Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!petrus!scherzo!allegra!princeton!caip!topaz!ll-xn!nike!lll-crg!seismo!nbires!hao!hplabs!tektronix!uw-beaver!tikal!sigma!uw-nsr!tim
From: tim@uw-nsr.UUCP (tim@uw-nsr)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: Computer Census
Message-ID: <355@uw-nsr.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 26-Aug-86 00:20:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-nsr.355
Posted: Tue Aug 26 00:20:23 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Aug-86 20:55:31 EDT
References: <183@uwmacc.UUCP> <184@wolf.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: UW-Bioengineering, Seattle, WA
Lines: 13

In article <184@wolf.UUCP> billw@wolf.UUCP (Bill "Did I Miss Something Here?" Wisner) writes:
>> [...] One was that the number of
>> computers is greater than the number of people in the world,
>> which I take to be 5 million million. [...]
>
>5 million million would be 5,000,000,000,000; five million millions. That there
>is five trillion.. 
>
This number, 5 million million, was called 5 billion by the original poster
of "Computer Census".  The English word billion is ambiguous because in the
United States it means 1 thousand million whereas in the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Northern Ireland I'm pretty sure that it means 
1 million million.  So both of you are correct: 5,000,000,000,000 can be either
five billion or five trillion depending on where you happen to be at the time.