Google has Googaplexes but not Gigabytes - Good Enough software?
Google has its large numbers such as googaplex : " Googleplex " is a portmanteau of Google and complex (meaning a complex of buildings) and a reference to googolplex, the name given to the large number 10 (10 100 ) There are further such curt identifiers for big, big numbers: A googol seconds is about a sexvigintillion (10 81 ) times the estimated age of the universe. A googol angstroms is approximately 100 trevigintillion light-years. It takes approximately 317 novemvigintillion years to count to a googol one integer at a time. Unfortunately, at least part of the Google enterprise is still getting to grips with rather smaller numbers, such as the Gigabyte: Since when has a gigabyte just 1000 megabytes? Perhaps this is some kind of IT equivalent of a move toward the metric system? Yet it looks more like a bug. In software there are always trade-offs, the most obvious being Quality vs Productivity, and this seems such an example... OR is this a case of "good enough&q