Solution: How to shift the decimal

[fornit]

non-US point of view: imperial units suck badly.
you cant calculate with them because they dont match the numbering system and you have to remember the numeric relations between them one by one because they are all different.
with metric units there is exactly one thing to remember: the number 10. bonus points if you know kilo-, dezi, centi-, milli- etc. which are kinda hard to forget with words like century and stuff.

i do understand why its not easy to get rid of imperial units. but objectively, they still suck.
what you forget when you dismiss all those example calculations is that in the metric system they arent just easier - they dont exist at all. because it fits the numeric system you just add zeros. thats something any moron can do. so there really are a lot of everyday calculations that are much easier in the metric system.

[1713558567]

1713558567

[1713558567]

1713558567

[1713558567]

1713558567

[westkybitcoins]

non-US point of view: imperial units suck badly.
you cant calculate with them because they dont match the numbering system and you have to remember the numeric relations between them one by one because they are all different.
with metric units there is exactly one thing to remember: the number 10. bonus points if you know kilo-, dezi, centi-, milli- etc. which are kinda hard to forget with words like century and stuff.

i do understand why its not easy to get rid of imperial units. but objectively, they still suck.
what you forget when you dismiss all those example calculations is that in the metric system they arent just easier - they dont exist at all. because it fits the numeric system you just add zeros. thats something any moron can do. so there really are a lot of everyday calculations that are much easier in the metric system.

I really need to observe several instances of average, non-mathlete Joe Blows discussing such calculations in metric in real life, without the aid of pen-and-paper or some device, to see the frequency and types of errors commonly made.

While I expect the error rate to be somewhat less, I suspect it's not as close to zero as we're being lead to believe.

[payb.tc]

[the imperial system is] still easier for many (most?) people to use.

  have you ever travelled?

[Dansker]

To reply to OP: I think this is a great idea, and I'm sure it's how it will be done, once the need for it arises.

I'd prefer for it to already happen actually, psychologically it would make people feel like they have a lot more coins!

[2112]

I used metric during my military career.

Your military career is nothing to be proud of, unless you've got dishonorable discharge. The military career in the USA is pretty much an extended indoctrination in blind obedience and training for involuntary automatic behaviors. You are just repeatedly showing your deeply ingrained fear responses: I still remember your post regarding ARRL/FCC:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53371.msg636677#msg636677

This is an international forum and you can be assured that this forum has many members who have enough perspective to compare various ex-military types: USA service veterans, ex-USSR  Dedovshchina survivors, ex-Israeli Defense Force conscripts, etc.

If it is more than a 10 years from your discharge, then your continuous thinking in terms of obedience is just your personal psychological problem. You should have taken advantage of the discounted travel opportunities right after your discharge.

Your posts put me in a difficult spot. On one hand I don't want to make ad-hominem comments about you personally. On the other hand you are just such a model example of the human costs that the military-industrial complex dumps into the broader society of the USA. I need to find a better writing style that puts more stress on the general and be less personal.

Initially this thread was about shifting a decimal point (or decimal comma) in a numbers. But as many other threads it had to turn into a group psychoanalysis session. This forum has a lot of young readers. I would like to encourage them to spend some time studying industrial and organizational psychology. Maybe the shortest message I cam make is that MoonShadow's position is quite widespread in the USA, but it isn't representing a vast majority.

Here's an example of a very thread that is very similar psychologically, but about completely different subject:

How mining GeistGeld/Tenebrix can get you a prison sentence in the US

And by the way: "American Standard" is a bathroom fixture company: http://www.americanstandard-us.com/

[legolouman]

Basically, you are trying to inflate the bitcoin on itself. It makes great sense, considering the ability to go to satoshi levels (uBTC).

[2112]

It's not just inertia that's preventing the US from switching, it's
just rank, dumb, chauvinistic, patriotic misplaced pride, the
hallmark of a nation that - on average - barely knows the rest
of the world existed until said world decided to come and blow
up a couple of their buildings.

Dear znort987!

Please don't go overboard with your rhetoric. USofA was/is a leader in many industries and they don't need to be ashamed of that. They are also pretty much insular nation spanning almost whole half-continent. They wouldn't reap that much benefit from the adoption of SI.

Please ponder this a bit next time you are traveling on a jet plane at a "Flight Level" expressed in hundreds of feet: which continent was first to introduce a comprehensive civilian air-traffic management system and why?

Besides, PC LOAD LETTER sounds funnier than PC LOAD A4.

[westkybitcoins]

[the imperial system is] still easier for many (most?) people to use.

  have you ever travelled?

I've actually spent several years in a metric-using country. Just didn't have much chance to delve into complex conversions with it, or observe others doing so (sounds strange, but it's really not; no need to delve into it.)

I'm speaking of "easier" from the standpoint of innately, and for simple usage, assuming the relevant terms (quart, gallon, pint or deci-, deca-, centi-) are already well-known by the group.

I don't intend to live or die by that statement though; I'm not emotionally invested in using either.

And in a strained attempt to bring this back on topic....

It seems clear bitcoin should stay metric.

And with that in mind, I still think clients should start presenting three decimal places minimum on bitcoin amounts. I see no downside to it.

[PrintCoins]

.01 BTC = 1 BTCe-2
OR 1e-2 BTC
OR 1 BTC:e-2
OR 1 BTC-2
(what looks best?... idonno)

There, now you guys are covered for the next million years. No need to learn a new symbol every few years, just change the exponent for the scientific notation.

[2112]

And with that in mind, I still think clients should start presenting three decimal places minimum on bitcoin amounts. I see no downside to it.

So, to pour some gasoline into this fire, how should one thousand of bitcoins be shown to the user:

1)
1,000.000
2)
1.000,000
3)

1

000

000

4)
something else?

[Portnoy]

don't completely knock the imperial system (or other similar ones;) its emergence made sense...

Yup, as much as any fiat* makes sense.  


* an arbitrary decree or pronouncement, especially by a person or group of persons having absolute authority to enforce it: The king ruled by fiat.


"From henceforth this official unit of measure - which we shall call the rudebit - shall have the same length as this part of my body."        

[westkybitcoins]

And with that in mind, I still think clients should start presenting three decimal places minimum on bitcoin amounts. I see no downside to it.

So, to pour some gasoline into this fire, how should one thousand of bitcoins be shown to the user:

1)
1,000.000
2)
1.000,000
3)

1

000

000

4)
something else?

Oh, my...

 

I have no idea how common it is to represent one-tenth of a unit as 0,1 as opposed to 0.1.

I would think the client would adjust this when choosing a language, but I've never checked. I *do* feel the separator between the 1 and first 0 in the third option cleanly side-steps any controversy. Could be wrong though....

[MoonShadow]

There is no case of a population voluntarily moving to metric in the absence of government influence.  None.  I don't blame Europe for getting together for a common standard, because their imperial units were all screwed up and different from one another; but base 10 units only work well on paper, not in the human mind.  Most of the American standard units are based upon halving of larger known units, thus base two.  It's easier for the human mind to visualize halving and quartering of larger units than one-tenthing, which has much to do with why the American public never embraced the Metric Standard.  

Yes, we've heard it all before. And it superficially makes sense, as long as
all you're interested in is chopping wood lengths ... until the day you have to
figure out how many gallons of paint to get from your local home depot to
repaint your house and the calculation requires a calculator and 2 hours of
scribbling figures on paper to get from inches, feet, the square thereof to
gallons. LOL.

Are you trying to imply that you wouldn't need a calculator to do this in metric?  I sure would need one.

In metric ?

No I wouldn't, and neither would you.

That you don't even realize that is proving my point rather well.

Really?  Alright then, show me how you can get from cm to liters of paint in metric.  Without using a computing device or a conversion table.

[MoonShadow]

Again, there is not a single case of a nation moving to metric because the public voluntarily did so in the absence of some kind of government edict.  Not a single one. 

This, is probably the single worst argument I've ever heard
in favor of the imperial system. Notice how I said "imperial",
as in Empire, as in this system that was forced down the throat
of unsuspecting nations conquered by the brits when they were
busy raping half of the rest of the world.

The American Standard is based upon English Imperial, to be sure, but not only is it not quite the same (it's 'evolved' since then, there are several less commonly used units that have no English corollary) it continues to exist, along with metric, because Americans continue to choose it.  I have an American built car that has both Miles-per-hour and Kilometers-per-hour on my speedometer, this is required by government edict.  Every freeway sign in my state since ~1999 has distances expressed in both systems, also by fiat.  I know many (mostly former military) people in my city that could quote you distances in both systems without any obvious mental effort whatever, but the only time I've seen driving directions preferred in km was when I overheard a conversation between the counter attendant at Mammoth Cave National Park (a young woman of about 20) giving driving directions to some 30-something guy who (by his accent first, and confirmed later when I saw his license plate) was Canadian.  He couldn't wrap his head around miles, but this young woman switched from miles to klicks without missing a beat.  Which, considering her rather thick southern drawl, I know that most people (from other American states) would have assumed she was uneducated.  I'm pretty certain that she has never had to use metric for anything growing up, beyond school work.

It's not just inertia that's preventing the US from switching, it's
just rank, dumb, chauvinistic, patriotic misplaced pride, the
hallmark of a nation that - on average - barely knows the rest
of the world existed until said world decided to come and blow
up a couple of their buildings.

Says you. I use metric at work nearly every day.  I maintain massive plastics injection presses and assembly lines for a living.  I have to have both sets of tools, because even though most machines are American Standard, there are many machines that only Germans seem to make.  I find it amusing that metric bolts don't come in as wide a standard spectrum as AS bolts, and to compensate there are fractional metric bolts in the millimeter range.  The engineers there really hit the roof whenever someone finds a metric bolt in a fractional size that also fine threaded.  Those have to be special ordered, even though I could buy the closest AS equivalent at Home Depot.  The early engineers who developed the standard spectrum of AS bolt sizes during the Industrial Revolution didn't just pull those fractional inch sizes out of their hind ends, nor did they say "hey, I think an eleven-thirtyseconds just sounds good!"  Yet the standard specturm of Metric Allen bolts run from 3 mm to about 20 mm hitting every integer number with a couple of oddball fractionals in there for more specific purposes.  The standard units were obviously chosen to match the metric system units, not their engineering design goals.  I'm pretty sure the same can be said for just about every aspect of metric tooling and hardware.

[MoonShadow]

I used metric during my military career.

Your military career is nothing to be proud of, unless you've got dishonorable discharge. The military career in the USA is pretty much an extended indoctrination in blind obedience and training for involuntary automatic behaviors. You are just repeatedly showing your deeply ingrained fear responses: I still remember your post regarding ARRL/FCC:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=53371.msg636677#msg636677

I think I should be offended, but I have no idea what point you are actually trying to make here.  Can you point out my error in either the above crosspost, or the current thread?

[MoonShadow]

There is no case of a population voluntarily moving to metric in the absence of government influence.  None.  I don't blame Europe for getting together for a common standard, because their imperial units were all screwed up and different from one another; but base 10 units only work well on paper, not in the human mind.  Most of the American standard units are based upon halving of larger known units, thus base two.  It's easier for the human mind to visualize halving and quartering of larger units than one-tenthing, which has much to do with why the American public never embraced the Metric Standard.  

Yes, we've heard it all before. And it superficially makes sense, as long as
all you're interested in is chopping wood lengths ... until the day you have to
figure out how many gallons of paint to get from your local home depot to
repaint your house and the calculation requires a calculator and 2 hours of
scribbling figures on paper to get from inches, feet, the square thereof to
gallons. LOL.

Are you trying to imply that you wouldn't need a calculator to do this in metric?  I sure would need one.

In metric ?

No I wouldn't, and neither would you.

That you don't even realize that is proving my point rather well.

Really?  Alright then, show me how you can get from cm to liters of paint in metric.  Without using a computing device or a conversion table.

Fairly simple: when you go buy paint, you read what it says on the label.

What you get is something along the lines of: this pot of 10L will cover a
surface of 50 square meters.

The same process applies equally to square footage coverage per gallon of paint.  I had assumed that you were talking about something other than reading the label and taking their word for it.

[PrintCoins]

I really don't think having a little character signify the decimal point moving is useful for new users (and people that don't want to remember what character means what)

Using the scientific notation makes it easy.

0.01 -> 1e-2

Look I just moved the decimal over 2 places.

Or
0.000001 -> 1e-6 ... which if you want to have a little decimal -> 0.1e-5

It is nice and clean, and once you learn it, you never need to guess what some strange character means.

[SkRRJyTC]

Assuming a BTC success scenario, anyone care to speculate if it would be better to shift the decimal sooner or later?

[kjj]

Assuming a BTC success scenario, anyone care to speculate if it would be better to shift the decimal sooner or later?

Heh.  Where have you been?  It really looks like everyone wants to speculate about that.

Thing is, there is no reason to try to make this a broad decision.  In the long run, there will be multiple clients, and each user will be able to decide on the representation that they prefer.

[Technomage]

Exactly. One should be able to choose between BTC, mBTC and uBTC, easy and conveniently. My opinion is that once these options are made available and are a little more relevant than they are now, mBTC should be the default. We have little need for uBTC in the foreseeable future. But the option should be there, just like there would be a BTC option.

Edit: In fact I think that it would be a good idea to add these options right now, simply keep the default as BTC for now. Change it to mBTC when it becomes relevant and to uBTC when that becomes relevant, which is much later.