windows, at least, uses hexadecimal, base 16, and I think most OSs do so as well, though I could be wrong. There has to be a reason behind that, anyone know history of computers well enough to tell me what it is? Did one of the original computer guys lose a couple fingers?

The imperial system tends to use multiples of two to go up in terms. It makes some sense, when you think about it, people usually get one or two things, not one or ten. I knew a guy that made a whole long post on the subject, he really knew his stuff, or at least was good enough to make it sound like he did. I'll see if I can find it, if you want to read it. Interesting stuff.

16 ounces in a pound, 8 fluid ounces in a cup, 2 cups to a pint (which makes you wonder why they don't just say cup rather than half-pint, maybe ambiguity between the cup object and the cup measurement?), 2 pints to a quart, 4 quarts to a gallon. Not consistent, but always either doubling, quadrupling, or octupling. I imagine that there is an intermediate step between quarts and gallons, I mean a real name, not just half-gallon, like there are decimeters but you never hear anyone using them. Maybe the same with ounces to cup. The yard is the only exception to the even number tendency I can think of off the top of my head. I believe the foot measurement was based off of the tread of a marching legionnaire, and other measurements were based off of how far an army could march in a certain amount of time (mile seems a bit short, but then again, hoplites carried armor, spears, shields, swords, and walked long distances. Most were shorter than the average person today as well, and probably not as well nourished).

And would someone please tell me what kind of animal has fur that stretches out for an eighth of a mile? I need to shoot me one of those, lifetime's supply of leather right there, unless you are Rob Halford.

imagist42:
Man, it's all well and good to "explain" where these absolutely arbitrary measurements come from (mile? WTF?), but do you realize how many people have no idea how to convert between these units? It makes conversions for, say, mathematical calculations (which already use decimal units, why not continue that trend!) so much more of a pain than necessary. And besides, how relevant are any of those measurements now? None of them have any meaning to an average person beyond the fact that they are ingrained into our memory from an early age. The only arguments against switching is it would be difficult to change things that are already established, like highway markers, and harder on people who are already used to this terrible, terrible system, but it would make everything ever so much easier, in the long run. Oh, and our system is also probably easier on cooks, but they already use their own ridiculous measurements like dashes and pinches, so whatever.

RE: Computers: Hexadecimal was convenient for early computers because they were built on 16-bit architecture: a memory address was usually 16 binary digits (16-bit address space), and the information at any given address was also 16 digits long (16-bit addressability). So, instead of having to write out a sequence of 16 ones and zeros, computers could simply use hexadecimal digits to represent groups of four digits (2^4 = 16). This doesn't necessarily make anything easier, as when a computer is executing some instruction in memory it still has to expand into binary to parse the opcode, operands, etc., and even doing simple calculations it's often easier to use binary, as it simplfies the arithmetic (especially given two's complement calculations with negative numbers; at least, I find binary easier to understand in that case). So computers only really "use" base-16 numbers for input/output related things, as it's easier to report a long binary number in this kind of hexadecimal shorthand. Interestingly, it's not much harder to convert from binary to decimal than it is from binary to hexadecimal. At least, the logic behind the algorithms is pretty similar.

As far as Windows using hexadecimal, that's not quite true anymore. The x86 architecture, on which most processors for the last many years of computing have been based, is actually a 32-bit processor: 32-bit address space, 32-bit addressability. So mostly it works with larger numbers, but still in the way I outlined above. Eight hexadecimal digits per binary word instead of four. In recent years they've been developing stuff like the x86-64 architecture, which is 64-bit in contrast. This is why you have had 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows' latest OSs, and why programs designed for one aren't necessarily compatible with the other (if you're trying to read from one memory location to the next in a 32-bit program, that same program, depending on how it's designed, may instead read the first half of one location, then the second half, and so on).

redglasscurls:
You guys really are being kind of assholes to this guy. I understand you don't care much for him, but really he's done nothing wrong in this thread and you're not encouraging good forum behavior when you jump on him just as much when he hasn't done anything here (vs in the fashion thread).

 The more remote you are, the prices rise much faster than in urban areas where people have more options about which station they go to. I am right on the border to DC and gas reached $3.85 this morning. Gas in my hometown tends to be 25-30 cents more a gallon than here. So I am really not all that incredulous that wherever he is has manged to reach $5.
Oh and last time gas prices got high, stations around here ran out of gas. I believe him.

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