Return-Path: Received: by snark.thyrsus.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.21.1 #21.19) id ; Tue, 11 Feb 92 08:49 EST Received: by cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com (5.57/UUCP-Project/Commodore 2/8/91) id AA23464; Tue, 11 Feb 92 07:57:58 EST Received: from cunixf.cc.columbia.edu by relay1.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA03812; Tue, 11 Feb 92 07:43:49 -0500 Received: from cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu by cunixf.cc.columbia.edu (5.59/FCB) id AA30472; Tue, 11 Feb 92 07:43:47 EST Message-Id: <9202111243.AA30472@cunixf.cc.columbia.edu> Received: from CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU by CUVMB.COLUMBIA.EDU (IBM VM SMTP R1.2.1) with BSMTP id 1326; Tue, 11 Feb 92 07:42:24 EST Received: by CUVMB (Mailer R2.07) id 2628; Tue, 11 Feb 92 07:42:03 EST Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1992 12:37:08 GMT Reply-To: Ivan A Derzhanski Sender: Lojban list From: Ivan A Derzhanski Subject: Billions To: John Cowan , Eric Raymond , Eric Tiedemann In-Reply-To: CJ FINE's message of Tue, 11 Feb 1992 09:17:37 GMT <812.9202111156@cogsci.ed.ac.uk Status: RO X-From-Space-Date: Tue Feb 11 08:49:23 1992 X-From-Space-Address: cbmvax!uunet!CUVMA.BITNET!LOJBAN > Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1992 09:17:37 GMT > From: CJ FINE > > (I happen to think that anything outside Mego- to micro- is a worthless > accretion to the metric system, but that is another matter). I disagree. Some SI units of measure are too large for practical purposes, and consequently one hears about nF (1E-9 F) and pF (1E-12 F) much more frequently than about F (the unit of capacity), for example. I reckon there must be some that are too small for practical purposes, too. > The only > (possible) problem is in the translation - if you gloss "gigdo"% as > "billion" rather than "Giga-": You must not do that. {gigdo} must be glossed as `1E9', or `109' in LaTeX. Using words is too confusing, and sooner or later you'll have to switch to the exponential notation anyway. > [<...>] the > only thing directly conveyed to me by the choice between "quintillion" > and "quadrillion", say, is that the one is bigger than the other <...>] More precisely, a thousand times bigger, or maybe a million times bigger if you acknowledge a thing called "quadrilliard" between them. The only thing I know is that a google is 1E100. How's that in Lojban? Ivan