Scale of large things

We often hear "project A will cost $X million" or "something will cost $Y billion" on the news. Do we really understand how big these amounts are? Studies show that a group of people would spend a lot of time to decide how to spend a US$3000 budget, and relatively less on a multi million dollar budget. The reason is simple: we know how big US$3000 is. For your convenience, I've compiled a table of large monetary values. While I was doing this, I realized that the number of units sold is also a frequently mentioned figure on media. So without further ado,

Monetary

Source	Date	Thing	US$	TW¥	CN¥
IMF thru Wikipedia	2006	Nominal GDP of the World	48.25 tr.	1559.77 tr.	356.82 tr.
IMF	2006	Nominal GDP of the U.S.A.	13.19 tr.	426.58 tr.	97.59 tr.
White House	2007	Outlays of the U.S. Federal Government	2.78 tr.	89.85 tr.	20.55 tr.
IMF	2006	Nominal GDP of the P.R.C.	2.64 tr.	85.50 tr.	19.56 tr.
IMF	2006	Nominal GDP of France	2.25 tr.	72.81 tr.	16.66 tr.
HM Treasury	2007	U.K. Government expenditure	1.20 tr.	38.70 tr.	8.85 tr.
IMF	2006	Nominal GDP of the R.O.C.	364.56 b.	11.79 tr.	2.70 tr.
IMF	2006	Nominal GDP of Singapore	132.16 b.	4.27 tr.	977.42 b.
IMF	2006	Nominal GDP of Vietnam	61.00 b.	1.97 tr.	451.12 b.
Forbes	2007	Bill Gate's net worth	59.00 b.	1.91 tr.	436.36 b.
Yahoo Finance	2007	Microsoft's revenue	54.07 b.	1.75 tr.	399.90 b.
Directorate-General of Budget, Accouting and Statistics, Executive Yuan	2007	Outlays of the R.O.C. central government	51.46 b.	1.66 tr.	380.62 b.
Yahoo Finance	2007	Microsoft's gross profit	40.43 b.	1.31 tr.	299.02 b.
Yahoo Finance	2007	Amazon's revenue	13.15 b.	425.14 b.	97.26 b.
IMF	2006	Nominal GDP of Brunei	11.56 b.	373.77 b.	85.51 b.
Apprentice 505	2006	Cruise line industry	10.00 b.	323.30 b.	73.96 b.
NY MTA	2007	Total operating budget of NY MTA	9.72 b.	314.09 b.	71.85 b.
Apprentice 504	2006	Americans spend this much on cereal	6.00 b.	193.98 b.	44.38 b.
IMF	2006	Nominal GDP of Madagascar	5.50 b.	177.78 b.	40.67 b.
Department of Budget, Accounting, & Statistics, Taipei	2007	Taipei government expenditure	4.39 b.	142.05 b.	32.50 b.
Yahoo Finance	2007	Amazon's gross profit	2.46 b.	79.53 b.	18.19 b.
Washington Metro	2007	Budget of 2007	1.89 b.	61.14 b.	13.99 b.
IMF	2006	Nominal GDP of Eritrea	1.16 b.	37.50 b.	8.58 b.
IMF	2006	Nominal GDP of Liberia	614.00 m.	19.85 b.	4.54 b.
Yahoo Movie	1997	Cumm. gross of the movie Titanic	600.79 m.	19.42 b.	4.44 b.
Yahoo Movie	2004	Cumm. gross of the movie Shrek 2	441.23 m.	14.26 b.	3.26 b.
Reuters thru Wikipedia	2007	Official list price of Airbus A380	319.20 m.	10.32 b.	2.36 b.
Taipei MRT	2006	Revenue of Taipei MRT	311.78 m.	10.08 b.	2.31 b.
Yahoo Movie	2003	Cumm. gross of X2: X-Men United	214.95 m.	6.95 b.	1.59 b.
NY MTA	2004	Long Island bus operating budget	100.60 m.	3.25 b.	744.04 m.
Department of RTS, Taipei	1988-2006	Per km cost of high volume lines (Taipei MRT)	89.58 m.	2.90 b.	662.51 m.
IMF	2006	Nominal GDP of Kiribati	70.00 m.	2.26 b.	517.72 m.
Taipei MRT	2006	Pre-tax profit of Taipei MRT	31.55 m.	1.02 b.	233.34 m.

Unit

Source	Start	End	Thing	Unit
ITWorld.com thru Wikipedia	2001/10/25	2006/1/15	Windows XP	400.00 m.
Sony thru Wikipedia	2000/3/4	2007/9/20	PS2 Worldwide	120.00 m.
Wikipedia	2001/10/23	2007/10/15	All iPods	119.00 m.
Sony thru Wikipedia	1994/12/3		PS	102.49 m.
Wikipedia	1983/7/15		NES	61.79 m.
Motorola thru Wikipedia	2004/11/8	2006/7/18	RAZR V3	50.00 m.
Nintendo thru Wikipedia	1990/11/21		SNES	49.00 m.
gamecubicle.com thru Wikipedia	1985/9/13		Super Mario (All-stars excluded)	40.24 m.
GameDaily Biz thru Wikipedia	2000/10/26	2007/9/13	PS2 US	39.10 m.
Nintendo thru Wikipedia	1996/6/23	2005/3/31	Nintendo 64	32.93 m.
Wired thru Wikipedia	1988/10/29		Sega Genesis (Mega Drive)	29.00 m.
Xbox.com thru Wikipedia	2001/11/15	2006/5/10	Xbox	24.00 m.
Nintendo thru Wikipedia	2001/9/14	2007/9/30	GameCube	21.66 m.
ownt.com thru Wikipedia	1988/10/23		Super Mario 3 (All-stars excluded)	18.00 m.
Punch Jump thru Wikipedia	2005/11/22	2007/9/30	Xbox 360 Worldwide	13.40 m.
Nintendo thru Wikipedia	2006/11/19		Wii	13.17 m.
GamePro thru Wikipedia	1998/11/27		Dreamcast	10.60 m.
IGN thru Wikipedia	1998/4/1		StarCraft	9.50 m.
GameDaily Biz thru Wikipedia	2005/11/22	2007/9/13	Xbox 360 US	6.30 m.
Sony thru Wikipedia	2006/11/11	2007/9/30	PS3	5.59 m.

Note: Using the following exchange rates
US$ = TW¥ 32.33
GB£ = US$ 2.03947
US$ = CN¥ 7.396