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1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

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Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#51

Post by pdw »

mc32 wrote: post #31
gizmo686 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because kilo- already has a meaning. And both usages of kilobyte were (and are) in use. If we are going to fix the problem, we might as well fix it right.

Sure outside of computing in other science it has a meaning but in binary computing traditionally prefix + byte implied binary number quantities. Many things acquire domain specific nuanced meaning ..

Even in computing the binary definition is only used with memory sizes. E.g. storage, network speeds, clock rates use the standard definition.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#52

Post by pif »

mc32 wrote: post #16

One thing that annoys me is: Why don’t kilobyte continue to mean 1024 and introduce kilodebyte to mean 1000. Byte, to me implies a binary number system, and if you want to introduce a new nomenclature to reduce confusion, give the new one a new name and let the older of more prevalent one in its domain keep the old one…

> Why don’t kilobyte continue to mean 1024

Because it never did!

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#53

Post by pif »

marssaxman wrote: post #47
pif wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The wish is for "kilobyte" to have one meaning. Which is the reality. "kilobyte" means "1000 bytes". There's no possible discussion over this fact. Many people have been using it wrong for decades, but its literal value did not change.

That is a prescriptivist way of thinking about language, which is useful if you enjoy feeling righteous about correctness, but not so helpful for understanding how communication actually works. In reality-reality, "kilobyte" may mean either "1000 bytes" or "1024 bytes", depending on who is saying it, whom they are saying it to, and what they are saying it about. You are free to intend only one meaning in your own com…

I understand the usual meaning, but I use the correct meaning when precision is required.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#54

Post by pif »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #44
pif wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The wish is for "kilobyte" to have one meaning. Which is the reality. "kilobyte" means "1000 bytes". There's no possible discussion over this fact. Many people have been using it wrong for decades, but its literal value did not change.

In computers, "kilobyte" has a context dependent meaning. It has been thus for decades. It does not only mean 1000 bytes.

I understand the usual meaning, but I use the correct meaning when precision is required.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#55

Post by none_to_remain »

hnlmorg wrote: post #32
none_to_remain wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

KiB is a an abbreviation for "kilobyte" which emphasizes that it means 1024.

No it’s not. KiB is an abbreviation for kibibyte Eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobyte

Those silly words only come up in discussions like this. I have never heard them uttered in real life. I don't think my experience is bizarre here - actual usage is what matters in my book.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#56

Post by happytoexplain »

pif wrote: post #40
nerdsniper wrote: post #9

Final edit: This ambiguity is documented at least back to 1984, by IBM, the pre-eminent computer company of the time. In 1972 IBM started selling the IBM 3333 magnetic disk drive. This product catalog [0] from 1979 shows them marketing the corresponding disks as "100 million bytes" or "200 million bytes" (3336 mdl 1 and 3336 mdl 11, respectively). By 1984, those same disks were marketed in the "IBM Input/Output Devic…

> The wish is for "kilobyte" to have one meaning. Which is the reality. "kilobyte" means "1000 bytes". There's no possible discussion over this fact. Many people have been using it wrong for decades, but its literal value did not change.

The line between "literal" and "colloquial" becomes blurred when a word consisting of strongly-defined parts ("kilo") gets used in official, standardized contexts with a different meaning.

In fact, this is the only case I can think of where that has ever happened.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#58

Post by nayuki »

mrb wrote: post #33

Whenever this discussion comes up I liked to point out that even in the computer industry, prefixes like kilo/mega/etc more often mean a power of 10 than a power of 2: I gave some examples in my post https://blog.zorinaq.com/decimal-prefixes-are-more-common-th...

Nice page, and nice link to Colin Percival's page too! Let me toss you one example: CDs are marketed in mebibytes. A "650 MB" burnable CD is actually 650 MiB ≈ 682 MB, and likewise for "700 MB" being actually 700 MiB ≈ 734 MB. DVD and BD do use metric prefixes correctly, like you pointed out. Back in the day, I archived my data on CD/DVD/BD, and I planned out my disc burns to have only about 1 to 10 MB of wasted space, so I had to be very aware of the true definition and exactly how much capacity was available for me to use.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#59

Post by card_zero »

Sophira wrote: post #30
cedilla wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got it exactly the wrong way around. And that with such great confidence! There was always a confusion about whether a kilobyte was 1000 or 1024 bytes. Early diskettes always used 1000, only when the 8 bit home computer era started was the 1024 convention firmly established. Before that it made no sense to talk about kilo as 1024. Earlier computers measured space in records and words, and I guess you can see h…

> Early diskettes always used 1000 Even worse, the 3.5" HD floppy disk format used a confusing combination of the two. Its true capacity (when formatted as FAT12) is 1,474,560 bytes. Divide that by 1024 and you get 1440KB; divide that by 1000 and you get the oft-quoted (and often printed on the disk itself) "1.44MB", which is inaccurate no matter how you look at it.

I'm not seeing evidence for a 1970s 1000-byte kilobyte. Wikipedia's floppy disk page mentions the IBM Diskette 1 at 242944 bytes (a multiple of 256), and then 5¼-inch disks at 368640 bytes and 1228800 bytes, both multiples of 1024. These are sector sizes. Nobody had a 1000-byte sector, I'll assert.
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