Imperial System... oh how i loathe theee!
 

LOL

Ok first off.. let me just say this up front. Im an American construction worker... and despite using it all my life... i fugging hate the Imperial System.

Yup.

It sucks almost as bad as fractions.

Only thing worse is "Imperial Fractions". Its the devil. I mean seriously.. "Hey Chuck... hand me the 5/8 nut driver... no better make that the 9/32. No that one dont fit either.. hand me the 1254/1340984 driver."

I'm a logically thinking type of person... and mathematically, the imperial system just has no logic to me. Who the hell comes up with Inches, Feet, Yards, and Miles? The system is ancient and needs to die!! LOL!!

Dont even get me started on liquid quantities/measurements!!

but i digress..

I really wish this country would switch to the metric system as i used to hear people say was coming. It will make our lives easier. but i Doubt it will happen any time soon.

I dunno, i guess thats just the way my brain is wired.

So how many of you "Imperial subjects" prefer Metric? And how do the rest of you just not get annoyed when your ruler jumps from yds to miles.

I know nothing about the imperial system, thats why I use it in SH4, just to learn something about it.

:o


[Quickly jumps down on his stomach before Rockin Robbins sees this thread and the FLAK starts shooting]

:haha:

Uhh you know you can change that right?

yes.

I used metric since day 1 of SHIV coming out.

Since i reinstalled SH4 recently after a long hiatus.. i decided to go imperial for a laugh.

It ended in fits.

oddly, given how long it's been since i visisted this site.. that's one of the few names i remember. Mostly from some tactical/targetting discusions we had.

Imperial seems quite simple to me. 1NM=2000yds=6000FT. The ruler jumping from yards to miles is no different than it jumping from meters to kilometers. IMO.

5,500yds = 2.7nm
5,500m = 5.5km


it speaks for itself.

About the only good thing is the Nm/Knot relationship.

If only we could get these sailors to quit using Kts and use Kmh.:D

lol, ok i was just joking on that last one.

Read up on the Nautical system, and you'll see how much simpler it is, than the metric with regard to global, universal measurements.

This system was developed over hundreds of years of exploration. Had the metric system been easier I'm sure it would have been used, as the metric system was known in the east since baylonian times...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nautical_mile to correct al those incorrect measurements.
In SH4 they've changed the size of the Nm to 2000m (1852m) :nope:
:03:

Grew up in the British West Indies with Imperial (British) measurements including learning how to work with pounds-shillings-pence (even though the islands used dollars!), then learned how to use metrics when I moved back to the Netherlands at the age of 12 so I'm familiar with both systems. Have one SH4 + UBM install with TMO running USN subs in Imperial, and another install with OM running U-Boote in metric. No problem when switching- just seems to come naturally.

I'll not repeat myself except to say that the imperial system is a reflection of the natural world which divides itself into twos, fours, eights, twelves, etc, the products of small prime numbers, NEVER into powers of ten so our feeble brains can calculate easily.

Trying to stuff the round world into the square metric hole is just plain silly. Even the metric people are sensible enough to measure boat speed in knots, an imperial measurement in spite of the whitewashing that has occurred.

Yes, it is possible to measure the universe in metric units. Yes, those inappropriate units act as a smokescreen, keeping us from understanding the underlying processes working in products of small prime numbers.

Units are sort of like translating one language into another. If I were translating "Well, that's quite another kettle of fish" into German, I would have two choices: one, to translate the words and leave the German reader entirely clueless about what I said, and two, to translate the idea into the equivalent of "that is another idea entirely" and lose all sense of the underlying language and figure of speech. You can't have it both ways, and perhaps you are best served by having both renditions.

re
 

lol see the metric system drives me nuts, i prefer imperial.To each his own...

Imperial is not too bad. I was being kind of tounge in cheek about it earlier (well somewhat anyway).

the only thing that really irks me in the game is the yards/nm switch on the tools.

i ping a contact, and he's 28,567yds away. i have to convert that to NM just to place a mark on the map. yeah, its not that big a deal.. just divide by two to get a decent idea (~14nm), but i sometimes find myself forgetting to do that lol.

Yeah, it would be nice to be able to do those conversions in the game. After awhile dividing by 2000 becomes second nature. Also remember a target traveling 3 knots is going 300 yards a minute, 100 yards in 20 seconds. One knot is 100 yards per minute.

Yes, imperial measurements are closer to how nature works, metric is strictly for our retarded convenience, but have little connection with reality. It's a lousy choice. But what are computers for?

Reminds me of the all time circle runner stupidity award. I was working as a marine mechanic many moons (about 25 years) ago and from across the yard, a fellow mechanic (pronounced mech' a nick) yelled, "Hey Steve", "Eh?", Hey I forget. How many sixteenths in an inch?"

I had to think real hard before I answered that one... "Who's buried in Grant's tomb?"

Whoa Nelly I've got to stop you there. There ain't nothing "natural" about a yard or a nautical mile. Calling factors of primes more sensible than base-10 is a non-starter. A well distributed basis that's hard to work with is no better than an uninsightful basis that's easy to work with.

There's a subtle but important distinction between the Imperial and Metric systems when it comes to units. Feet and yards and miles and inches are four distinct different units of measuring distance while metric only has the meter. Picometer, kilometer, centimeter, etc are not actually different units of measure but simply modifiers. To have many different units for the same measure is dumb, Metric doesn't do this.

As for extolling the virtues of 1/16ths of an inch... that's not a property owned by Imperial, just commonly used with it. Fractions are not part of the measurement system. I can use 1/32nd of a meter just as easily as I can use 1/32nd of a yard.

The only reason people use knots anymore is due to how ostensibly stubborn the world is such that there are conventions that the metric system wouldn't bother tackling like 60 seconds per minute or 360 degrees in a circle. Radians are the natural unit of angular measure in a Euclidean universe, no matter what base your numbering system. Oh, 1/3600th of the circumference of the Earth... that's reasonable and not arbitrary.

well nautical mile does have somewhat of a relationship to nature. as for the others... they are nonsense, and metric is far superior to them.

Ok, i gave it some thought while on the crapper earlier... and I'll agree.. Imperial system seems more useful for visualizing things, and for quantities etc. that are practical for use in everyday life. But then again, that could just be 30+ years of using it.

but when it comes to math and computations, imperial sucks.

so yeah, thats my verdict. I think i might be lost if i suddenly had to view the world in metric eyes.. but i'd rather do math in metric.

And I can and do use decimal fractions of an inch. As a matter of fact, all imperial micrometers are calibrated that way.

The imperial system is a group of measurements loosely based on the measurements of man, to measure a world and items that man uses. For that reason, the units are sized so that they are appropriate for the items they measure. Using units that are a factor of 10 larger than each other makes you use units that are inappropriately large or inappropriately small, with no choice of an intermediary unit.

Using a foot divided into 12 inches lets you divide it by six, four, three or two using whole units, a flexibility the metric system can't even dream of. Architecturally, this makes building pleasingly shaped structures a brainlessly easy task. Small prime numbers unlock concepts buried in a myriad of natural and human processes. Five and two don't cut it.;)

As an experiment to validate my claim. Try writing music by note durations or pitches of a "decimal" type system and see if you can make it aesthetically pleasing. Music and mathematics are intertwined systems, following the same principles. Sometimes music can convey a mathematical concept much better than digits on a piece of paper. Small prime numbers are in the "music of the spheres." (Play the spooky theremin music here)

When I play the U-Boat, I strictly use the metric system. When I play the fleet boat I use imperial. I'm equally adept at both. But the metric U-Boat retains the knot. And the non-metric time and date system. That says volumes.