In article , Erik Naggum 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.