Re:Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug
by jakub_g on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @10:38AM
(#5674329)
In Polish, there's one standard: million, milliard, billion. Every time I see some article in the press that tells about "billions" and seems to be based on some foreign data, I have to stop and think whether the author cited the original value unchanged, or converted it.
Re:Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug
by quarterto on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @10:34AM
(#5674308)
Also, basically no-one uses the long scale anymore. Which is a shame. -illiard is a fantastic suffix.
Re:Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug
by adlpz on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @10:44AM
(#5674376)
Well, if no-one is pretty much all the non-english-speaking world, then yes.
Re:Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug
by yen223 on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @10:53AM
(#5674441)
The Chinese don't use the long scale either, at least not in this form - we count in magnitudes of 10,000.
Re:Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug
by adlpz on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @11:14AM
(#5674630)
I wasn't aware of that. To be sincere, I also made the mistake of looking too close home. I was mostly talking about the non-English-speaking 'western hemisphere'.
Re:Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug
by apetresc on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @11:25AM
(#5674732)
So are thousands of billions called billiards? :)
Re:Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug
by ahomescu1 on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @02:40PM
(#5676012)
Yes, it appears they are. In long scale it's million, milliard, billion, billiard, trillion, trilliard etc.
Re:Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug
by astrodust on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @11:31AM
(#5674776)
Long-scale should be officially retired, it's needless. Keep rocking with fortnights and stone if you must, nobody else is laying claim to those.
It's things like having three different "gallons" that all mean wildly different things that make communication difficult.
Re:Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug
by lucian1900 on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @11:45AM
(#5674871)
Or perhaps short-scale should be retired instead, since pretty much all other languages use long-scale anyway.
Re:Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug
by astrodust on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @04:07PM
(#5676535)
Short's as much as a standard and pairs well with SI units. Long's an anachronism in comparison.
Re:Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug
by danceonfire on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @10:34AM
(#5674313)
No. The long scale of 420,081,335,014 would be 420 milliards, short scale being 420 billion.
Re:Diablo III Economy Broken by an Integer Overflow Bug
by csense on Wednesday May 08, 2013 @04:47PM
(#5676819)
I'm a native English speaker (USA) with lots of math and science education, and I'd never heard of the long scale until you posted this article.
It sounds so strange. Are you sure this isn't another Wikipedia hoax masterminded by Stephen Colbert?
In the short scale, you'd be right, but the author probably uses the long scale.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_scale#Comparison.
It's one of those things that makes English ... interesting to learn as a foreign language. :)
EDIT: Actually no, I mis-read the table on the Wikipedia page. The author was simply mistaken, and has corrected that. Thanks to everyone who pointed this out.