>> Maybe you mean MHz? :-). Sorry, ads where sellers claim
>> spectacular milliHertz performance are one of my pet peeves. (Along
>> with specs calling for compatibility with the ASC-2 character set
>> and construction plans calling for DB-9 connectors!) Though it would
>> be an interesting exercise to construct a Pentium II-type computer
>> based on relays just so that it does top out around 300 milliHertz!
>
>No thanks... I don't have a dozen spare telephone exchanges for parts
;-)
If one were to estimate the number of transistors in a penitum II
at 100 million (?), then if an exchange has ~three relays per number,
you would get 300,000 relays in an exchange, which means 334
exchanges with a few spare parts left over!
>> example, everybody around the world uses the term "metric ton" when
>> the perfectly acceptable (and SI-preferred) term "megagram" is
>> exactly equivalent (and to my ears sounds better!) And why say
The reason is that using scientific notation/unit prefixes requires
more calculation if one is not well practiced. While 90 decibels
versus 900 decibels shows the relationship clearly (for those that
know what a log is), 90 decibels vs. 90 bels is not quite as simple for
some.
>90 decibels (what's wrong with 9 bels?)
>1000 millibars (= 1 bar. I was told by an idiot teacher at school that
>the 'bar' as a unit of pressure did not exist. A lot of books claim it
>does, though).
Has anyone read the book "Innumeracy"? It mostly deals with debunking
the concept of probability, but it is interesting in other respects,
too. BTW, would you say 'kilobyte' is a misnomer? THe number it
signifies isn't 10^3, it's 2^10. For a feeble attempt to get back on
topic: was kilobyte always accepted as 1024 bytes?
>-tony
>
>
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Received on Sun Oct 18 1998 - 18:19:31 BST