Re: Another easter egg in gnome-something...
Quoth Neal H Walfield <neal@cs.uml.edu> 2001-09-12 18:19:30:
>> It looks like we're getting confused between the UK billion and the American billion. (Apologies to all other countries who
>use one or the other.)
>>
>> American (including Unix) = 10^9
>> British = 10^12
>
>What the heck do the British call 10^9?
A milliard, IIRC. (Or perhaps that's a thousandth
of a skinhead.) Unfortunately, the UK meeja have
now polluted the English language so thoroughly
that most Brits think a billion is 10^9, and that
"hacker" == "vermin" -- but that's a rant for another
day.
> And further more, is 10^15 a
>trillion (in the British system)?
Nope, a real trillion is 10^18. Not sure what 10^15 is, as
I'm away from my dictionaries .... Any more literate Brits
out there?
MaJoC
----
Dr M J Carter
Physics and Astronomy
University of Nottingham
E-mail: Martin.J.Carter@nottingham.ac.uk
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