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While most countries have Le Système International d’Unités ( SI), this seems to be one more reason to delve into the Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight system of units of measurement which draws its attraction from being conservative and off-beat at the same time. The three Fs stand for:
One very convenient unit deduced from this set is the 1-millionth part of the fundamental time unit of FFF, which equals 1.2096 seconds, and is a typical example of computer nerd humour. As the story goes, "The VMS operating system has a lot of tuning parameters that you can set with the SYSGEN utility, and one of these is TIMEPROMPTWAIT, the time the system will wait for an operator to set the correct date and time at boot if it realizes that the current value is bogus. This time is specified in microfortnights."[1]
The joke is in having a rather large, obsolete unit (fortnight) combined with a fractional SI prefix ( micro) to counteract that. The practical purpose is to discourage setting such parameters without some thought.
Another example which shows this principle is the nanocentury. Another derived time unit, reducing a rather large time span ( century) by preceding it with a fractional prefix ( nanoNano is a prefix (symbol n in the SI system of units denoting a factor of 10-9. It is often used in prefixing time and length units encountered in electronics and computer systems, like 30 nanoseconds (symbol ns) and 100 nanometers (nm). It was confirmed). As Tom DuffTom Duff Thomas Douglas Selkirk Duff born December 8, 1952) is a computer programmer. He was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and grew up in Toronto and Leaside. In 1974 he graduated from the University of Waterloo with a B. and, two years later, got a M. at Bell LabsBell Telephone Laboratories or Bell Labs was originally the research and development arm of the United States Bell System, and was the premier corporate facility of its type, developing a range of revolutionary technologies from telephone switches to spec correctly pointed out: "How many seconds are there in a year? If I tell you there are 3.155 × 107, you won't even try to remember it. On the other hand, who could forget that, to within half a percent, πOr pi with a lower-case p . minuscule, or lower-case, pi The mathematical constant (written as pi when the Greek letter is not available) is ubiquitous in mathematics and physics. In Euclidean plane geometry, π may be defined as either the ratio of a c seconds is a nanocentury."[2]
It is also recorded, for example, that one computer science professor used to characterize the standard length of his lectureA lecture is a talk on a particular subject given in order to teach people about that subject, for example by a university or college teacher. Criticised by educators and methodologists for its typical one-way communication, lectures have nevertheless surs (a little less than an hourIn modern usage, an hour is defined as a unit of time 60 minutes, or 3600 seconds in length. It is approximately 1/24 of a median Earth day. There is also the hour of right ascension a unit of both time and angle. Earlier definitions of the hour: One twel) as a microcentury.[3]