It's software this time!

[Letalis Sonus]

It's the same SI prefix, unless that is you insist on using mebibytes and all that.

Hard disks always come in SI prefixes, their size is always provided as base-10.

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

For one thing, it's spelt 'teragram', or possibly 'teragramme' in French and older English.

Correct, thanks.

If in doubt, think about hard disk sizes; they used to come in megabytes, then gigabytes and now terabytes. It's the same SI prefix, unless that is you insist on using mebibytes and all that.

I was thinking about that. Clearly I know they're the same prefix, that was my point. In fact, they're the same prefix whether I use binary prefixes or not. People who use normal prefixes to mean binary prefixes are mangling the system! They should just go back to the imperial system and make up things like
"dick" = 1 bit
"balls = 2 bit
"hand" = 5 bit
so that people who e.g. forget what 2 bits are are can pull down their pants and count their balls to remember, comparable to how they can measure a foot by measuring their foot and likewise unreliable (not everyone has the same amount of balls just like not everyone has the same length of feet).

 

[matzesu]

But what happen if you are a woman and dont have these 2 bits ? And what happen if you dont have feets, because you lost your legs somewhere in the past, then you cant measure how many feets there are..
Whit this Metric System, you allways have a measure, ..

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

Back to the topic: Any update on pyra assembly, is it started yet ?

That's not on topic, actually. This topic is about the software and davidshah, not about assembly of the Pyra. If you want to go on topic, then let's talk about whether daveshah should get his Pyra sooner.
Besides, won't ED make a new news topic for that, as opposed to dumping it in some random unrelated topic on page 40+?

 

[docbroke]

That's not on topic, actually. This topic is about the software and davidshah, not about assembly of the Pyra. If you want to go on topic, then let's talk about whether daveshah should get his Pyra sooner.
Besides, won't ED make a new news topic for that, as opposed to dumping it in some random unrelated topic on page 40+?

did I said 'topic as per thread title' ?
I think not

 

[sepulep]

Woops! This was a reply to Lambda.



I don't agree with what you wrote here. What you wrote is overly broad and lacks context. Here is what you missed:

1) Imperial == base 12

Base 12 counting is probably something like 10 000 years old, maybe older. The ancients used various types of counting systems but THEY NEVER used base 10.

The reason for that is that base 12 is perfect for low technology and relative precision types of industries and where you simply double numbers or halve them in fractions and that is good enough. So, for example, building ancient roads, ancient bridges and so forth is just good enough for the kinds of tolerences they worked with. Even today, in North America, we make houses to fairly crude tolerences of 1/16th of an inch at the most.

So, just consider that base 12 is designed for the kinds of normal things ancient and current people build, used by people whose kings and queens had less education than our grade 4 students.

On top of that, you have to consider that the upper bound for the amount of things that most regular people needed to count up to was 60 and base 12 fractions and multiplies nicely up and down 0 to 60 at reasonable and easy to understood tolerences that allowed ancient people to build small buildings, roads, houses, castles, roman bridges and even the pyramids without any education whatsoever. You can train someone to use base 12 with no knowledge of numbers or reading in a few hours because it is intrinsic to how use the tools them selves. You cannot do that with metric.

Imperial really is an amazing counting system.

nice try;-) some unit ratios are base 12, but you are still using a decimal number system so its a mixed system, in other words everything becomes an unholy mess once you start calculating things or e.g. things like volumes are involved...

 

[spud42]

FYI

In 1866, the U.S. Congress authorized the use of the metric system and almost a decade later America became one of 17 original signatory nations to the Treaty of the Meter. A more modern system was approved in 1960 and is commonly known as SI or the International System of Units.

 

[Neelix]

For some inexplicable reason I feel a need to drop this in here....

-Neelix

 

[CFWhitman]

What if i live in Europa and whe dont have inch ,
Whe only have metric

I can't explain it, but at least in English speaking countries, it seems that 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch hard drives are generally referred to that way even in places where they exclusively use the metric system. Ironically, at least in the U.S., there are 2.5 inch 7mm drives and 2.5 inch 9mm (or 9.5mm) drives, so a combination of Imperial and metric measurements are employed to describe them as a standard practice. It is rather odd.

Basically, though, 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch drives are often referred to as laptop drives and desktop drives respectively, though there is nothing stopping you from using the smaller 2.5 inch drives in desktops, and basically all SSDs are the smaller 2.5 inch drives regardless of whether they are used in desktops or laptops.

Ironically again, the 2.5 inch size (as well as the 3.5 inch size) is technically a reference to the drive platter size, and SSDs don't have platters but are still referred to as 2.5 inch.

 

[Grench]

Clearly we need to switch internationally such that all measurements of velocity are measured in furlongs per fortnight.
You're not going 50 KPH, you're going 83,512 FPF.
Or here in the US, you're not going 80 MPH, you're going 215,040 FPF.
A brisk walk? You're cruising right along at 13,440 FPF.
Apollo 11? A blistering 5,483,509 FPF.

 

[Kev2442]

The superior system is Dozenal which gives loads of fractions for how small a number it is. No smaller number has more fractions. So the really really smart people use dozenal and a metric system using powers of 12 as multipliers. AFAIK no country is that smart as of now.

I hope that one day we wil become enlightened and move to the superior dozenal system.

I, for one, welcome our new polydactyl overlords.

 

[Djoga'Ro]

Here in Germany we call them "2,5-Zoll-Laufwerk" or "3,5-Zoll-Laufwerk" - Zoll being German for inch. A foot rule we call Zollstab, which is sometime scaled in mm on one side and in inch/Zoll on the other or mm on both sides. (But don't get confused, when you run into German's customs - that's called "der Zoll" also.)

 

[Bosbeetle]

Here in Germany we call them "2,5-Zoll-Laufwerk" or "3,5-Zoll-Laufwerk" - Zoll being German for inch. A foot rule we call Zollstab, which is sometime scaled in mm on one side and in inch/Zoll on the other or mm on both sides. (But don't get confused, when you run into German's customs - that's called "der Zoll" also.)

I thought zoll had something to do with customs (or douane in dutch)

 

[Djoga'Ro]

I thought zoll had something to do with customs (or douane in dutch)

So I said. It's a one-character-string-two-meanings kinda thing. Don't know if it's incidental or if they come from the same roots - didn't look at the etymology.

 

[Bosbeetle]

So I said. It's a one-character-string-two-meanings kinda thing. Don't know if it's incidental or if they come from the same roots - didn't look at the etymology.

Looks like I only read the first half of your post ...

 

[levi]

But what happen if you are a woman and dont have these 2 bits ?

Easy:
1bit - bellybutton
2bits - nipple
4bits - nybble
8bits - byte

 

[Yogendra]

What camera ?
The Pyra has no camera. You can plug external cameras to it like you would to a PC, more or less.

So we waited all this time to get a unit without a camera or maybe two

 

[TrashyMG]

So we waited all this time to get a unit without a camera or maybe two

There was never any plans of having a Camera in the Pyra. It was brought up during design time, it was voted down as it somewhat complicated things, I think if I recall at the time sourcing a proper camera was somewhat difficult and implementing it so that it wouldn't thicken the already thick device was a tad difficult. In the end just not having a Camera was the choice.

 

[λ the β-Redex Reducer]

at the time sourcing a proper camera was somewhat difficult

At the time? So then there might still be hope left…

 

[Confuzzled]

Woops! This was a reply to Lambda.



I don't agree with what you wrote here. What you wrote is overly broad and lacks context. Here is what you missed:

1) Imperial == base 12

nice try;-) some unit ratios are base 12, but you are still using a decimal number system so its a mixed system, in other words everything becomes an unholy mess once you start calculating things or e.g. things like volumes are involved...

Actually, its even worse. There are 12 inches to the foot, and 12 pennies to the shilling*, but 20 shillings to the pound (21 to the guinea), 14 pounds to the stone, 112 pounds to the hundredweight, 20 hundredweights to the ton, 8 pints to the gallon, and 16⁺ 20 (Imperial) fluid ounces to the (Imperial) pint (and American fluid measures are different in volume to Imperial (British) ones of the same name.). A rod is 16-and-a-half feet, and a chain is 4 rods (66 feet, or 22 yards, the length of a cricket pitch between the wickets). A furlong is 40 rods, or 10 chains, and there are 8 furlongs to a mile, so there are 80 chains in a mile. For binary lovers, there are 16 ounces (weight) to a pound, and 16 drachms to the ounce. So not consistently base 12.

Metrication makes things easier, but also makes order-of-magnitude mistakes trivial.

Footnotes:
* The full monetary system divided a penny into 4 farthings, a shilling into 12 pennies, and pound into 20 shillings (Guineas were used for prices of thoroughbred horses and professional fees). So a price of something could be 5 pounds 17 shillings and 5 pence 3 farthing. If you wanted to by 13 of them, working it out the total price could be quite involved (the answer is (inline spoiler here⇒ 76 pounds 7 shillings 2 pence 3 farthing)).
Now work out the result to the nearest farthing after a 7% discount. (Student exercise)

⁺ I got this wrong. There are, in fact 20 Imperial fluid ounces to the Imperial pint. eric kindly pointed this out to me. I have edited this original post to correct, and 'fess up to my mistake.