[Ads-l] Transmission rates and related goodies

[victor steinbok]

A current Verizon FIOS radio advertising uses "Megs" to represent data
transmission rates (it's possible that copy writers don't know the
difference bytes, bits and bps, but the usage is pretty common).

A quick check of online OED revealed entries for Meg == megabyte, baud &
baud rate, bps == bits per second. No variations, however, involving
combinations of these.

In particular, there's no entry for "bips", which became a colloquial
substitute for bps (and standard pronunciation), nor one for megabips or
"Meg" for "Mbps". In fact, there are two separate entries for Meg,
including one for megohm. Would it make sense to have a unifying article
with subentries for different "megs"? Contrast this with FLOPS that get a
full treatment with separate entries for FLOPS, megaflop and gigaflop (not
sure why -s was dropped in those two -- I suppose, one could find an
occasional reference to a single megaflop or gigaflop).

Similar uses of K (for kilo-, from computing, including "transformative"
for $1000) and G (for "grand", $1000) have subentries under the respective
letter entries. But there's no sign of "mil(s)" as a common truncation for
million(s), particularly millions of dollars. Nor K for kilowatts or G for
gigawatts of power (the former as a rating for speakers, for example, the
latter as network capacity).

VS-)

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