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Count/measure abstraction works until you start falling between the cracks. Float is just another form of digital (discontinuous) number. It just happens to be designed to have high resolution in the 'general use' range.

Digital is still just integers however you slice it, and in fact, measurements are also 'just' integers since any measurement is limited by the resolution of the instrument (and likely further hobbled by variations in resolution over the instruments range). Aside, it is interesting to note; (nearly) every 'analog' clock is also digital, being limited by the resolution of the escapement.

The use of an 'AH' value is a perfectly acceptable, and common, use of the 'lowest common denominator' to reduce a real world measurement domain to integers suitable for computing. Anyone reading the code or using the system 'simply' has to be made sufficiently aware of the number systems in use and consequences there-of.

And there's the rub. The number of humans involved in being computer 'literate' grows exponentially year on year. The task of keeping them on the same conceptual and taxonomic pages has grown similarly to the point that, in my observation, it is now usually the biggest problem of all. Long-winded discourse on simple paradigms being required to 'bring everyone along'.

Smile | :)

modified 9-Aug-24 8:33am.

You can't seriously argue that because measurement values have a limited precision (they do when written down on paper, too!), the there is no conceptual conceptual difference between a count and a measurement value.

They are conceptually different, even if a given measurement technology does not have infinite precision.

Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.

Sure I can and I do, for the simple reason that, the computer cannot represent real numbers (your notion of a 'measurement') as anything other than integers. The the earlier a developer realizes that, the simpler it is to conceptualize and manage the (many) translations and transforms between the multitudinous real number (measurement or other) domains and integers.

Smile | :)

modified 10-Aug-24 10:06am.

I like the TÅ or Tera-Ångstrom, 100m in other words.

Have you ever seen that used in practice?
(Also note that Ångstrøm is not an SI unit, even though it is a ten-factor of an SI-unit.)

I was surprised to see astronomers referring to the mass of astronomical object in Tg, teragrams. That was clearly a dead serious unit, not meant as any sort of joke, and definitely within SI, just as much as kg. But we tend to use 'ton' rather than Mg (as we really ought to!) and kiloton rather than Gg. I honestly prefer Tg to "thousand kilotons".

Student humor is full of 'funny' derived units. Such as "square liter": The floor area covered by beer if you tip over two full glasses.

Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.

Never used it in practice, it was something a teacher at school came up with as an alternative name for an athletics event.

I have seen a lot of times the "k" for 1000 instead for 1024 or the "M" for "10^6" instead of "1048576"
Specially when speaking about money.

M.D.V.

If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.

k (lowercase) is kilo, 1000. (K (uppercase) is Kelvin.)
M (uppercase) is Mega, 1,000,000.
m (lowercase) is milli, 1/1000.
G (uppercase) is giga, 1,000,000,000. (g (lowecase) is gram).
Ki (Upper-lowercase) is kibi, 1024.
Mi (Upper-lowercase) is mebi, 1,048,576.
Gi (upper-lowercase) is gibi, 1,073,741,824.

The prefixes are valid for any unit, but you often see incorrect use: In economy, you often see KUSD, for 1000 US Dollars, which literally means Kelvin-US-Dollars. The correct use is kUSD.

I never saw binary prefixes (Ki, Mi, Gi, ...) used with money. Actually, I never saw them anywhere outside computer contexts. On the other hand, I saw a lot of decimal prefixes in computer contexts - almost all of it incorrect. You frequently see abuse of SI units, e.g. size of data object given in kB. What does sound pressure have to do with object size? (and: 1000 Bel is a sound pressure that would shake your house to gravel.) Maybe the size is even given in Kelvin-Bel, to suggest 1024 (Bel??) rather than 1000.

Note that networking people always used decimal prefixes. Besides, they count bits, not bytes. A 64 kbps line is 64,000 bits, not 65536 bits - and far from 65536 bytes! (When phone lines were digitized in the late 1980s in Norway, lots of computer enthusiasts complained to the telco when the didn't get 64 Ki bytes through the line, but only a little over 7.5.)

Also - particular attention to the youngsters among you: A byte being 8 bits, and that is final!, is a new phenomenon. I have been working with 6 bit bytes (Univac 1100 series), 7 bytes (DEC-10, DEC-20), 8 bytes (quite a few machines) and 9 bits (also Univac 1100 series). When I got my ham license, the only permitted "digital" (modem signal) format was using 5 bit bytes (Baudot code); I never used that myself. The classical definition of "byte" was the space required to store one printable character. When networking people talk about data sizes (e.g. in protocol definitions), if they are not talking about bits, they use octets to make perfectly sure that there is no confusion. I have seen protocol standards using 'byte' - a clear indication that the standard development has been dominated by young software people rather than by experienced networking people.

Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.

one that annoys me is the use of mc instead of µ such as on tablets - "contains 5mcg" rather than "contains 5µg".

Units in SPICE (analog design software) can cause some really big mistakes:
m = 10^-3
M = 10^-3
MEG = 10^6
meg = 10^6

Kevin

Once there was a Codproject member, with such a name. But I cannot recall who…

"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"

once I understood what any of this meant, I spiralled into why the Mega Drive was called the Mega Drive

7.6 MEGA hertz cpu
16 MEGA bytes ram
upto 5 MEGA herts external bus

it was Mega

yeah, now I want a Tera Station

Since it requires a micro-scope to see a mega-karocyte, do I need a micro-micro-scope to see a micro-megakaryocyte ?

I asked copilot to explain about this (megakaryocyte and micromegs), and got:

Certainly! Let's dive into both topics:

1. **Megakaryocytes**:
- A **megakaryocyte** is a large bone marrow cell with a lobated nucleus. These cells are responsible for producing **blood platelets** (also known as **thrombocytes**), which are essential for normal blood clotting.
- In humans, megakaryocytes typically account for about 1 out of every 10,000 bone marrow cells. However, their numbers can increase significantly during certain diseases.
- Structurally, megakaryocytes are much larger than red blood cells (about 10 to 15 times larger). During maturation, they grow in size and replicate their DNA without dividing, a process called **endomitosis**. This results in a large, lobulated nucleus.
- The cytoplasm of megakaryocytes contains **α-granules** and **dense bodies**, similar to the platelets they produce.
- These cells develop from hematopoietic stem cell precursor cells in the bone marrow, with **thrombopoietin (TPO)** being a key signal for their production.
- Abnormal megakaryocyte function can lead to various diseases related to platelet dysfunction¹.

2. **Micromégas**:
- **Micromégas** is a 1752 novella by the French philosopher and satirist **Voltaire**. It's considered an early example of **science fiction** and has its place in the history of literature.
- The story revolves around the visit to Earth by two extraterrestrial beings:
- **Micromégas**, an inhabitant of a planet orbiting the star **Sirius**. He stands 120,000 royal feet tall (about 38.9 km) and has solved over fifty of Euclid's problems.
- His companion from the planet **Saturn**, who is much smaller (only 6,000 royal feet or 1.95 km tall) but clever.
- Micromégas travels between planets, discussing differences in senses, lifespans, and intelligence. The tale humorously comments on human self-importance and cosmic scale⁶⁷⁸.

Feel free to ask if you'd like more details! 😊

Source: Conversation with Copilot, 8/8/2024
(1) what is megakaryocytes?. https://microsoftstart.msn.com/en-us/health/ask-professionals/in-expert-answers-on-bloodcells/in-bloodcells?questionid=quj5pnu8&type=condition&source=bingmainline_conditionqna.
(2) Micromégas - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microm%C3%A9gas.
(3) Micromégas by Voltaire (1752) — The Public Domain Review. https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/micromegas-by-voltaire-1752/.
(4) Micromegas: Voltaire’s Trailblazing Sci-Fi ... - The Marginalian. https://www.themarginalian.org/2015/08/14/micromegas-voltaire-elizabeth-hall/.
(5) Megakaryocyte - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megakaryocyte.
(6) The bone marrow niche from the inside out: how megakaryocytes are .... https://ashpublications.org/blood/article/139/4/483/477078/The-bone-marrow-niche-from-the-inside-out-how.
(7) Global characterization of megakaryocytes in bone marrow ... - Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41417-022-00476-z.pdf.
(8) undefined. https://microsoftstart.msn.com/.

A "dime" is the metric weight of a bag of pot = 10g. A dime is the U.S. coin that equals 10 cents or 1/10 of a U.S. dollar. My English teacher in high school said that the best thing about kids using drugs was that they learn the metric system.

Bond
Keep all things as simple as possible, but no simpler. -said someone, somewhere

Well, "mega" refers to "large", NOT "small", and yes, neither "micro" nor "mega" in this context has anything to do with SI units, beside that they have a common Greek origin... ("megas"="large"/"mighty", "mikros"="small")

that "micromegs" is a rather strange word concontion for "rather small examples of (normally) large blood cells"...

I worked for a gold mining company in my career who used "milli-ounces" for the units of how much gold was in the ore. Gold concentrations are usually reported from the assayers in three decimal amounts.

This worked fine. It got rid of any decimals for gold input value for all reserve calculations.

Back when I was gainfully employed in a chemistry lab, our quality control officer would occasionally refer to a hybrid and never used unit "femtograms per hogshead". No practical use whatsoever, but always good for a chuckle.

OK, this is a little more off-topic than most, but I don't do much social media outside of CP, so I wouldn't know where else to post it.

I finished a book a while back -- my first! (authoring, that is, not reading; I've finished a few of those, too, though.) I'm pretty sure it's pretty good. I like it anyway, and a few of my kids and their friends do, too. At least that's what they tell me. Maybe they're just polite. (Kids these days!)

It's an adventure book of sorts. (About 3 young kids who live/hangout at the White House. No politics of course. Just zany antics and goofball adventures. Protecting the world from the devious plots of a couple international spies. That sort of thing.) If any of you want to read it online, I'll send you a link.

Anyways, now I'm on to the sequel. I like writing. It's hard, but rewarding, so I enjoy the process and the product. What I DON'T enjoy is trying to get published. I've sent off a formal proposal to a half-dozen publishers and literary agents, but after 6 months I haven't heard back a peep. (OK, well maybe a couple "peeps", but definitely no "pops".) So now I'm trying to decide whether I'm on the right track or not. Is it crazy to be writing the 2nd book when I haven't even sold the 1st? Sure it's fun, but is it worth the investment? The first book was the hardest thing I've ever completed. Took 7+ years of weekends, on & off. This second one should be a bit easier, but it still takes a lot of time. (Time I could be spending with my kids, instead of writing about somebody else's!)

My dream would be to find a publisher (one of those niche outfits; not a meat grinder) who would give it a look and say, "I think you're on to something here." I've looked into self-publishing too, of course. But that's just not my gig. Maybe my ego is getting in the way, but I think the book has enough quality to earn a stamp on the spine.

So now, I'm just curious: what would you do? Keep writing just for the fun of it, even if it never sits on anyone's shelf but the grandkids'? Or quit and just take the family on a hike?

modified 6-Aug-24 16:46pm.

It sounds like it's providing you with some joy(tm), so I'd say keep at it.

As far as publishing, yeah. I hear it's hard. Keep at it, maybe find an agent willing to shop it around. After all:

Quote:
When writing his first award-winning novel, Carrie he gave up and threw it in the garbage, fortunately, his wife read it and encouraged him to finish it. Once finished Carrie was submitted and rejected 30 times by various publishers until it was finally accepted by Doubleday.

TTFN - Kent

I would never try to talk anyone out of his hobby, as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else.

I happen to listen to a podcast that is hosted in part by John C. Dvorak, which a lot of people here might remember from PC Mag. He's had a 30-year writing career, and even though it has nothing to do with his current podcast(s), he does talk about writing every once in a while.

Based on what I've repeatedly heard him say, I'd suggest you get yourself an agent, first and foremost. Without one, forget about going directly to publishers - that's a dead end.

It's also my understanding that Amazon might be more willing to publish books than any "traditional" book publisher. I wouldn't know where to start however, but that's something that was relayed to me.

You are right on the dot about Amazon as a publisher.

I know a 13-year-old high school kid in Chennai, India who got his book published by Amazon. It is an adventure story set in Central America, God only knows where he got the idea and how he got the details about Central American jungle right but the book was good enough for Amazon to agree to publish it.

If you enjoy doing it, keep doing it.
If it gets to stressful quit.

If you keep doing what you've been doing you'll keep getting whatcha been gettin.

A home without books is a body without soul. Marcus Tullius Cicero
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Here is one resource you might look into.
It is the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) They are the organization that sponsors the yearly challenge to write a complete novel (50,000 words or more) during the month of November. They tend to cater to new writers with tips and encouragement to finish a first novel. I do know that a few literary agents do check out the winners (finishers) of their novel to see if there is any new talent that they can represent.

Here is a link to the general organization:
<nanowirmo>[^]

Here is a link to one of their work shops on how to edit your completed first draft of a novel:
Edit to Excellence with ProWritingAid[^]

If writing feels good, keep at it!
(I think it was Stephen King that said he sent his first novel to about 100 publisher/agents before one gave him a shot.)

The site should be back to normal.

"Mistakes are prevented by Experience. Experience is gained by making mistakes."

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