Re: Old fart rant inside...
Ahahaaaah. LOL. SI -facepalm-
Let me tell you a joke about SI
The international System of Units aka SI. from the International Bureau of Weights and Standards (BIPM)
Hold it right there.
International System <=> SI
International Bureau of Weights and Measures <=> BIPM
It is in reality:
Systeme Internationaux (sorry, don't know how to create the french accents)
Bureau International de Poids et Mesures
So we've all been using that wrong all these years. "The international system" "SI"
yeah, mon lecteur DC utilise du CD .. ( disque compacte) (courant directe) as they say over there. (my Compact Disc player uses Direct current)
Second joke. The SI specifies that MULTIPLIERS are UPPERCASE , and fractions are lowercase.
so:
Multipliers:
T = Tera
G = Giga
M = Mega
Fractions
d= deci (1/10)
p = pico
n = nano
Hold it. What about Deca (x10), Hecto (x100), Kilo (x1000) ? They are multipliers too. Ah, mais oui, those are lowercase. WHY ? Because we're french. We like exceptions. Our language is built on exceptions.
Ok, but what with the single letter prefix rule, doesn't that cause an issue with deca (x10) and deci (1/10) ?
yes, so for deca we will use TWO letters : da
So we have a "systeme international" where we use a single character to indicate a multiplier or divider. We use uppercase for multipliers and lowercase for dividers, but deca hecto and kilo will use lowercase (despite being multipliers) and deca gets two letters (despite the standard using one letter everywhere else).
You've been a wonderful audience , next up a monkey riding a monocycle while reading shakespeare.