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

[wayne]

Hello, Each!

Interesting arguments.  I say, "Thank God for the French, 10x10x10x10 and
the S.I.units system!"  Otherwise we would still be trying to convert
between inches, feet, yards, chains, roods, acres - not to mention farthings
and pounds ....and the rest!

But it is all academic because the Americans are not likely to convert from
their brand of Imperial Units to S.I.  So, I will take bets that one day
some idiot - a paid yank goon - will stand up in Parliament and suggest that
we convert to the American Imperial system.

Ooops, sorry about the emotion.

By the way...  A thousand million is a billion in this country, ie 10^9.
Ooops again.


----- Original Message -----
From: John Knight <anarchist_tomato at hotmail.com>
To: <plug at plug.linux.org.au>
Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2001 11:06 AM
Subject: Re: [plug] billion (was Unix Epoch: 1 billion seconds breakfast
function.)


>
> This I'm well aware of due to all the feedback from when I was asking what
> sort of spelling people would prefer for the en_GB translation of KDE.
>
> I previously didn't have time to explain myself more effectively. The
> English language certainly is "frenchied" but I can see the US using 10^9
> simply because the English didn't.
>
> >
> >On Mon,  3 Sep 2001 12:15, John Knight wrote:
> > >
> > > I can see why the Americans used the French version, as the US dialect
> >is
> > > based around being independent from English.
> >
> >Actually, it is the English usage that is Frenchified.  It was the style
of
> >the times to make the language seem more dignified.  When Webster wrote
his
> >dictionary he chose to simplify the spelling of certain words and to make
> >American English distinct from English English.
> >
> >skribe
> >--
> >Public key information available at:
> >http://www.amber.com.au/~skribe/publickey.html
> >Key fingerprint = A855 9CA3 953B 5195 C518  12F2 0E05 DCCD 5A88 E8A4
> >
> >You will never know hunger.
> >
>
>
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>
>