[Gllug] Why we still like CRTs

[David Damerell]

On Thursday, 19 Nov 2009, Andrew Farnsworth wrote:
>I hate to nit pick, but it IS an order of magnitude difference.
>Maybe not a 10 fold difference but that is not what an order of
>magnitude difference means. 

No. You are making a classic error; taking a word or expression from a
selected technical context and insisting it must mean the same thing
in all contexts.

"Organic" food means what it does even though all food is "organic" in
the sense that the adjective is used in chemistry. A device on a
bicycle that generates electricity is a "dynamo" even though, to an
electrician, it is a "generator" because it generates AC. And, in
ordinary speech, an "order of magnitude" is universally [1] understood
to mean a factor of ten.

[1] Well, apart from the deliberately obtuse, and people who just
stare at you blankly when you say "order of magnitude". :-)

-- 
David Damerell <damerell at chiark.greenend.org.uk> Kill the tomato!
Today is First Friday, November.
Tomorrow will be First Saturday, November - a weekend.
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