sorry, it was a joke, I never meant 10^9 == 1 Billion. I edited the brackets in afterwards ;)
I was also joking.
"Billion" suffers from the same problem as "Gigabyte". It has two mutually exclusive definitions (10^9 and 10^12) so you can't use it without the possibility of some confusion resulting.
Doh. Double gotcha'd :)
10^9 = german billion. no problem here with the short ladder.
Maybe I misunderstand your comment, but Germany uses the long scale, last time I checked.