From: jcb@inf.ed.ac.uk (Julian Bradfield)
Subject: Re: decimal separator (international?
Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 15:29:49 +0000 (UTC)
Date: 2004-10-29T15:29:49+00:00 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <cltnld$5jc$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: mq2a52-b29.ln1@news.naggum.no
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In article <mq2a52-b29.ln1@news.naggum.no>,
Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> wrote:
>Excuse me for being precise, but a statement that pretends to be true
>always but is actually only true some of the time, is entirely false: It
Depends on your notion of truth. The statement "birds are flying
creatures with two feathered wings" has a number of well-known
exceptions, but is nonetheless true for useful meanings of "true".
In any question of linguistic usage, taking a two-valued definition of
truth is just pointless. Clearly "in computing, giga = 2^30" is not
maximally true; but it's not plain false, if one takes plain false to
mean the minimal truth value. (You weren't precise about what you
meant by "plain", so I took the meaning that seemed most plausible.)
>is /not/ true that �in computing�, giga = 2^30. The simple fact that a
>lot of uses of �giga� in computing are 10^9, invalidates the statement
>and its broad claim.
Only if you think the broad claim was one of absolute maximal truth,
which I don't.
I might note that the specific counter example I gave is
contentious: many people think that giga means (or should mean) gibi
in disk capacities, and that manufacturers only use giga means giga in
order to inflate their capacities.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2004-10-29 15:29 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 31+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <dc7de4ff.0410171805.727ff73b@posting.google.com>
[not found] ` <d4a75c1f.0410211229.263f74c9@posting.google.com>
2004-10-22 10:20 ` decimal separator (international? Peter Hermann
2004-10-22 13:18 ` Georg Bauhaus
2004-10-22 16:20 ` Erik Naggum
2004-10-22 19:29 ` Jacob Sparre Andersen
2004-10-22 20:45 ` Erik Naggum
2004-10-23 18:54 ` Chris Kaese
2004-10-25 10:16 ` Georg Bauhaus
2004-10-29 9:52 ` Stefan L�rchner
2004-10-29 9:59 ` Adrien Plisson
2004-10-29 10:23 ` Julian Bradfield
2004-10-29 11:22 ` Markus Kuhn
2004-10-29 12:41 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2004-10-29 13:43 ` Erik Naggum
2004-10-29 13:55 ` Julian Bradfield
2004-10-29 15:05 ` Erik Naggum
2004-10-29 15:29 ` Julian Bradfield [this message]
2004-10-30 12:15 ` Binary prefixes in Google's calculator Markus Kuhn
2004-10-30 14:23 ` Binary prefixes and decimal separators " Björn Persson
2004-10-29 12:58 ` decimal separator (international? Peter Hermann
2004-10-29 14:41 ` Björn Persson
2004-10-29 15:15 ` Frank J. Lhota
2004-10-29 15:48 ` Peter Hermann
2004-10-29 16:31 ` Frank J. Lhota
2004-10-29 19:18 ` Larry Kilgallen
2004-11-01 10:14 ` Anders Wirzenius
2004-11-01 18:53 ` Octal number system Andrew Nowicki
2004-11-01 21:47 ` Björn Persson
2004-11-02 1:04 ` Jeffrey Carter
2004-10-29 16:09 ` decimal separator (international? Andreas Prilop
2004-10-30 9:46 ` Dmitry A. Kazakov
2004-10-29 14:21 ` Gee Pee (was: decimal separator (international?) Christoph Paeper
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