Re: OT: Standards was Re: Does everything depend on everything?
On Sat, Oct 31, 2009 at 4:05 PM, Johannes Wiedersich
<johannes@physik.blm.tu-muenchen.de> wrote:
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> Dennis Wicks wrote:
>> Sadly, only three nations have the good sense not to spend 10's of
>> millions of their GNP converting to Yet Another Arbitrary System Of
>> Measurement. Burma, Liberia, and the United States.
>
> FWIW, I don't think that it makes sense that different countries, etc.
> use different sets of standards. The standards [1] of the ISO [2] are
> not 'Yet Another Arbitrary System Of Measurement'. They are *the* common
> standard that exists.
I wish that were true, but it is not. It is just ISO propoganda.
> All other systems are arbitrary (ie. different for
> different countries, different purposes, etc.).
Wrong. The system of natural units is not arbitrary. So it is the
One True System if you want to get religious about it.
However, the individual metrics in all possible systems, including
those based on natural units, have several equivalent forms, the
choice of which is necessarily arbitrary, but only slightly.
>
> Note that this very mailing list would not exist in its present form, if
> instead of a common standard there were different implementations for
> email for the different applications and/or countries.
By that reasoning the US component of this mailing list is necessarily
incompatible with the rest of the internet. Since that conclusion is
manifestly false either your factr or your reasoning is wrong. IMHO
both are.
> There are many
> more examples, why common standards are important.
That statement confuses "common" with "right", which is a serious
error. It also implicitly assumes that "common standards" are
intolerant of alternatives, which is also manifestly wrong.
And at one time the ISO system was uncommon, so it would have been
subject to the same criticisms that you now level against its
competitors. That indicates that your assertions are based on the
shifting sands of history and its accidents rather than on objectively
measureable merits. So why should anyone care about the current fads
of metricians? After all they are certain to change. (C.F. the
shrinkage in the ISO national standards for weight as compared to the
master standard.)
Please consider these propositions:
Resolved: that the existence of standards is a Good Thing(tm).
Resolved: that the existence of standards zealotry is a Bad Thing(tm).
Since we have adequate standards we should not tolerate any kind of
standards zealotry.
-- Lee
P.S. Astute observers will note that the Imperial/American system of
units has already been converted to an ISO basis. That is why the
modern inch is DEFINED to be 2.54 cm. -- L.
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