language misuse (Was: laser scope

[Tony Duell]

> 
> I'm still tilting at 1,024,000 as a "megabyte".

Indeed. Personally I prefer 2^20 (1048576), particularly for things 
addressed by a number of 2-stste lines (like all random-access stores, 
including most ROMs, etc). For things like disks I _prefer_ 2^20 for 
consistency, but I can see the justification for 10^6 (1000000). I can 
see no justification for 1024000


> 
> I don't mind the creation of new words.  For example, "hassle" is fairly
> recent.  But, let's try to avoid misuse of the words that we have.

Ypu have to have new words for new ideas/concepts/devices, etc. That is 
not the problem. The prolem comes when there's a perfectly good word with 
a precise meaning and j-random-luser insists on misusing it to mean 
something differnt (for which there is also a perfectly good word already)

-tony