Just a few minor comments on your letter, Mike. On Fri, 15 Nov 2002 11:22:37 Mike Joy wrote: ... >The Secretary >Media Relations Office >JPL >Pasadena >CA 91109 >USA > >Dear Sir, > >Re: Better use of measurements in your media releases > >First, congratulations on your use of SI (metric) measurements in your >media releases. This now brings a sense of reality to your releases >removing the "Star Trek" image of so many decades past. > I, personally, do not see a "connection" with Star Trek as inherently bad actually. Quite the opposite. However I do understand your "beef" concerning the use of 'billions' below.
>However, your use of "billions" should be relegated to the old customary >units, as the term "a billion miles" means absolutely nothing to anyone >other than "a long, long way". > >Today in the 21st century we are all familiar with metric prefixes as we >use them every day, e.g. kilo for "a thousand" (kilogram), milli for "a >thousandth" (millimeter), Mega for "a million" (MegaHertz), cent for >"hundredth" (cent coin), Giga for "a thousand million" (Gigabyte) and so >on. > >May I persuade you to consider using suitable prefixes for very large >distances in order to make them more meaningful? Your statement "1.6 >billion km" would be better stated as 1.6Tm... Actually "1.6 Tm" would look better, instead of 1.6Tm (no space). Unfortunately the prefix tera is still not quite into popular jargon... yet. Perhaps in a matter of 5 years computer speeds will get to "THz" and/or disk drives will offer spaces of "xx TB". Until that happens I'd see no harm in scaling one prefix down, like, say, 1 600 Gm, for now... ;-) > or at least you could use "xxx times the >distance from the Earth to the Sun", or other suitable astronomical >measuring terminology. >... But this one I have some reservations! Just like I don't like the light year stuff. If we have measurement units to use to convey messages we should preferrably use them. However, I'd much rather see what you offered above than '1 billion miles' anyday, anywhere... ;-) Marcus ____________________________________________________________ Get 25MB of email storage with Lycos Mail Plus! Sign up today -- http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus
