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Weed_O_Whirler t1_j4w3ih1 wrote

Reply to comment by liquid_at in Whats stopping us from sending a probe into a black hole if we haven't already? by stealth941

The nearest black hole to us isn't 1.6 lightyears away, it's 1600 lightyears away.

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liquid_at t1_j4w4ajz wrote

sorry, my mistake. (US and Europe use "." and "," in different ways")

So it's 622,000x as far away and would take 28m years. (or 1000x as long)

Same argument though. Anything exceeding the life-time of a few generations on earth is currently unfeasible.

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urzu_seven t1_j4zbbyc wrote

FYI the difference in "." and "," isn't a Europe/US difference. The UK also uses the decimal point "." as do most English speaking countries along with former British colonies such as India and Pakistan. Additionally Most of East Asia also uses the decimal point, including China, Japan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Malaysia. Indonesia and Vietnam are the exceptions in that region. Most of Central America and the Caribbean does too, with Cuba and the Dominican Republic being exceptions (plus a few of the smaller islands and overseas territories of European countries).

Additionally, due largely to English's influence on their development, most major computer languages use the decimal point (and don't use thousand's separators at all). Some computers and programs CAN handle input as text that uses the decimal comma, but its not universal.

Long story short though, in English you're better off using the decimal point to avoid confusion.

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liquid_at t1_j4zfr7m wrote

I can handle both, but when switching between sources it's easy to mix things up.

Every programmer had to suffer through that inconsistency in numbers.

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