> I remember the frustration as kid getting a book of designs from the US and having none of them work quite right.
"Not quite right" means even more fun. We used a non-standard paper format, the resulting planes were a little bit different than shown and this made them unique.
Fun story: when the Soviets tried to reverse-engineer captured B-29s bombers (into Tupolev Tu-4s) they had a lot of trouble because their production of sheet aluminium, rivets, etc. was done in metric sizes, whereas the B-29 used imperial-sized components, and thus extensive re-engineering was required to compensate the slight differences in thickness (and thus in weight and balance) of all components.
I wonder if this justifies the US adherence to the imperial standard - meaning it acts as a basic barrier to entry for other countries who use the "world" standard.
Compatibility usually gains you more than you lose. If you can't make US planes with parts from the rest of the world then that does mean other countries can't make US planes, but that also means that the US manufacturers can't import parts from elsewhere.
Not quite the same thing, but since you mention Galactica and her non-networked systems, I believe watching this show should be required of anyone even tangentially considering work in an IoT project.
"Not quite right" means even more fun. We used a non-standard paper format, the resulting planes were a little bit different than shown and this made them unique.