2K1 & hello

Indigo Som indigo at WELL.COM
Wed Jan 3 20:01:11 UTC 2001


snip
>number, K is most often used to signify quantities of bits or bytes.
>Since these critters live in a binary universe, K is a rough decimal
>translation: 2^10 = 1024, not 1000.  So, Y2K would be the year 2048.
>
>The only other example that I can think of the number K being used with
>an elliptic unit is in foot racing - 5K or 10K races, where K = 1000
>(meters).
snip
>How about other words or letters that are used to mean 1000, like
>"grand" or "G" or "large" (e.g., Y2G)?  Unfortunately these 3 examples
>represent both quantity and units (i.e., forty large = $40,000), so they
>wouldn't work either.

Hello to the list,
This is my 1st posting after lurking for a while. I'm an artist & writer;
my art frequently includes text or other reference to language & language
structures (most currently sentence diagrams). So I'm a sort of language
professional, but in a *very* different way, I'm assuming, than most folks
on this list. So I ask your patience & indulgence if I inadvertently
stumble over any academic conventions, &c. I am definitely here to learn &
don't anticipate posting very often anyway.

Anyway, as a tangent to the above post, I wonder if anybody else was using
Roman numerals MM in their dates last year, eg 31/12/MM. I did it all year
but never saw anybody else do it. A few store clerks expressed confusion
(until I said "Roman numerals") but otherwise I never got any comment one
way or the other about it.

I don't think I will extend it into this year. MMI seems like a slippery
slope into that Roman numeral awkwardness, which is what made me so
appreciative of the simple MM in the 1st place.

Indigo Som
indigo at well.com

Poets don't have hobbies; they have obsessions --Leonard Nathan



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