From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 12014d,7134e36a23e57417 X-Google-Thread: 103376,aa463d25bcbdaa7 X-Google-Attributes: gid12014d,gid103376,public X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news1.google.com!news2.google.com!proxad.net!proxad.net!easynet-quince!easynet.net!feed4.jnfs.ja.net!feed2.jnfs.ja.net!jnfs.ja.net!gemini.csx.cam.ac.uk!news.cam.ac.uk!pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk!news.cam.ac.uk!viterbi.cl.cam.ac.uk!n04W44+mgk25 From: n04W44+mgk25@cl.cam.ac.uk (Markus Kuhn) Newsgroups: misc.metric-system,comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: decimal separator (international? Date: 29 Oct 2004 11:22:09 GMT Organization: University of Cambridge, England Sender: mgk25@viterbi.cl.cam.ac.uk (Markus Kuhn) Message-ID: References: <8h34o0dbc2h70ojvsst879nfkthko7suok@4ax.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: viterbi.cl.cam.ac.uk X-Newsreader: xrn 9.02 Xref: g2news1.google.com misc.metric-system:1405 comp.lang.ada:5846 Date: 2004-10-29T11:22:09+00:00 List-Id: jcb@inf.ed.ac.uk (Julian Bradfield) writes: |> I would confuse almost all of my compatriots. Sometime in the |> 1970s, the Treasury announced it would start using American billions, |> because all the numbers it wanted to talk about were of that |> order. That infected the rest of society. Confusingly, the French used |> to use the American system (they invented it both). Gigapounds and teradollars seem perfectly acceptable solutions today, especially since computing has introduced these SI prefixes into common vernacular. Markus -- Markus Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ || CB3 0FD, Great Britain