[QUOTE=kladner;384824]Are you trying to bring about the end of the universe by compiling All the Names? I read a story like that, where computer engineers assisted some Tibetan sect with their quest. The IT guys speculate about getting out of town before the computer run ends, and it becomes clear that it did not work.

The last line is approximately, "Overhead, the stars were quietly going out."[/QUOTE]

[url]http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41108[/url]

[QUOTE=chappy;384827][URL]http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?41108[/URL][/QUOTE]

Wow, thanks! Arthur Clarke, no less!

Yes, that's from where I got the idea. But I never succeeded in
figuring out what alphabet or word sizes in letters would
combinatorily produce exactly 9,000,000,000 such names.
That is, whether there was a rule for deciding whether a
random finite sequence of letters was a valid name, a rule
that actually could be programmed to list them.

I sure don't want to see the stars getting extinguished.
The stars are cool to see.

[QUOTE=davar55;384883]Yes, that's from where I got the idea. But I never succeeded in
figuring out what alphabet or word sizes in letters would
combinatorily produce exactly 9,000,000,000 such names.
That is, whether there was a rule for deciding whether a
random finite sequence of letters was a valid name, a rule
that actually could be programmed to list them.

I sure don't want to see the stars getting extinguished.
The stars are cool to see.[/QUOTE]Try 9,000,000,000,000.

Clarke was British.

In the story, iirc, there were only transcribed the letters that corresponded to Tibetan (I think) phonemes and also something like at most three letters in a row could be the same. I'm sure I've got a copy of the story around the house somewhere. If I'm not too drunk after work I'll try to locate a copy and look at the reasons.

[QUOTE=xilman;384889]Try 9,000,000,000,000.
Clarke was British.[/QUOTE]

Haha, you're right, though I think it was published here.

Does 9 thousand million still sound more natural
than 9 billion? Or 9 billion more natural than 9 trillion?

[QUOTE=davar55;384915]Does 9 thousand million still sound more natural
than 9 billion? Or 9 billion more natural than 9 trillion?[/QUOTE]
As a small child learning numbers in the UK in around 1970, I was taught 9x10^12 as "9 billion" and 9x10^9 as "9 thousand million". I can't quite remember what "trillion" was used to mean in the UK then. But Arthur C. Clarke would certainly have used "billion" to mean 10^12 when he wrote that work back in the early 1950s.

But I would say that the UK was already, during the 1970s, gradually switching over to the American use of "billion" to mean 10^9 and "trillion" to mean 10^12, and that is certainly the normal usage nowadays.

[QUOTE=Brian-E;384916]I can't quite remember what "trillion" was used to mean in the UK then.[/QUOTE]
Straightforward and arguably more logical than the American (and now British) system.

The suffix "-illion" denotes a power of 1,000,000 and the prefix is the Latin abbreviation of the power to which 10^6 is raised,

1 (mono-) = million = (10^6)^1
2 (bi-) = billion = (10^6)^2
3 (tri-) = trillion = (10^6)^3
4 (quad-) = quadrillion = (10^6)^4
5 (quint-) = quintillion = (10^6)^5

and so on.

[QUOTE]"Look,” whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.[/QUOTE]
Reading this was one of the reasons I grew up a scientist.

[QUOTE=xilman;384920]Straightforward and arguably more logical than the American (and now British) system.

The suffix "-illion" denotes a power of 1,000,000 and the prefix is the Latin abbreviation of the power to which 10^6 is raised,

1 (mono-) = million = (10^6)^1
2 (bi-) = billion = (10^6)^2
3 (tri-) = trillion = (10^6)^3
4 (quad-) = quadrillion = (10^6)^4
5 (quint-) = quintillion = (10^6)^5

and so on.[/QUOTE]
Thanks, yes that makes sense. I was unsure whether it was this or whether a trillion was a billion squared, a quadrillion was a trillion squared, and so on.

[QUOTE=xilman;384920]Straightforward and arguably more logical than the American (and now British) system.

The suffix "-illion" denotes a power of 1,000,000 and the prefix is the Latin abbreviation of the power to which 10^6 is raised,

1 (mono-) = million = (10^6)^1
2 (bi-) = billion = (10^6)^2
3 (tri-) = trillion = (10^6)^3
4 (quad-) = quadrillion = (10^6)^4
5 (quint-) = quintillion = (10^6)^5

and so on.[/QUOTE]

Certainly, it's only the in-betweens that are more cumbersome,
as in a thousand million (10^9), thousand billion (10^15), etc.