What Stinking feet is it anyways??

http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/faq.shtml
What are the "official" conversions that are used by NGS to convert 1) meters to inches, and 2) meters to feet?

[This explaination courtesy of Ed McKay]

First, remember this rule: There is only one meter, BUT, there are
two types of feet.
 
The two types of feet are:

 1. The U.S. Survey Foot
 It is defined as: 1 meter = 39.37 inches.
 If you divide 39.37 by 12 (12 inches per foot), you get the
 conversion factor: 1 meter = 3.280833333... U.S. Survey Feet.

 2. The International Foot
 It is defined as: 1 inch = 2.54 centimeters.
 If you convert this to meters and feet, you get the conversion
 factor: 1 International Foot = 0.3048 meters.

These two conversion factors produce results that differ by 2 parts per
million; hence for most practical work it does not make any difference
to the average surveyor which one is used since they usually do not
encounter distances this large. For example, converting a distance of
304,800 meters (about 1,000,000 feet) to feet using the two conversion
factors, these are the results:

 304,800 meters = 999,998.000 U.S. Survey Feet
 304,800 meters = 1,000,000.000 International Feet

A difference of 2 feet in 1 million feet.