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| ▲ | array_key_first 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It means that is fine for Kilo to mean 1024 in the context of computers and 1000 in the context of distances, because you're never going to be in a situation where that is ambiguous. | | |
| ▲ | crazygringo 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Except it's not because it's constantly ambiguous in computing. E.g. Macs measure file sizes in powers of 10 and call them KB, MB, GB. Windows measures file sizes in powers of 2 and calls them KB, MB, GB instead of KiB, MiB, GiB. Advertised hard drives come in powers of 10. Advertised memory chips come in powers of 2. When you've got a large amount of data or are allocating an amount of space, are you measuring its size in memory or on disk? On a Mac or on Windows? | | |
| ▲ | kazinator 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It's the forced revisionism of what "kilobyte", "megabyte" and "gigabyte", that has caused most of the confusion. Especially that it was only partially successful. Which is not to say that there had been zero confusion; but it was only made worse. | | |
| ▲ | crazygringo a day ago | parent [-] | | What forced revisionism? Things like hard drives often used decimal/metric sizing from the start. Because their capacity has always been based on physical platter size and density, not powers of two the way memory is. So this confusion has been with computing since the beginning. The attempt to introduce units like KiB isn't revisionism, it's an attempt at clarity around something that has always been ambiguous. And obviously, if you need two separate prefixes, you're going to change the one whose unit of measurement differs from all the rest of science and technology. | | |
| ▲ | kazinator a day ago | parent [-] | | > The attempt to introduce units like KiB isn't revisionism Yes it is; it is literally asking people who call 1024 bytes "kilobyte" to stop doing that and say "kibibyte" instead, and to revise the meaning of "kilobyte" to 1000 bytes. Some people have not stopped doing that, so there is more confusion now. You no longer know whether a fellow engineer is using powers of 1000 or powers of 1024 when using kilobyte, megabyte or gigabyte; it depends on whether they took the red pill or the blue pill. | | |
| ▲ | crazygringo a day ago | parent [-] | | It's a partial renaming but it's not revisionism. > You no longer know whether a fellow engineer is using powers of 1000 or powers of 1024 when using kilobyte, megabyte or gigabyte You never knew this, that's the point. You didn't know it in e.g. 1990, before KiB was introduced in 1998. People didn't only start using powers of 10 once KiB was formally introduced. They'd always used them, but conventions around powers of 10 vs 2 depended greatly on the computing context, and were frequently confusing. There isn't more confusion now. Fortunately, places that explicitly state KiB result in less confusion because, at least in that case, you know for sure what it is. Unfortunately, a lot of people won't get on board with it, so the confusion persists. And frankly, I don't care what you call it when you're speaking, as long as you just use the right label in software and in tech specs. | | |
| ▲ | kazinator 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | > You didn't know it in e.g. 1990 False: source, I was there. Kilobyte and megabyte were powers of 1024, except in well-delineated circumstances (mass storage devices). The size labeling of mass storage devices was widely reviled due to using a weasly definition of terms that everyone normally undestood to be powers of 1024. > a lot of people won't get on board with it, so the confusion persists. The idea that people refusing to change their behavior according to someone's wishes are causing confusion is fallacious. Of course it's those introducing change that are introducing confusion. The kibi-mebi people failed to predict human behavior; that they cannot just roll out a vocabulary change to all of humanity the way you roll out a new kernel throughout a machine cluster. The irony is that you can even find people who were not born at the time, who are using kilobyte to mean 1024 bytes. | | |
| ▲ | crazygringo 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | I was there too. What you call being "widely reviled" is just another way of saying "in common usage". Maybe you "reviled" it, but it was just convention. So it's not false, and it wasn't well delineated. Just like it continues not to be. Why don't you take a look at Wikipedia which clearly describes the many, many, many places in which powers-of-10 is used, and then also has a section on powers-of-2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Units_based_on_powers_of_... Remember, it wasn't just hard drives either. It's been data transfer speeds, network speeds, tape capacities, etc. There's an awful lot of stuff in computing that doesn't inherently depend on powers of 2 for its scaling. And so as long as we have both units and will always have both units, it makes sense to give them different names. And, obviously, the one that matches the SI system should have the same name as it. Can you seriously disagree? Again, I don't care what you say in conversation. But in labels and specifications, how can you argue against it? |
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| ▲ | thayne 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And that is because some people didn't like that a kilobyte was 1024 bytes instead of 1000, so they started using 1000 instead, and then that created confusion, so then they made up new term "kibibyte" that used 1024, and now it's all a mess. And in most cases, using 1024 is more convenient because the sizes of page sizes, disk sectors, etc. are powers of 2. | |
| ▲ | fc417fc802 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > 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 aren't speaking but are rather working in writing. kb, kB, Kb, and KB refer to four different unit bit counts and there is absolutely zero ambiguity. The only question that might arise (depending on who you ask) is how to properly verbalize them. | | |
| ▲ | cornstalks 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > 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. | | |
| ▲ | fc417fc802 2 days ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | nayuki 2 days ago | parent [-] | | > 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. | | |
| ▲ | fc417fc802 a day ago | parent [-] | | Touche! I had no idea that term was in use. That said, I remain unconvinced that there is any danger of confusion here. Benchmarking compression algorithms is awfully specific; it's normal for fields to have their own jargon and conventions. > Just because you don't see a use for mB doesn't mean it's open for use as a synonym of MB. At the end of the day it's all down to convention. We've never needed approval from a standards body to do something. Standards are useful to follow when they provide a tangible benefit; following them for their own sake to the detriment of something immediately practical is generally a waste of time and effort. I don't believe I hallucinated unit notations such as mB and gB. Unfortunately I don't immediately recall where I encountered their use. > In case you're wondering, mHz is not a theoretical concept either. Just to be clear, I was not meaning to suggest that non-SI prefixes be used for quantifying anything other than bits. SI standardized prefixes are great for most things. |
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