HP shows smallest pod in the world, talks HPC Now that every vendor has a shipping container (pod) computing solution, how do you differentiate your offering? You can’t go bigger and stick to the form factor. But wait a minute: you can go smaller… hmmm... Stalking the floor at SC09, we believed we found Hewlett-Packard pursuing this strategy with its new pod. The …
The embedded link to the exhaustive set of cubit/palm conversions doesn't work in the article above. If I know anything about Reg readers, I know that there will be folks that want to know if my Roman cubit calculations are correct or will also want to convert into Persian cubits, Greek cubits, or Salmis cubits. Here's the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubit#Other_important_cubits
The anglo-american crowd shows its lack of practical experience with the metric system.
"about 18” tall" does not translate to "45.72 cm". Look at a ruler to get an idea about the level of accuracy you imply (your rulers have metric on the other side, right?), don't just copy and paste from the calculator. Just say "about 45 cm" or even "about 0.5 m". I guess the distinction is hard if you're not used to thinking in metric.
Reminds me of the milk bottle I saw in a UK supermarket that said "2 pints, 1.13652 liters". Could I complain if the volume was off by a hundredth of a milliliter?
Another favourite is the use of grams in anglo-american cooking recipes for our "benefit". Who the heck measures flour by the gram? Come on, 1 cup is 2 deciliters for all practical purposes, you need to manually fine tune the consistency of the dough/batter anyway. In my kitchen we use a deciliter measure, a table spoon, a teaspoon and fingers for pinches.
A pint because it's a recognized unit for beer world wide.
Exactly. For some reason or other, the US pint is only 16floz. I was always taught that "a pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter" - i.e. 1 pint = 20 floz.
Anyway, it's because the Americans get their measurement of a pint wrong that the US quart and gallon (still 2 and 8 pints respectively, but smaller pints) are smaller than real quarts and gallons.
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