10 May
2010
10 May
'10
11:11 a.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 09, 2010 9:03 PM
Subject: Re: Greatest videogame device (was Re: An option - Re:
thebeginningof
On 9 May 2010 at 14:42, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
So what I earlier referred to as being 'mis-informed' is actually language
specific?
So if someone in the US orders a billion <insert item here> from a company
in the UK, how many of the item should they expect to receive?! Is that why
orders are given in numbers and not words, and why cheques have both?
Regards,
Andrew B
aliensrcooluk at yahoo.co.uk
Andrew Burton wrote:
If you're talking about the long scale vs. short scale debate, it has
nothing to do with being misinformed. It has more to do with
"C-O-L-O-R" vs. "C-O-L-O-U-R".
"Thousand million" is a good disambiguator that seems to be
comprehesible on either side of the pond. At Wolfram Mathword, under
the term "milliard":
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Milliard.html
"In French and German usage, one milliard equals 10^9=1000000000.
American usage does not have a number called the milliard, instead
using the term billion to denote 10^9. British usage, while formerly
using "milliard," has in recent years adopted the American convention
(Mish 2003, p. 852). This constitutes a fortunate development for
standardization of terminology, albeit a somewhat regrettable
development from the point of view that the (former) British
convention for representing large numbers is simpler and more logical
than the American one.
Do you
really think that we can successfully correct the meaning of
"hackers"?
About as much chance as correcting the modern mis-informed erm...
non-geeks about the terms billion and trillion.