13 May
2010
13 May
'10
5:49 a.m.
You mean, kind of like "aluminium?"
I will never, ever refer to a kilo-, mega-, giga-, ... bytes in kibi-, mibi-, gibi, ...
that sounds dumb. Oh, and Pluto is still a planet. ;)
On May 13, 2010, at 4:15 AM, Roger Holmes wrote:
On 10 May 2010, at 21:29, cctalk-request at classiccmp.org wrote:
Message: 26
Date: Mon, 10 May 2010 13:28:32 -0700
From: "Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com>
Subject: Re: Greatest videogame device (was Re: An option - Re:
thebeginningof
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Message-ID: <4BE80A00.31785.DF06BA at cclist.sydex.com>
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On 10 May 2010 at 19:11, Andrew Burton wrote:
About ten years ago the BBC made an official statement that when talking about money, a
billion would mean a thousand million but elsewhere it would mean a million million.
To me a number is a number and that was b......t but the problem is US has a bit too much
influence on broadcasting, you only have to look at the questions on the UK version of
'who wants to be a millionaire' where they asked what you would do with a
'brown betty' in a fairly low value question. The contestant and I guess 75% of
the audience had no idea. Of course the other 25% might have just guessed randomly.
Actually there is really no excuse for creating confusion as they could just as easily
talk about GigaPounds or GigaDollars or for 10^12, TeraPounds/Dollars.
I have no problem with the many americanisms in my life but to me numbers are sacrosanct.
Just because a single US journalist made a mistake in the 1930s should not make us all
roll over and play dead on a matter of principal.
Roger (UK born and bred)
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?
Well, as I mentioned, I listen to the BBC World Service a lot and
today they were taling about the ECB bailout fund as being one
Trillion dollars.
Economics aside, I don't think they were talking about 10**18
simoleons, unless they were Zimbabwean simoleons.
If the BBC uses the short form billion, trillion, then it's pretty
safe to assume that the long form is sunsetting.
--Chuck