Robert Hampton

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23rd January 2004

It is now safe to turn off your computer
Posted by at 9.35pm | 3 responses | Uncategorised

Interesting BBC article about a Silicon Valley veteran who has decided to disconnect himself permanently from the Internet after more than 20 years.

Buried in the text is the statistic that out of a population of 6.3 billion, only 600 million are connected to the Internet. There’s a lesson there for people (like me) who spend a lot of time online: if you rely on the Internet too heavily, you’re only experiencing 10% of the world.

UPDATE: I forget, is a billion equal to a thousand million or a million million?

3 Responses
  1. Comment by Seb
    28th January 2004 at 3:06 pm

    Depends if you’re English or American. An English billion is a million million, an American billion is a thousand million…

  2. Comment by Nick E
    28th January 2004 at 10:23 pm

    I actually think Britain has finally come round to the American way of thinking, and the world standard for a billion is now 10^9, ie a thousand million.

  3. Comment by Jonty Campbell
    30th January 2004 at 9:29 pm

    yup a thousand million, it makes sense – a million is a thou thou so…
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    A Trillion btw is a thou billion – 4.3Tr is the US debt i think…