As I know 1000-based units are used only by hard-drive manufactures to sell hard drives with 930GB capacity as 1TB capactiy-drives.
1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?
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Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?
#282There is a counterproductive obsession with powers of 10. Sometimes, other systems just make more sense. For example, for time, or angles, or bytes. There are properties of certain numbers (or bases) that make everything descending from them easier to deal with. for angles and time (and feet): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_highly_composite_numb... For other problems we use base 2, 3, 8, 16, or 10. Must we tr…
Agreed. Metric is stupid. The ancient Sumerians used multiples of 60, as we continue to do for time and angles (which are related) today. It makes perfect sense. 60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, which makes it easy to use in calculations. Even the metric people are not so crazy as to propose replacing these with powers of 10. Same with pounds, for example. A pound is 16 ounces, which can be divided 4 times witho…
> even the metric people are not so crazy
No, they were absolutely that crazy [1]. Luckily the proposal fell through.
Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Macs measure file sizes in powers of 10 and call them KB, MB, GB. That doesn't conform to SI. It should be written as kB mB gB. Ambiguity will only arise when speaking. > Advertised hard drives come in powers of 10. Mass storage (kB) has its own context at this point, distinct from networking (kb/s) and general computing (KB). > When you've got a large amount of data or are allocating an amount of space, ... You ar…
> That doesn't conform to SI. It should be written as kB mB gB Little m is milli, big M is mega. Little g doesn’t exist, only big G.
Oh. Indeed you're correct. I was thinking in computer terms instead of scientific terms. Personally I see this as reinforcing that computers as a context wouldn't really benefit from using "proper" SI.
Note that no one is going to confuse mB for millibytes because what would that even mean? But also in practice MB versus Mb aren't ambiguous because except for mass storage no one mixes bytes with powers of ten AFAIK.
And let's take a minute to appreciate the inconsistency of (SI) km vs Mm. KB to GB is more consistent.
Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?
#284the solution is, of course geometric mean. 1KB = sqrt(1000 * 1024) B
Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've never heard It doesn't matter. "kilo" means 1000. People are free to use it wrong if they wish.
All words are made up. They weren’t handed down from a deity, they were made up by humans to communicate ideas to other humans. “Kilo” can mean what we want in different contexts and it’s really no more or less correct as long as both parties understand and are consistent in their usage to each other.
All you've done is created a homonym for no good reason at all.
Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?
#286A mile is exactly 1000 paces, or 4000 feet. You may disagree, but consider: the word mile come from latin for "one thousand". Therefore a mile must be 1000 of something, namely paces. I hope you find this argument convincing.
5000, but a slightly shorter foot than the modern one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile#Roman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Roman_units_of_measure...
Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> It doesn't matter. "kilo" means 1000. People are free to use it wrong if they wish. > All words are made up. Yes, and the made up words of kilo and kibi were given specific definitions by the people who made them up: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix > […] as long as both parties understand and are consistent in their usage to each other. And if they don't?…
> Yes, and the made up words of kilo and kibi were given specific definitions by the people who made them up Good for them. People make up their own definitions for words all the time. Some of those people even try to get others to adopt their definition. Very few are ever successful. Because language is about communicating shared meaning. And there is a great deal of cultural inertia behind the kilo = 2^10 definitio…
That also makes your comment unreadable, no idea what the definition of any word in your comment means anymore.
Can’t use a dictionary, those bastards try to get us to adopt their definitions.
Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That doesn't conform to SI. It should be written as kB mB gB Little m is milli, big M is mega. Little g doesn’t exist, only big G.
Oh. Indeed you're correct. I was thinking in computer terms instead of scientific terms. Personally I see this as reinforcing that computers as a context wouldn't really benefit from using "proper" SI. Note that no one is going to confuse mB for millibytes because what would that even mean? But also in practice MB versus Mb aren't ambiguous because except for mass storage no one mixes bytes with powers of ten AFAIK.…
> no one is going to confuse mB for millibytes because what would that even mean?
Data compression. For example, look at http://prize.hutter1.net/ , heading "Contestants and Winners for enwik8". On 23.May'09, Alex's program achieved 1.278 bits per character. On 4.Nov'17, Alex achieved 1.225 bits per character. That is an improvement of 0.053 b/char, or 53 millibits per character. Similarly, we can talk about how many millibits per pixel JPEG-XL is better than classic JPEG for the same perceptual visual quality. (I'm using bits as the example, but you can use bytes and reach the same conclusion.)
Just because you don't see a use for mB doesn't mean it's open for use as a synonym of MB. Lowercase m means milli-, as already demonstrated in countless frequently used units - millilitre, millimetre, milliwatt, milliampere, and so on.
In case you're wondering, mHz is not a theoretical concept either. If you're generating a tone at say 440 Hz, you can talk about the frequency stability in millihertz of deviation.
Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?
#289There is a counterproductive obsession with powers of 10. Sometimes, other systems just make more sense. For example, for time, or angles, or bytes. There are properties of certain numbers (or bases) that make everything descending from them easier to deal with. for angles and time (and feet): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_highly_composite_numb... For other problems we use base 2, 3, 8, 16, or 10. Must we tr…
Agreed. Metric is stupid. The ancient Sumerians used multiples of 60, as we continue to do for time and angles (which are related) today. It makes perfect sense. 60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, which makes it easy to use in calculations. Even the metric people are not so crazy as to propose replacing these with powers of 10. Same with pounds, for example. A pound is 16 ounces, which can be divided 4 times witho…
> Same with pounds, for example. A pound is 16 ounces, which can be divided 4 times without involving any fractions. Try that with metric.
Not sure if you're actually serious... 1 kg is 1000 g, dividing with 4 gets you 250 g, no fractions. And no need to remember arbitrary names or numbers for conversions.
> Then there's temperature. Fahrenheit just works more naturally over the human-scale temperature range without involving fractions. Celsius kind of sucks by comparison.
Again, I'm not sure I get it. With celsius, 0°C is freezing temperature of water and 100°C is boiling point of water. For fahrenheit it was something like 32 and 212? And in every day use, people don't need fractions, only full degrees. Celsius also aligns well with Kelvins without fractions (unlike fahrenheit).
Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?
#290There is a counterproductive obsession with powers of 10. Sometimes, other systems just make more sense. For example, for time, or angles, or bytes. There are properties of certain numbers (or bases) that make everything descending from them easier to deal with. for angles and time (and feet): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_highly_composite_numb... For other problems we use base 2, 3, 8, 16, or 10. Must we tr…
Agreed. Metric is stupid. The ancient Sumerians used multiples of 60, as we continue to do for time and angles (which are related) today. It makes perfect sense. 60 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, which makes it easy to use in calculations. Even the metric people are not so crazy as to propose replacing these with powers of 10. Same with pounds, for example. A pound is 16 ounces, which can be divided 4 times witho…
> A pound is 16 ounces, which can be divided 4 times without involving any fractions. Try that with metric.
1000 g, 500 g, 250 g, 125 g
I also don't understand the fear around fractions - we deal with halves, quarters and fifths all the time in the natural world.