On 6/16/2012 2:54 PM, andy pugh wrote: > On 16 June 2012 18:48, Dave <e...@dc9.tzo.com> wrote: >>>> I suspect real estate was also to be a holdout, hell, nobody around here >> has a clue what a hectar is, not even me.<< >> >> I think that Hectars are english also, as well as fathoms, etc. > No, the Hectare is metric. > > An Are is an area 1km x 1km. A Hectare is 1/100 of that. So, a hectare > is the area of a square 100m on a side. > (1 million square metres to the Are, 10,000m^2 to the hectare.) >
Real estate is all about land records. Even in the relatively young US, land records now stretch back 300 years. No way anybody is going to be in a hurry to convert them to some newfangled system of units. GPS is no panacea. Almost no one's land deed, and certainly not mine, is described in terms that are easily confirmed by GPS survey, and even if I resurveyed my property I'd have to convince all my adjoining neighbors to go along as well as the county-record office before I could use the new measures in a sale of my property. Taint a cheap proposition even if everyone is being reasonable about it, and how often are people reasonable about land? Things are changing in land management , more because of the spread of GIS than anything else, but they are changing very slowly considering the technologies involved were settled decades ago. Standards, including units of measure, are intimately tied to commerce; hence my former employer, NIST, nee NBS, is in the US Department of Commerce. There have been least three official attempts at metrification in the USA in my lifetime, several of which NBS played a role in. None really took root (I exclude engineers and scientists) although many items on the shelves of stores I frequent are now marked in both "English" and "metric" units. Simplistically, I think it's because export of goods and services accounts for little more than 10 percent of our gross domestic product. That's a little tail on a big dog. This is a people problem that is not unique to the US. Look at the UK. Even though export accounts for some 30 percent of its GDP I know from firsthand experience that there is still a sizable resistance to SI. In neither the US nor the UK has legislation and its implementing regulations been completely successful. Lots of trade will give those who have the ability to change a monetary incentive to do so and lots of time will allow those who can't change to die away. Standards are intimately tied to agreements as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilogram gives a nice sampling of the work that has been going into reaching international agreement on the redefinition of the kilogram. Regards, Kent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
