Canuck57 wrote:
> "Moshe Goldfarb" <brick.n.straw@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:9t96hqagi7vh.172qilsj253n$.dlg@40tude.net...
>> On Fri, 16 May 2008 19:55:15 -0600, Bruce Grubb wrote:
>>
>>> In article <1l1i4zt4ow56w.1le5ew7pmd4of$.dlg@40tude.net>,
>>> Moshe Goldfarb <brick.n.straw@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, 16 May 2008 17:00:21 -0500, Ivan Marsh wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, 16 May 2008 17:57:01 -0400, Moshe Goldfarb wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, 16 May 2008 16:47:58 -0500, Ivan Marsh wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Fri, 16 May 2008 14:06:43 -0700, The Ghost In The Machine wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Ivan Marsh <ivanmarsh@yahoo.com>
>>>>>>>> wrote
>>>>>>> At least Java went to Mars.
>>>>>> Was Java running the innards of that 40 million dollar Tonka Toy that
>>>>>> went brain dead on Mars 10 minutes after it landed?
>>>>> Suggesting that hitting Mars much less landing safely on the surface is
>>>>> trivial?
>>>> Not at all.
>>>>
>>>> The thing fscked up.
>>>>
>>>> I'm just wondering if Java was what fscked it up.
>>> Might have been who ever NASA used as the subcontracter. Remember how
>>> Lockheed Martin went off and put English standard units into equations
>>> designed for Metric units and got the Mars Climate Orbiter clobbered?
>> I believe they did a similar thing with the Hubble as well.
>> One team was using English the other metric.
>>
>> Personally, as an Engineer, I could never understand the reasoning for
>> Englsih vs MKS.
>>
>>> When I went to college in the mid 1980's our physics book used metric so
>>> I
>>> couldn't understand this. I mean why on Earth would anyone outside the
>>> automotive industry use English standard units?!
>> The problem is thinking and converting.
>>
>> Example: Typical American (like me) knows a foot is *this long* (stretch
>> your arms out) but has no idea how big a meter is.
>> They are constantly trying to convert which makes a mess of things.
>>
>> If they were taught in terms of MKS their would be no problem.
>
> Anyone in engineering and science had better know MKS. Not 100% sure of
> this, but is not the US the last market on earth using metric? Even the
> British sell gas by the litre.
>
>

I was fortunate because before high school I learned the British system
(240 pennies in the GBP etc, yards feet and inches) but when I got to
high school they switched to Metric, so using both comes naturally to me.

In the 80s I worked for a US corporation and though we made all kinds of
fasteners (Nuts and bolts) and sold huge quantities of Metric ones all
over Europe the drawing office had to submit things to the US corporate
who insisted on all measurements being in "English" units. There is some
logic to this, high precision gauges are often very costly, so to draw
and measure in the one standard avoids a lot of expense.

So I guess I have stayed in practice with both.