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Jun 15, 2004, 7:53pm

"The 15th of June 2004." That's how I've always said my dates...

[View Quote] > Because it's how it's verbally pronounced. Good enough a reason if you ask
> me =P
>
>
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Jun 15, 2004, 8:40pm

Sounds all nice and formal that =P

"Today is June 15th, 2004". Everyone I know in r/l would casually say it
like that. Whatever though, it's just a cultural thing.

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Jun 15, 2004, 8:55pm

me too :) silly americans love to change everything! :P

-SWE

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Jun 15, 2004, 9:13pm

Who cares how the date appears. Nothing wrong with being a little
ambidextrous. Eat, drink, and learn something. I was use to measuring in
inches , feet and yards before I went to pre-school. In school I learned
about other ways of measuring. See me freaking out about it now? Does
someone want to be the math God ? Is that it? Ah Huh Ah Huh !


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Jun 15, 2004, 10:23pm

What's an inch again?

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Jun 15, 2004, 11:01pm

63,360 inches = 1 mile
Yet, in some cases, you give someone inch they take a mile.

Even more precisely and according to an English woman, Miriam Webster, an
inch is :

1 : a unit of length equal to 1/36 yard
2 : a small amount, distance, or degree <is like cutting a dog's tail off by
inches -- Milton Friedman>
3 plural : STATURE, HEIGHT
4 a : a fall (as of rain or snow) sufficient to cover a surface or to fill a
gauge to the depth of one inch b : a degree of atmospheric or other pressure
sufficient to balance the weight of a column of liquid (as mercury) one inch
high in a barometer or manometer
- every inch : to the utmost degree <looks every inch a winner>
- within an inch of : almost to the point of


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Jun 16, 2004, 12:42am

An inch is a unit of a system of measurement based on completely arbitrary
amounts. The whole system seems completely random, and I would be very
interested in any articles regarding, for example, WHY a mile is 5280 feet.
Despite living in America, I use meters and grams more than anything.
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Jun 16, 2004, 12:44am

If they don't know what an inch is you think they'll know what a mile is?

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Jun 16, 2004, 3:05am

they use miles in the uk aswell, where 1 mile is 1,600m, or 1000m=0.625
miles(thats why in car magazines, they always wearing the speed from 0-62
:) )

-SWE

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Jun 16, 2004, 3:16am

I have no article but I can take a guess that the shoe making industry,
which was largely important back in the days of yore, were responsible for
both Foot and Inch measurements.
As for why there are 12, I can only guess it's because inch comes from the
old english word "ynce" which is from the latin word "uncia" which roughly
means 12 parts of x.

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Jun 16, 2004, 3:21am

but you americans changed the shoe size aswell! decided to add an extra
number from the silly english (e.g: 12 is 13 in america). Just never happy
until everything is diffrent are you? :)

-SWE

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Jun 16, 2004, 5:48am

One of the oldest units of length measurement used in the ancient world
was the 'cubit' which was the length of the arm from the tip of the
finger to the elbow. This could then be subdivided into shorter units
like the foot, hand (which at 4 inches is still used today for
expressing the height of horses) or finger, or added together to make
longer units like the stride. The cubit could vary considerably due to
the different sizes of people.

As early as the middle of the tenth century it is believed that the
Saxon king Edgar kept a "yardstick" at Winchester as the official
standard of measurement. A traditional tale tells the story of Henry I
(1100-1135) who decreed that the yard should be "the distance from the
tip of the King's nose to the end of his outstretched thumb"

In Edward I's reign (1272-1307) the yard (or Ulna) and its sub- and
aggregated divisions were defined.

"It is remembered that the Iron Ulna of our Lord the King contains three
feet and no more; and the foot must contain twelve inches, measured by
the correct measure of this kind of ulna; that is to say, one
thirty-sixth part [of] the said ulna makes one inch, neither more nor
less.... It is ordained that three grains of barley, dry and round make
an inch, twelve inches make a foot; three feet make an ulna; five and a
half ulna makes a perch (rod); and forty perches in length and four
perches in breadth make an acre."

The perch or rod, as it was also known, was a traditional Saxon land
measure and survives in twentieth century. It had originally been
defined as the total length of the left feet of the first sixteen men to
leave church on Sunday morning.
<<<

:-)







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Jun 16, 2004, 5:55am

By the 18th century, dozens of different units of measurement were
commonly used throughout the world. Length, for example, could be
measured in feet, inches, miles, spans, cubits, hands, furlongs, palms,
rods, chains, leagues and more. The lack of common standards led to a
lot of confusion and significant inefficiencies in trade between
countries. At the end of the century, the French government sought to
alleviate this problem by devising a system of measurement that could be
used throughout the world. In 1790, the French National Assembly
commissioned the Academy of Science to design a simple, decimal-based
system of units; the system they devised is known as the metric system.
In 1960, the metric system was officially named the Système
International d'Unités (or SI for short) and is now used in nearly every
country in the world except for the United States. The metric system is
almost always used in scientific measurement.

The simplicity of the metric system stems from the fact that there is
only one unit of measurement (or base unit) for each type of quantity
measured (length, mass, etc.). The three most common base units in the
metric system are the meter, gram and liter. The meter is a unit of
length equal to 3.28 feet; the gram is a unit of mass equal to
approximately 0.0022 pounds (about the mass of a paper clip); and the
liter is a unit of volume equal to 1.05 quarts. So length, for example,
is always measured in meters in the metric system, regardless of whether
you are measuring the length of your finger or the length of the Nile
river - you use the meter.

To simplify things, very large and very small objects are expressed as
multiples of 10 of the base unit. For example, rather than saying that
the Nile river is 6,650,000 meters long, we can say that it is 6,650
thousand-meters long. This would be done by adding the prefix 'kilo'
(meaning 1,000) to the base unit 'meter' to give us 6,650 kilometers for
the length of the Nile river. This is much simpler than the American
system of measurement in which we have to remember inches, feet, miles,
and many more units of measurement. Metric prefixes can be used with
any base unit. For example, while a kilometer is 1,000 meters, a
kilogram is 1,000 grams and a kiloliter is 1,000 liters.

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Jun 16, 2004, 6:56am

believe it or not i have on occasion used the tip of my nose to the end of
my thumb as a yard. :)
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Jun 16, 2004, 11:46am

Yup, yer right swe!!! It's a conspiracy hon. All of us Americans decided to
do that just to confuse the rest of the world. C'mon hon. You seriously
believe this has been invented recently? We Americans cannot change a
century or two of a way of communicating date, time or measurement. All of
us who were born here have been raised with these systems already in place.
Our ancestors also were raised with it. We've been trying for decades to
become more comfortable using the metric system, but old traditions die
hard. Some people here, especially the old ones, cannot remember how many
centimeters are in an inch and so forth. Our children are being taught
metric in school because most of their parents aren't familiar with it. Heck
I didn't even learn about it until the late 1970's when I was in high
school!!! We're coming around, gradually. Just quit pointing the finger at
us to blame us for all the confusion. It wasn't our doing. ;-"p



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Jun 16, 2004, 11:50am

Yup and that is commonly used today when estimating fabric when planning on
making clothes (it is approximately 1 yard from the tip of the average
person's nose to their fingertips when extending the arm straight out to the
side) ;-"D


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Jun 16, 2004, 11:58am

whew!!! Thank you for being the person to explain in detail for our
"non-American" friends, why some people here still use ancient forms of
measurement. And also reminding us perhaps that America is made up of
diverse ethnic backgrounds. Most of the people in this country had ancestors
who came from other countries and brought their customs with them. IF they
learned the metric system at all from their native country, their family
would learn both ways of doing things. In my case, however, my German and
Swiss ancestors came to this country lonnnnnng before the French came up
with the metric system. And my great-great grandfather, who was from
England, obviously didn't know it either. Hence, none of my redneck family
had a chance to learn it or use it. And that's another thing (while I'm on
a roll) .... our children are learning all about it in our schools but
there isn't much need for it to be used in our society since most of our
country still uses the "old fashioned" methods of measurement. Its amazing
we all survived, isn't it? ;-"D


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Jun 16, 2004, 12:14pm

wait a sec, which side do you face? :) i mean, if you face the right, and
you have your right arm stretched out, would be far less then if you were
facing left! :)

-SWE

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Jun 16, 2004, 12:31pm

lol i face left with my right arm extended
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Jun 16, 2004, 1:30pm

My ancestory is French which I can happily trace back to 1640 France. I'm
American born, as were my parents and grandparents, yet my great
grandparents are from Canada. OH NO !!!!! I have this French blood... Good
heavens !


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Jun 16, 2004, 1:34pm

"Let's get real" ????

AW is backed up daily.

AW runs on a dedicated machine.

Routinely we do maintenance on said dedicated machine.

From time to time maintenance reveals a problem.

When a problem is found we stop the machine to fix the problem.

THe time to fix a problem on the machine varies:

A: a hot swappable part and you never notice any delay
B: a big fix that requires a new part not in stock

When the problem is fixed the machine is rebooted.

AW is back up


Wow...


E

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Jun 16, 2004, 4:00pm

Smile ENZO loves us. :)

I'm sure feelin' the love. :)

:)

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Jun 16, 2004, 5:51pm

So one could deduce from this that we are waiting for parts. LOL

Thanx E N Z O

:)


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Jun 16, 2004, 7:54pm

there's also a silly thing called 'baker's dozen' in which one receives 13
fer the price of 12..... which makes me happy =D

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Jun 17, 2004, 12:40am

Care to tell us what the problem was? Hey, I'm glad you people are working
on fixing things, but it would be reassuring for all of us if you told us
what was going on.

Yes, I said "Let's get real" because "routine maintenance" is not
maintenance that causes Alpha World to shut down once every few years.
Sure, you may have routine maintenance, but whatever was done in Alpha World
that needed Alpha World to shut down was not routine.

Jun 17, 2004, 1:51am

Ferruccio, E N Z O said what the problem was. They were running routine
maintenance, and during that discovered a part that needed replacing but
they needed to send out for the part. What further info are you trying
to badger out of the poor man, do you need the part number or what???
Give it a rest already geez. These things happen. Computers have
probs, you fix them, sometimes it might take a little longer than you'd
like, but you DEAL with it.

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Jun 17, 2004, 2:02am

</snippet>
In 1790, the French National Assembly
> commissioned the Academy of Science to design a simple, decimal-based
> system of units; the system they devised is known as the metric system.
> In 1960, the metric system was officially named the Système
> International d'Unités (or SI for short) and is now used in nearly every
> country in the world except for the United States. The metric system is
> almost always used in scientific measurement.
<snippet/>

I find this quite untrue. As I have studied in Physics, Chemistry, Biology
and other sciences I have noticed that the metric system is heavily used in
instruction and widely throughout our scientific scenes. While America does
not use it for average daily use(you won't notice it on freeway signs, but
you will in most textbooks), we have our own system that works well for our
needs, and simply because we don't follow "the international" standard for
everything does not necessarily mean that we are inferior, or that our
system is inappropriate or our prerogative.. When necessary to meet the
international standard we have conversions that we use to follow
international protocol. I see no problem with having two systems in place
coinciding in our country. Why does it seem like others have such a problem
with this? From a programmers view, which I like to think of myself as
*grins* I can see that continuity is great, and that is why ISO standards
are used. For such cases, it is essential that when developing for other
countries as well as your own, you keep these standards in mine.

I am also not prone to defending America's actions. I don't feel it is
something i should be obligated to do, except to try to correct statements
made infallibly. I have my own criticisms of the U.S. and they are much
more intense then the metric system. They deal more with Race, War, Poverty
and Politics...the list goes on, but is neither here nor there.

Enjoy the week,
armygeddon

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Jun 17, 2004, 4:39am

Whoa there, turbo. All I wanted was some more specific information as to
what they were doing. Besides, you seemed to completely miss the point I
was making about "routine maintenance" anyway.
I don't care about how sad "poor" E N Z O was feeling, and considering the
amount of information the company releases to the public anyway, it's not
too much to ask for specifics, especially when Alpha World going down for a
few days is hardly "routine."

Jun 17, 2004, 12:07pm

If I had a nickel for every kid that telegrammed me : "Oh yeah, sure,
ROUTINE maintenance. What really happened?"....


OK OK I am ready to tell the truth. It all started as a routine inspection
of the power feed and the string accelerators. The transspace modulator we
had found at the crashsite back in 1992 had started to show signs of
subspace interphasing. If this was not locked down this would have meant
that we could have lost the entire hyperplasma interflux. Of course if it
were just Alphaworld that would have been affected then that wouldn't have
required immediate attention and we could probably have left it go for
several light seconds. Unfortunately for us it began to seem that the
failure was also creating a antimatter flux on the nanointerpolator we had
juryrigged as a power source... who knows what would happen if that had a
breach. So we shut it down and swapped the motherboard.

result:

universe safe for another day

Please keep this under your hats ok?


E






"NO NO SHUT THEM ALL DOWN!"
C3PO

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Jun 17, 2004, 12:11pm

OH yeah...

The delay...


FedEx had a labor dispute between their workers in France and the Collective
of Opus Centauri 5 so all shipments had to go the LONG way


E



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