Lottery Jackpot
Moderator: Moderators for English X Forum
-
Mantikhoras
- Posts: 1
- Joined: Sat, 19. Jun 04, 23:56
Lottery Jackpot
Has anyone ever won the lottery yet? I keep seeing prizes on the order of twenty-five billion credits but my numbers never win. Have any of you been able to claim the jackpot?
-
Tsar_of_Cows
- Posts: 9966
- Joined: Sat, 31. Jan 04, 14:38
the old "imperial" billion was a million million. Under the metric system of course, a billion is a thousand million, and a million million (or a thousand billion) is a trillion, like you said.OutSane wrote:i never heard of 1 000 000 000 000 representing 1 billion!
seems like 1 trillion to me but im from Canada
any 'billion'aires where your from?!
I know noone these days who uses the old meaning, even those who would otherwise use inches / pounds / miles etc. Funny that, I use cm and m but I wouldn't know how much a km was if it hit me in the face!
-
Carl Sumner
- Posts: 5145
- Joined: Mon, 23. Feb 04, 01:28
It's not a matter of imperial/metric (Napoleon didn't speak English), but UK/US. The US meaning started to take over here a few decades ago, but I still remember newspapers patiently explaining the difference for British readers - and I'm not that ancient. I always suspected that it was just so some Yanks could call themselves billionaires. The old UK term for 1000 000 000, incidentally, was "milliard", but it's obsolete now.the old "imperial" billion was a million million. Under the metric system of course, a billion is a thousand million
i like this quote especially the reference to Monsieur Bonaparte and then the Milliard which is a Billion (1,000,000,000) in "french"johnstrt wrote:It's not a matter of imperial/metric (Napoleon didn't speak English), but UK/US. The US meaning started to take over here a few decades ago, but I still remember newspapers patiently explaining the difference for British readers - and I'm not that ancient. I always suspected that it was just so some Yanks could call themselves billionaires. The old UK term for 1000 000 000, incidentally, was "milliard", but it's obsolete now.the old "imperial" billion was a million million. Under the metric system of course, a billion is a thousand million
Edit: Just so we dont start the 100years war again I am An Englishman and i am married to a Frog and learnt the history of both langauges.
Advanced Magnate
Ace of Ace 3rd
Ace of Ace 3rd
Perhaps we should also include the German terms, since this is a German game, and the developers might have done a mis-translation from German to English:johnstrt wrote: It's not a matter of imperial/metric (Napoleon didn't speak English), but UK/US. The US meaning started to take over here a few decades ago, but I still remember newspapers patiently explaining the difference for British readers - and I'm not that ancient. I always suspected that it was just so some Yanks could call themselves billionaires. The old UK term for 1000 000 000, incidentally, was "milliard", but it's obsolete now.
1 Billion = 1'000'000'000'000
1 Milliarde = 1'000'000'000
(To all developers watching this thread:
See - it is actually possible to put thousand's separators into big numbers. Something to think about when designing user interfaces, huh?)
Apart from the minor issue of separators being country-specific, apparently the main reason they are not included is because they make the numbers take up too much room on some of the busier screens. For those of us who have to play the game at 800x600 because our graphics cards aren't all that hot, screen real-estate is a prime consideration.Gnavpot wrote:(To all developers watching this thread:
See - it is actually possible to put thousand's separators into big numbers. Something to think about when designing user interfaces, huh?)
The words themselves offer an explanation:
Million = 10^6
Billion = Bi-million = 10^12
Trillion = tri-million = 10^18
Quadrillion = ... you get the idea.
The "Thousands" modifier can be added to each of those
Thousand = 10^3
Thousand Million = 10^9
Thousand Billion = 10^15
etc.
Americans and their Billionaires! Huh!
To answer your question:
No. But I am an Aussie
Million = 10^6
Billion = Bi-million = 10^12
Trillion = tri-million = 10^18
Quadrillion = ... you get the idea.
The "Thousands" modifier can be added to each of those
Thousand = 10^3
Thousand Million = 10^9
Thousand Billion = 10^15
etc.
Americans and their Billionaires! Huh!
To answer your question:
No. But I am an Aussie
Well, that is a very minor issue.CBJ wrote:Apart from the minor issue of separators being country-specific.
Firstly, the game could simply use the separator corresponding to the language version of the game - or to the international settings of the computer where the game is installed.
Secondly, the ' is widely used as a non-country-specific separator which cannot be confused with the decimal separator.
If this had been a prime consideration for the developers, they would not have wasted so much screen space on uninformative 3D animations etc.apparently the main reason they are not included is because they make the numbers take up too much room on some of the busier screens. For those of us who have to play the game at 800x600 because our graphics cards aren't all that hot, screen real-estate is a prime consideration.
I think I can say that I've learnt as much (or more) about arb irrelevant stuff as I have about the actual game in this forum. Prime examples being this thread and the one about a week ago about spanish pronounciations of the words "no va". Keep them coming, X2 helps you learn 
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate
Learned something new today too. Never knew there was a different definition of a billion.
To answer the original poster, no one has provided any concrete prove (screen prints) of winning the lottery. Because of the number range and the number of picks, the odds of winning is so astronomical that it is much harder real life lottery. Don't waste your money.
To answer the original poster, no one has provided any concrete prove (screen prints) of winning the lottery. Because of the number range and the number of picks, the odds of winning is so astronomical that it is much harder real life lottery. Don't waste your money.
I'll shed some light on this issue:
There are two¹ numerical systems currently in use: the short and long scale. Both scales are widespread and used in many countries, so we can't say that either is right or wrong (some countries even use both). What's important here is that the short scale is used in the US, so we could say that the short scale is generally used in the English language (yes, even British English - the long scale was officially abandoned in '74), especially on the Internet.
In the short scale, each new term is 1,000 times greater than the previous term. Therefore, a billion is 1,000 million or 10^9, a trillion is 10^12, a quadrillion is 10^15 etc.
In the long scale, each new term is 1,000,000 times greater than the previous term. Therefore, a billion is 1,000,000 million or 10^12, a trillion is 10^18, a quadrillion is 10^24 etc.
As far as I know, X²: The Threat and X³: Reunion, like most other games, use a signed long int. variable to store the player's money. As such, it cannot exceed 2,147,483,647 ²³. Of course, there were ways to increase the limit but since it doesn't seriously affect gameplay in any way, a standard long int. is sufficient.
¹ There are other systems in use (ex. in some Asian countries) but they're not widespread and are therefore irrelevant for this discussion.
² There's a subroutine that checks if adding a specific number will result in an arithmetic overflow (similar to the one that checks if you have enough money to buy something - if it didn't exist, you'd have negative money after buying an item whose value is greater than your current amount of money).
Without such a subroutine in C++, for a long int. "a" with a value of 2,000,000,000, "a+=1000000000;" wouldn't produce a run-time error but result in "a" becoming -1,294,967,294 instead of 3,000,000,000.
³ Although you cannot "carry" more than 2,147,483,647c, it's still possible to store the same amount of cash on each station you own. We could say that each station is an "object" (programming-term) with a money-variable of its own. Therefore, your real limit is (X+1)(2^31-1) where "X" is the number of stations you currently own.
There are two¹ numerical systems currently in use: the short and long scale. Both scales are widespread and used in many countries, so we can't say that either is right or wrong (some countries even use both). What's important here is that the short scale is used in the US, so we could say that the short scale is generally used in the English language (yes, even British English - the long scale was officially abandoned in '74), especially on the Internet.
In the short scale, each new term is 1,000 times greater than the previous term. Therefore, a billion is 1,000 million or 10^9, a trillion is 10^12, a quadrillion is 10^15 etc.
In the long scale, each new term is 1,000,000 times greater than the previous term. Therefore, a billion is 1,000,000 million or 10^12, a trillion is 10^18, a quadrillion is 10^24 etc.
To be exact, the limit is 2^31-1 or 2,147,483,647 (that's 2 short-scale/"American" billion). In programming, the most frequently used integer data type is "long integer". In most programming languages, it's a 32-bit (4-byte) integer so its range is -2^31 to 2^31-1 or -2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647. Some programming languages also support unsigned integers so their 32-bit integer range would be 0 to 4,294,967,295.Tsar_of_Cows wrote:... and if you did win all 25 bil, it would crash the game, since it cant work with numbers over 2 billion... but I wonder if its a British Billion:
1 000 000 000 000
Or an American Billion:
1 000 000 000
That it applys too....
As far as I know, X²: The Threat and X³: Reunion, like most other games, use a signed long int. variable to store the player's money. As such, it cannot exceed 2,147,483,647 ²³. Of course, there were ways to increase the limit but since it doesn't seriously affect gameplay in any way, a standard long int. is sufficient.
¹ There are other systems in use (ex. in some Asian countries) but they're not widespread and are therefore irrelevant for this discussion.
² There's a subroutine that checks if adding a specific number will result in an arithmetic overflow (similar to the one that checks if you have enough money to buy something - if it didn't exist, you'd have negative money after buying an item whose value is greater than your current amount of money).
Without such a subroutine in C++, for a long int. "a" with a value of 2,000,000,000, "a+=1000000000;" wouldn't produce a run-time error but result in "a" becoming -1,294,967,294 instead of 3,000,000,000.
³ Although you cannot "carry" more than 2,147,483,647c, it's still possible to store the same amount of cash on each station you own. We could say that each station is an "object" (programming-term) with a money-variable of its own. Therefore, your real limit is (X+1)(2^31-1) where "X" is the number of stations you currently own.