Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

waspdev.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 430 posts

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#171

Post by whichquestion »

kmm wrote: 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 worked with networked attached storage systems at pib scale several years ago and we referred to things in gib/tib because it was significant when referring to the size of systems and we needed to be precise.

That being said, I think the difference between mib and mb is niche for most people

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#172

Post by kstrauser »

quotemstr wrote: post #67
none_to_remain wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be honest, I think the power-ten SI people might have won the war against the power-two people if they'd just chosen a prefix that sounded slightly less ridiculous than "kibibyte". What the hell is a "kibibyte"? Sounds like a brand of dog food.

I genuinely believe you're right. It comes across like "the people who are right can use the disputed word, and the people who are wrong can use this infantile one".

I don't know what the better alternative would have been, but this certainly wasn't it.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#173

Post by Out_of_Characte »

The author doesn't go far enough into the problems with trying to convert information theory to SI Units.

SI units are attempting to fix standard measurements with perceived constants in nature. A meter(Distance) is the distance light travels in a vacuum, back and forth, within a certain amount of ossilations of a cesium atom(Time). This doesn't mean we tweak the meter to conform to observational results as we'd all be happier if light really was 300 000KM/s instead of ~299 792km/s.

Then there's the problem of not mixing different measurement units. SI was designed to conform all measurements to the same base 10 exponents (cm, m, km versus feet inches and yards) But the authors attempt to resolve this matter doesn't even conform to standardised SI units as we would expect them to.

What is a byte? Well, 8 bits, sometimes. What is a kilobit? 1000 Bits What is a kilobyte? 1000 Bytes, or 1024 Bytes.

Now we've already mixed units based on what a bit or a byte even is and the addition of the 8 multiplier in addition to the exponent of 1000 or 1024.

And if you think, hey, at least the bit is the least divisible unit of information, That's not even correct. If there Should* be a reformalisation of information units, you would agree that the amount of "0"'s is the least divisible unit of information. A kilo of zero's, would be 1000. A 'byte' would be defined as containing up to 256 zero's. A Megazero would contain up to a million zero's.

It wouldn't make any intuitive sense for anyone to count 0's, which would automatically convert your information back to base 10, but it does prove that the most sensible unit of information is already what we've had before, that is, you're not mixing bytes (powers of 2) with SI-defined units of 1000

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#174

Post by kstrauser »

nayuki wrote: post #104
ValdikSS wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's still wrong and you've solved nothing. 32 Gb = 32 000 000 000 bits = 4 000 000 000 bytes = 4 GB (real SI gigabytes). If you think 32 Gb are binary gibibits, then you've disagreed with Ethernet (e.g. 2.5 Gb/s), Thunderbolt (e.g. 40 Gb/s), and other communication standards. That's why I keep hammering on the same point: Creating context-dependent prefixes sows endless confusion. The only way to stop the confusio…

It's not wrong. It's the standard definition for that industry.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#175

Post by ValdikSS »

nayuki wrote: post #104
ValdikSS wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's still wrong and you've solved nothing. 32 Gb = 32 000 000 000 bits = 4 000 000 000 bytes = 4 GB (real SI gigabytes). If you think 32 Gb are binary gibibits, then you've disagreed with Ethernet (e.g. 2.5 Gb/s), Thunderbolt (e.g. 40 Gb/s), and other communication standards. That's why I keep hammering on the same point: Creating context-dependent prefixes sows endless confusion. The only way to stop the confusio…

Damn you're right. It's double-confusing now.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#176

Post by zephen »

kstrauser wrote: post #169
zephen wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When dealing with microcontrollers and datasheets and talking to other designers, yes precision is required, and, e.g. 8KB means, unequivocally and unambiguously, 8192 bytes.

Ummm, should we tell him?

That I can't type worth shit?

Yeah, I already knew that, lol.

But thanks for bringing it to my attention. :-)

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#177

Post by kstrauser »

zephen wrote: post #176
kstrauser wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummm, should we tell him?

That I can't type worth shit? Yeah, I already knew that, lol. But thanks for bringing it to my attention. :-)

I kid good-naturedly. I'm always horrified at what autocorrect has done to my words after it's too late to edit or un-send them. I swear I write words goodly, for realtime!

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#178

Post by waffletower »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #139
waffletower wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see a precision argument for binary represented frequencies. A systems programmer would value this. A musician would not.

Musicians often use equal temperament, so they have their own numerical crimes to answer for.

Touché, appropriate to describe near compulsory equal temperament (ala MIDI) as a crime.

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#179

Post by senfiaj »

waffletower wrote: post #162
crazygringo wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? The article literally fully explains the rationale, as well as the history. It's not "denying" anything. Seems entirely reasonable and balanced to me.

They are definitely denying the importance of 2-fold partitioning in computing architectures. VM_PAGE_SIZE is not defined with the value of '10000' for good reason (in many operating systems it is set to '16384').

That's why I said "usually acceptable depending on the context". In spoken language I also don't like the awkward and unusual pronunciation of "kibi". But I'll still prefer to write in KiB, especially if I document something.

Also If you open major Linux distro task managers, you'll be surprised to see that they often show in decimal units when "i" is missing from the prefix. Many utilities often avoid the confusing prefixes "KB", "MB"... and use "KiB", "MiB"...

Re: 1 kilobyte is precisely 1000 bytes?

#180

Post by waffletower »

fsckboy wrote: post #135
waffletower wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see a precision argument for binary represented frequencies. A systems programmer would value this. A musician would not.

musicians use numbering systems that are actually far more confused than anything discussed here. how many notes in an OCTave? "do re mi fa so la ti do" is eight, but that last do is part of the next octave, so an OCTave is 7 notes. (if we count transitions, same thing, starting at the first zero do , re is 1, ... again 7. the same and even more confusion is engendered when talking about "fifths" etc.

The 7 note scale you suggest (do re mi fa so la ti do) is comprised of different intervals (2 2 1 2 2 2 1) in the 12-fold equal tempered scale. There are infinite ways of exploring an octave in music, but unfortunately listener demand for such exploration is near infinitesimal.
Post reply on HN