Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Well, even if you try to be metric, the Americans have a different idea 
> about what constitutes a "billion"...

  That's actually quite exasperating because it makes the word completely
useless. You can't use it for almost anything without the danger of
confusion.

  For example if you say "this program processes 2.5 billion data units
per hour", it could well have either meaning. It's completely ambiguous.
This means that if delivering the correct meaning is important, you just
can't use the word "billion". Thus the word, which would otherwise be
quite handy, is completely useless.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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