I clearly remember several years ago in Technically Speaking that the convention adopted by IEEE is to use "disk" for magnetic disk and "disc" for optical disc. However, I was quite surprised to see the use of "disk" for both magnetic and optical ones in 1995-08 issue of Spectrum. New technology such as "magneto-optical" may have blurred the line between disk and disc. Any comment?
Another picking. Despite the thrust to go global rather than a U.S. organisation, IEEE along with the advertisers continue to use North American centric telephone number notation. Specifically, I want to point out the absence of a country code for North American organisations. I am pushing for a universal telephone number notation (+1-819-595-9210), much like the URL (Uniform Resource Locator) for the World-Wide Web. The "+" indicates that the number must follow the external access code (011 in my case for overseas call). I also want the Telcos to adopt a method so that my directory database on a PDA will be usable anywhere in the world without modification. Since the computer is doing the dialing, I don't mind including the area code for local calls as long as the rates are properly calculated.
Thank you very much for your attention.
P.S. If you decide to publish my comments, I would appreciate your including my E-mail address.
