In retrospect, the aspect of the article in the Chronicle that
waylaid me (and which I still find puzzling) is the absence of any
mention of "tera". It is a giant jump from "giga" to "peta",
skipping "tera" on the way. But "giga" and "peta" were juxtaposed in
the article. [...] It makes me wonder if the article had it right.
It is reasonable to jump from gigabytes to petabytes in one fell
swoop?
IMO it is not. Without seeing it, I can't be sure, but it seems likely
that it's Just Another Dumb Reporter. Perhaps someone took notes and
wrote down 10^15 instead of 10^12, and then looked up the name for
10^15 and didn't notice the basic inconsistency of jumping from Gb to
Pb without stopping at Tb.
Hmmm, this is drifting off-topic for cube-lovers....
der Mouse
mouse@collatz.mcrcim.mcgill.edu