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At 12:27 PM 10/07/1999 -0500, you wrote: One-world-government types? Are you one of those fight against the new world order types? I can tell you, from an engineering standpoint that I would take metric any day. Much easier to work with, consistency when converting to different units, working complex problems involving multiple units. When I was in engineering school everyone would complain when we had to do problems in US units. In fact, to simplify the job, we often worked the problem in metric and just converted the final answer back to US units. Dealing with international business I also prefer metric. After all, the USA is the only major industrial country in the entire world that still uses only feet, lbs, etc., so I have to convert all prices and units to metric to quote overseas. US products that use SAE sized parts are less competitive for export sales overseas since all tools, etc overseas are metric. When I work on my own car, motorcycle, etc., I don't care if the tools are metric or SAE standard, but I would be happy to only need one set of tools instead of two. As far as estimating, it's just what you're used to. It's just as easy to estimate 2.54cm as it is to estimate 1", just takes a little practise. Then, maybe my brain works differently than others. No one is trying to force me to do metric, I want it and can't wait until the US converts. Because while the big multinationals and one-world-government types all push the metric system, the we-actually-have-to-use-the-stuff people in most non-metric nations vastly prefer the old units. From a human factors point of view, the old units are far superior. They are also much better for estimating, measuring in the field and doing quick mental calculations. The entire metric system is based on a basic misconception about how people use information. So one set of units fine, but don't be so fast to assume it should be metric. >techdiver@aquanaut.com -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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