>Here is an amusing story which I heard a while back, from a colleague who died recently.
>
>Many years ago, he was working with one of those big computer systems of old. One of the bosses told him to run a certain process - or was it a report? - and to assign it "priority 1".
>
>So he very obediently applied priority 1. He didn't bother to explain that on this particular system, the priorities went from 0 to 9, 9 being the highest priority. As a result, the process took a few hours longer.
>
>(Perhaps he thought the people in charge ought to know how the system worked.)

That's probably an exception from the general rule. Everywhere else I worked 1 means the greatest priority and they descend when number increases.