OT metric time (was Re: Proposal: Language code "de-DE-trad")

[Mark Davis]

You're right: I meant "hektoseconds", the closest approximation to
"minutes".

The other standard metric time units are:

      Metric Units → English Units (app.)
      hektosecond 1 ⅔ minutes
      kilosecond 16 ⅔ minutes
      megasecond 11 ½ days
      gigasecond 31 ⅔ years


I mention this not because I am opposed to the metric system -- I've
used it, it's clearly better -- but to give others a sense of the
inertia that keeps Americans from wanting to move that way. The system
of time (years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds) is far
more complex and difficult to compute than the English system of
weights, for example, and is used far more often in daily life, yet
nobody in the metric world cares; they just use because they are used
to it.

Mark
—————

Γνῶθι σαυτόν — Θαλῆς
[For transliteration, see http://oss.software.ibm.com/cgi-bin/icu/tr]

http://www.macchiato.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Duerst" <duerst@w3.org>
To: "Mark Davis" <mark@macchiato.com>; "A. Vine" <andrea.vine@sun.com>
Cc: <ietf-languages@eikenes.alvestrand.no>
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2002 23:35
Subject: Re: Proposal: Language code "de-DE-trad"


> At 19:36 02/02/18 -0800, Mark Davis wrote:
> >As to why the Americans would be resistant to making a change to
> >metric, with all of the logical advantages, just think about it for
a
> >few centiseconds.
>
> Maybe that should be centiminutes? :-)
>
> Regards,    Martin.
>