Apparently we have the French to blame for confusion in the term a Billion. It used to be a number with 12 zeros ie a million million which the British accepted. They then changed their mind and said it should be a number with 9 zeros, ie a thousand million and the US of A accepted this as their version of the Billion. Eventually France changed their mind again and the British, bored with the French ever worsening scientific approach to the whole thing decided to stick with the US of A version. Obviously this change had nothing to do with power. At the time of the original definition France was a great country and a force to be reckoned with, now it is the US. Interesting connection (maybe if you are a geek).
The other interesting factoid of the day is that the concept of Zero as a number was only first examined in the 7th Century by Indians and was such a suspicious concept that it was BANNED by a Florence banned it when Fibonacci introduced the concept to Italy.
![[]](./images/smilies/icon_e_geek.gif "Geek"){kind=icon}
The upshot is that number are pretty meaningless really and true algebra should be relied upon in future. Obviously now all I need to do is get a really complicated equation into my employment contract that means I can work 3 hours a day, have no responsibility to keep me there for overtime and pays 50x the going rate of any architect for a full time position.
