Delirium wrote:
On a mildly more on-topic note, there was some
discussion earlier of
some sort of automatic translation of units based on user preferences
(kg/lbs, degrees F / degrees C, mi/km, etc.). Did anything ever come
of that? Despite the obvious convenience of using metric as a
standard, currently a fairly large percentage of English speakers
would have to convert the units to make sense of them (the ~300
million Americans form a fairly decent percentage of English
speakers), so using the old "standard" units for them makes some sense.
The problem would be one of context. You don't want "3-mile Island"
to
be converted!
The simple solution is to *always* link to an Orde of Magnitude page,
which gives links to converters.
Besides,
* most people are at least familiar with the basic units of the SI system,
* Americans may have trouble visualising, say "15 metres". But frankly,
*WHO* can visualize "Lake Titicaca has a volume of 300,000,000 litres?