greg@utcsri.UUCP (10/04/87)
In article <1632@chinet.UUCP> editor@chinet.UUCP (Alex Zell) writes: >Whenever I came to an entry such as "B000" or "F000" I would pronounce >"boo" or "foo" and would be corrected by son Pete: "No, you should >always spell it out "ef-zero-zero-zero" or we may end up with errors." >(You have no idea how rigid very young teenagers can be. "What's right >is right.") You should always spell it out, fox-zero-zero-zero, or baker-zero-zero-zero, if you don't want to end up with errors. Ever wonder why we have such good names for the digits and such lousy ones for the letters? B,C,D,E,G,P,T,V,Z in particular. Several months ago I went to Ottawa for a series of interviews at a large communications firm. Over the phone, the fellow from personnel read off a list of times and persons, and spelled the more difficult names. He also gave me a locator number to get my ticket at the airport. I confirmed the letters in the locator number using 'M as in mary, F as in Frank', and he said, 'no, M as in Mary, S as in Sarah'. When I got to the place, I gave the name of the first interviewer at each location to the security guard, who would look it up in a book. In almost every such case, the first interviewer had a difficult name which had been spelled out, and in which I had written down 'f's instead of 's's. But that's life. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Greg Smith University of Toronto UUCP: ..utzoo!utcsri!greg Have vAX, will hack...
tedk@ihuxv.ATT.COM (Kekatos) (10/07/87)
In article <5486@utcsri.UUCP> greg@utcsri.UUCP (Gregory Smith) writes: >In article <1632@chinet.UUCP> editor@chinet.UUCP (Alex Zell) writes: >>Whenever I came to an entry such as "B000" or "F000" I would pronounce >>"boo" or "foo" and would be corrected by son Pete: "No, you should >>always spell it out "ef-zero-zero-zero" or we may end up with errors." >>(You have no idea how rigid very young teenagers can be. "What's right >>is right.") > >You should always spell it out, fox-zero-zero-zero, or baker-zero-zero-zero, >if you don't want to end up with errors. > >Greg Smith University of Toronto UUCP: ..utzoo!utcsri!greg Hexadecimal is always read digit by digit. Trailing zeros are sometimes read as "hundred" or "thousand" (such as "F000" equals "ef-thousand"). Having worked in Technical support for three years, I can tell you many stories of computer error due to similar "reading" mis-understandings. Remember: 0 = "zero" O = "oh" Ted G. Kekatos ihnp4!ihuxv!tedk