Re: Another easter egg in gnome-something...
On Wed, Sep 12, 2001 at 06:46:12PM +0100, Martin_J Carter wrote:
> 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.
As an English English teacher, I've been watching this
degeneration for thirty years. I don't think anyone ever
really said 'milliard' - it was always 'thousand million'
in my experience, 'milliard' was just continental. And I
have the feeling that it was arch-blockhead Margaret
Thatcher with her famous b-b-billion that turned the tide -
or perhaps just dealt the final blow - in the battle.
The derogatory use of 'hacker', by the way, is international.
>
> > 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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