Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Usually loaves of bread have like 24 or something slices. What about metric loaves of bread for nice, round, base-10 metric toastpaints?

There's gotta be a "Europe is teh bettar" thread somewhere.

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I meant gun violence wise.

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Umm... I don't think the metric system has an effect on gun violence. Actually, I don't think the metric system has ANYTHING to do with gun violence.

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He wasn't saying that the metric system had anything to do with gun violence--he was just saying that the reduced levels of gun violence in Europe would be further incentive to emigrate from America in addition to Europe's embracement of the metric system. Which, for those who want proof (other than what Michael Moore said in "Bowling for Columbine"), this site shows some statistics of international violence trends for the 1990s (yeah, not the best citing, I admit, but it's late for me and I'm tired--I might something better later). Other than Northern Ireland, America seems to be higher-ranking than any European nation listed there.

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That may be so, but my point then (and now) was that violence/gun violence has nothing to do with the metric system (the topic of this thread).
I was just tryin to keep things on topic.
It is my job, after all

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Well we all know why the Metric System isn't in USA, THE NO HOMERS CLUB! (or The Stonecutters for those with a fuzzy memory of The Simpsons)

But seriously, in my opinion, people should just use the measurment they prefer, we shouldn't force people to choose one.

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That kind of stuff is made and packaged however it is most efficient. (Guh, no wonder hot dogs come in packs of 10 but buns come in 8 or 12)

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That's not fair. There is like, a war going on here. America has people just killing each other for fun.

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What part of "VIOLENCE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE METRIC SYSTEM" do you people NOT understand?!?

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

No, hot dogs and hot dog buns are sold in different quantities per pack so that you're forced to buy more of one or the other. If the standard hot dog package comes with 10 hot dogs and the standard bun package has only 8 buns, then you end up having to buy 40 of each just to even out. It's just a way for the evil hot dog people to make more money. I wonder, though...could we apply metric terminology to money? I want a whole Kilo-dollar!

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We sort of do, if you think about 'dimes', 'cents', and 'mils'.

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'mils'?
Is that a tenth of a cent?
The only place you ever see that is that 9/10 of a cent they throw on the end of a gallon of gas. Personally, I never saw the point. Why not just tag on that extra 1/10 of a cent? It's the one time a tax increase would mean nothing to the people who it effects (and if they didn't mention it, I don't think a majority of people would notice).

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

OK, now I kinda know what you're talking about with metric conversion being possibly an unnecessary hassle.

I checked out the wikipedia entry for "Byte", wanting to know what the Metric System had to say about the way they increase every 2^(10x) instead of 10^(3x). Apparently, the SI people have declared that a kilobyte is totally 1000 bytes. They want people to call 1024 bytes a "kibibyte", 2^20 bytes a "mebibyte" instead of megabyte, "gibibyte" and so on. Uh.. yeah... about that. LAAAAAME!

I mean, it's logical in a sense.. 1024 is not 1000 and that's what a kilo is supposed to be... I'm not gonna die because they brought the prefixes into line, I guess. But if they're gonna change the definition like that, couldn't they at least tell people, instead of letting the new definition creep into usage in ways that'll be totally confusing (like the article states is happening sometimes)? I didn't know about this and I pay a moderate amount of attention to things like this. If they don't have the power to let people know what the standards are, what good are they (whoever "they" are)?

I guess my annoyance in both of these cases is: let's just do one or the other. Instead of this slow march to metric we're doing, let's just get it over with somehow or forget about it. Instead of letting a standard seep out slowly and confusingly, make a push for it or don't change it at all.

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Yeah, I read somewhere that that's what they're supposed to be called... I always thought they just put that little '9' up there to make the price look a penny lower. I wish they wouldn't do that, too, it's kind of dumb... one cent for every ten gallons!

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Exactly.. But I can hear the furor now, if that were to change..
"GEORGE BUSH IS TAXING THE POOR TO MAKE HIS OIL BUDDIES RICHER! OMG HALIBURTON!!1!1!1!!"
Seriously, though, I don't really think money could be anything but "metric". I suppose we could do some sort of base 8 or base 6 system, but that'd make no sense.

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I know--I was just kind of joking so I could at least try to toastpaint my own post. I was more just referring to metric prefixes (deci, kilo, giga, nano, etc.). But hey, who WOULDN'T want a Yotta-Dollar?

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I just have one thing to say to that: £sd.

Though, when people use the abbreviation "$10G" to mean "10 grand", or $10,000, I often respond with "10 giga-dollars? That's a lot!" just to be irritating...

As for the "hot dogs" thing... xkcd has something to say on a similar topic.

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Just as a side note, 1 cc is still the same as 1 ml, as are most other medical measurements

Oh, man, I hate when people use so many diffrent units of measure... I'm only used to the metric system, so I get problems with units like
miles, knots, inches, feet, ells, gallons, pounds... even stuff like teaspoons.



I've never understood the point with those... why do people insist that 1 kb = 1024 bytes when kilo means 1000, and it's easier to count. Say you have 1 MB and want to know how many bytes that is. 1000*1000 = 1 000 000. 1024*1024 = headache.

Well, that's what happens when nerds get too comfy with their compys, they start thinking about things from the computer's perspective. Computers can't count in base 10, they can only count in base 2. So if there are gonna be units of data for a computer, it's easier for the computer and for uber-technical types if they're in powers of 2, like 2^10=1024, which is KINDA 1000, and is 2 to the 10, so that's KINDA metric...you know, cuz it's got a 10 in it... so they started using those prefixes. But there probably aren't all that many of those people compared to general computer users anymore, and computers shouldn't get a vote in stuff like this.

(Yet?)

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i'm american so i grew up with the standard system and i still hate it. i can't estimate an inch to save my life , but i can visualize a centimeter or decimeter no problem. i actually would love to switch to metric, but yes, conversions would be annoying.

and i think it's funny how often americans use metric in combinations with their standrd. nobody buys a gallon of soda, but one or two liters (a nice size). and cokeheads use grams and kilos! (just kidding about that, well not about them using the metric system, but cocaine is a throroughly inappropriate aplication of the metric system [/responsibility])

i wonder how many meters tall i am. i am 72 GOLDFISH tall, though. the pepperidge farm website told me.

The thing is... the way RAM is built, and a bunch of similar things in a computer... it's pretty much required that a stick of RAM has a power of 2 bits in it. 'Cause if how it scales - you just double it and then add another address bit. That 2^10 is nearly a nice round number is merely a coincidence with base 10... even if it didn't happen RAM sticks would still come in 2^28 bytes, 2^29 bytes, 2^30 bytes... they just wouldn't use MB or GB.

And which would be easier? Saying "I want 2^30 bytes of RAM" or "I want 1GB of RAM"? The only time I've ever heard the word "gibibyte" is when specifically referencing that particular proposal.

If you want real confusing, look at 1.44MB diskettes... those are 1.44 * 1024 * 1000 bytes. Someone got mixed up.

Oh, and BTW: 1048576 is just one of the many useless numbers I have commited to memory... there's a nice pattern to the digits which makes it easier to remember... 4-8, 5-7, 6...

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Yeah, there was a point when the US sort of tried to switch over or at least get used to the metric system, so they put both units on things (but it obviously didn't work out). Now we pretty much use all the units (meters for some sports like track and soccer, yards for others like golf and football, gallons for milk and gas, liters for other drinks, nutrition info is in grams even when the package is measured in ounces - it's like everything uses its own unit).

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Why do Americans call their system "standard" and "English" when it is only the standard in the USA and is not in England?

Seriously, you guys need to get with the times. Don't give us the whole "America is not ready for metric" spiel - Australia converted to metric about forty years ago! Time to join the rest of the world.


(Incidentally, I'm against metric time measurement. Time is something that needs to be easily divisible - e.g. you can divide the day into 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12 and 24. These divisions are how you plan your day. With other measurement (linear measurement, area measurement, weight measurement) lots of irregular bases like inches, feet, yards and miles only make it harder rather than easier.)

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uh. you gotta chill jerome. unfortunately, standard is the only word we have for our system, it's just what its called. i didn't pick it, and neither did anyone on this forum, so get over it. and English because we used to be English way back in the colonial days, and that's where we got our measurements.

i agree with the metric system, and i like it. and if you want my opinion as to why we call it standard, probably because in America there are a lot of instances where you see both types of measure on packages still, or as smilde said, different things use different units, so knowing that i might guess that maybe we say standard because we have a system with two types present. or maybe because when we adopted it, it was our standard for measuring things.

Another word for the American system is "imperial". Which is probably another reference to the colonial days, like putitinyourshoe said.

By the way, Jerome - metric time??? WTF? Oh Lordy - please don't let there be campaigners somewhere lobbying for metric time!!

Haven't you heard?

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Imperial's actually slightly different from what Americans currently use. The Imperial system is the one used by the British starting sometime in the 1800s and continuing up until the metric conversion. The American system is based on the system the British had before Imperial. Imperial is largely based on that, so it's the same in many ways but different in some important things (the American gallon is smaller than the Imperial gallon for instance). If there aren't any more countries that use this specific system, we could just call it the "American" system I guess...

But it's "standard" because in America, it's the standard, and now Americans and everyone else is on this thing called the Internet where they're typing the way they talk normally. When you read what someone from a different country writes on the internet, you may have to imagine you're visiting their country while you read what they wrote. Most of us put up with Britishisms, Australianisms or whateverisms when we see them just fine.

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Oh, did I sound agitated or something? 'Cos I wasn't, it was just an observation.

PianoManGidley mentioned it earlier in this thread.

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