Originally Posted by
Cloudship
The resistance on the consumer side (which is fairly small, especially because few people realize it is coming) has mostly to do with having to remember yet another passcode, and some confusion about debit cards and whether that means if someone steals your card and code, are they now going to be able to take all your money in one transaction.
I don't see how this is any different than a mag stripe debit card, except that chips are more secure from interception and less prone to failure from use than the mag stripes.
I don't know how your card and pin can both be stolen at the same time, anyway, unless you're one of those foolish, foolish people who writes the pin on the back of the card. If you're that stupid, you don't deserve to have a debit card.
Originally Posted by
Cloudship
The bigger resistance is on the business side, which had a lot to do with regulations, which have now been dealt with, and the cost to small businesses to update their equipment.
The cost of equipment updates is substantial, especially to small businesses who might get the cheapest reader available and use it until it falls to dust. I don't blame smaller businesses one bit for being resistant to change, though I hope that cheap, mobile-device-based chip and pin readers are available, like those available for mag stripe cards (i.e. Square and other such devices). The changover might have to be slow, but hopefully it's inevitable.
Originally Posted by
Cloudship
About Metric...
You may be confusing precision with accuracy. Accuracy is how close to the actual value you come. Precision is about units - for instance 1 decimal place versus 2. The concern is that most metric measurements require lots of decimal places to get to the same level of precision as the imperial system.
But there are actually a couple of more important reasons. For one, imperial is actually a little bit easier when you understand it. You are dividing base 12, which means division is easier than base 10 (you can divide 12 by more denominators and get whole numbers than you can 10). Plus, you don't actually HAVE to do the math, you just write a fraction! Another factor is that it is more real world based. Metric may have very precise bases for its measurement units, but they don't relate anywhere near as well as imperial does for the base unit. An inch is about the distance from the end of a thumb to the first knuckle. A foot is about a foot.
Imperial is Base 12? Based on what? The fact that there are 12 inches in a foot? Because that's the ONLY 12-based division in the entire Imperial system. Everything else is based on dividing things in half and half and half again, which is less precise than decimals.
Rulers are typically marked in 1/2", 1/4", 1/8", 1/16", 1/32", and sometimes 1/64" increments. Building trades seldom go lower than 1/8". Automotive and appliance measurements seldom go below 1/32. Machinists tend to use decimal inches rather than fractions, i.e. 1.004" instead of 1-1/256".
Anything fraction-based is confusing as hell compared to the simplicity of decimals. Trying to add 12'-2 7/64" plus 19 5/8" is a lot harder than adding 3711.169mm plus 498.475mm. Decimals, whether inches or mm, can be added easily without conversion. Fractions require conversion to the lowest common denominator, and when you mix yards, feet, and inches together, you cave to convert yet again to get everything into the same units before you can even begin to deal with the fractions or decimals.
As to "relateability", what is more relatable than counting to ten? Base-ten math is our go-to precisely because it's the most relatable base, since humans default number of fingers and toes is ten.
Neither thumb length nor foot length are anywhere close to being a "relatable" common frame of reference. Trying to say that an inch is the length of your thumb is dumb, because all thumbs are unique, and vary wildly among individuals of different genders, age groups, racial groups, and body types. And have you been in a shoe store lately? How long is a foot? Anywhere from 7" to 14", and that's just the adult feet.
Besides, that argument is a non-starter. When people think about inches, feet, yards, or miles, they never think about thumbs and
brazos, they think about the inch-foot rulers and yardsticks we grew up with. THOSE are the real-world objects they relate to measurements, and that mental relationship can be established among schoolchildren just as easily with a CM ruler and a meter stick as they have been with rulers and yardsticks.
Originally Posted by
Cloudship
Temperature is realistically based around what is the coldest most people encountered long ago and 100 was about as hot. Who the heck experiences when water boils? And we often gt temperatures well below when water freezes, so why have to go negative?
That in the end is why the US has been able to stick with it - being more consumer/public driven, the government has not had the power to force change even when it didn't improve things.
Are you kidding? So 0F is as cold as it gets and 100F is as hot as it gets, like anywhere that people live? You do realize that even in ancient times, before the Imperial system was created, people knew that it got colder up north and hotter down south, right? Even for an American, that's a ridiculously parochial attitude; everybody knows it gets well below zero in the upper midwest and well above 100 in the desert southwest. Is 0F relatable to someone who lives in Miami? Is 100F relatable to someone who lives in the Upper Peninsula? How realistic is any of that?
And by the way - we've ALL experienced boiling water. Temperature is not just for measuring the air, it's also for measuring, well, EVERYTHING. I don't care where you grew up or where you live, every human being on earth has at some point in their lives encountered boiling water.
Frankly, is Imperial is so much better and/or easier than metric, why has it been abandoned by THE ENTIRE WORLD except for three stubborn hold-out nations (at least one of which is in the process of officially switching over now)?
In the end, the US looks like a bunch of April Fools for not having switched to metric five or six decades ago.