A4 paper

So I finally have the remotest clue what the deal is with A4 paper (and as a result why the rest of the world feels the need to use it and screw up my print jobs, and make life difficult in LaTeX sometimes). Basically, there’s a slashdot post on it that points to this page that discusses some of the ideas behind why A4 is the size it is. Apparently all metric paper has a height-to-width ratio of the square root of 2. Somehow that doesn’t make me any happier when the printer at work jams because someone has tried to print a conference paper in A4 format… Goofy metric folk.