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1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

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Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#82
>Why do we often say 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes?

Because Windows, and only Windows, shows it this way. It is official and documented: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20090611-00/?p=17...

> Explorer is just following existing practice. Everybody (to within experimental error) refers to 1024 bytes as a kilobyte, not a kibibyte. If Explorer were to switch to the term kibibyte, it would merely be showing users information in a form they cannot understand, and for what purpose? So you can feel superior because you know what that term means and other people don’t.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#83
post #46
post #10

And a megabyte is depending on the context precisely 1000x1000=1,000,000 or 1024x1024=1,048,576 bytes*, except when you're talking about the classic 3.5 inch floppy disks, where "1.44 MB" stands for 1440x1024 bytes, or about 1.47 true MB or 1.41 MiB. * Yeah, I read the article. Regardless of the IEC's noble attempt, in all my years of working with people and computers I've never heard anyone actually pronounce MiB (o…

> I've never heard It doesn't matter. "kilo" means 1000. People are free to use it wrong if they wish.

If Bob says "kilobyte" to Alice, and Bob means 5432 bytes, and Alice perceives him to mean 5432 bytes, then in that context, "kilobyte" means 5432 bytes.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#84
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was earlier than the 90s, and came with popular 8-bit CPUs in the 80s. The Z-80 microprocessor could address 64kb (which was 65,536 bytes) on its 16-bit address bus. Similarly, the 4104 chip was a "4kb x 1 bit" RAM chip and stored 4096 bits. You'd see this in the whole 41xx series, and beyond.

Even then it was not universal. For example, that Apple I ad that got posted a few days ago mentioned that "the system is expandable to 65K". https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Apple_1_...

Seems like a typo given that the ad contains many mentions of K (8K, 32K) and they're all of the 1024 variety.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#86

>Why do we often say 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes? Because Windows, and only Windows, shows it this way. It is official and documented: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20090611-00/?p=17... > Explorer is just following existing practice. Everybody (to within experimental error) refers to 1024 bytes as a kilobyte, not a kibibyte. If Explorer were to switch to the term kibibyte, it would merely be showing users in…

I know the only other software with this kind of error: https://github.com/lsd-rs/lsd/issues/807

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#88
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's funny. If I used the "correct" meaning when precision was required then I'd be wrong every time I need to use it. In computers, bytes are almost always measured in base-2 increments.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#89

It's too late. Powers-of-two won. I'm the sort of person who uses "whom" in English, but even I acknowledge that using "KB" to mean 1,000, not 1,024, can only breed confusion. The purpose of language is to communicate. I'm all for pedantry when it's compatible with clarity, but we can't reconcile the two goals here.

No it didn't, look at your flash/hard drive labels. Also, there has been confusion since the beginning, and the core cause of confusion is refusing to use the common meaning of K, so insisting on that is just perpetuating said confusion

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#90
post #38

> 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes Agreed. For the naysayers out there, consider these problems: * You have 1 "MB" of RAM on a 1 MHz system bus which can transfer 1 byte per clock cycle. How many seconds does it take to read the entire memory? * You have 128 "GB" of RAM and you have an empty 128 GB SSD. Can you successfully hibernate the computer system by storing all of RAM on the SSD? * My camera shoots 6000×4000…

Well, you're joking, but the entire RAM industry still lists their chips in Gb (gigaBITS) to avoid confusion.

32 Gb ram chip = 4 GiB of RAM.

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