[plug] billion (was Unix Epoch: 1 billion seconds breakfast function.)

[Greg Mildenhall]

On Mon, 3 Sep 2001, John Knight wrote:
> Also, a million is a thousand thousands, shouldn't that make it a billion is 
> logically a million millions?

How it is meant to work:
BI-llion     = Million^2
TRI-llion    = Million^3
QUAD-rillion = Million^4
etc.

Notice the correspondence between root and exponent?

Sadly, this confused the Americans somehow, I suspect it is a symptom of
their inflationary addiction to sensationalist hyperbola.

-Greg