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A kB by anyother name...
Authored by: IslandDan on Apr 10, '03 09:21:00AM

The Law of Least Astonishmen would be that kB and MB would be 1,000 and 1,000,000 conforming to everything not computer and most things computer such as communication speeds, USB speeds, FireWire speeds, bus speeds, cpu speeds, disk drive sizes, etc. How long should it take to transfer 1Mb over a 1Mb/s communications channel? 1 second?

It is least astonishing that 1 kB, 1 kg and 1km are 1,000 base units. It is least astonishing that 1KB is 1024 bytes and 1MB is 1,048,576 bytes and 1GB is 1,073,741,824 bytes only to techno geeks.

Computers should conform to common and expected standards or people, not people to computer memory manufacturing methods.



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A kB by anyother name...
Authored by: carsten on Apr 10, '03 01:24:33PM

As memory and hard drives are becoming increasingly larger, I expect the computer industry will eventually switch from binary size notation (i.e. 1024) to metric (1000), as the disparity bewteen an actual count of bytes represented by each notation increases with ever-greater size measurements.

For now it seems, the only ones who consistently use metric byte notation are hard-drive manufaturers.

Seriously, until such time as hard drives and memory size grow so large that the computer industry is forced to switch over from binary byte notion to metric byte notation, I suggest a more profitable expenditure of "metrification" efforts would be to encourage the general adoption of S.I. units everywere in North America, as most of the world already employs.

Particularly the lack of use of A4 paper bothers me personally, the infinite benefits of metric paper sizes seem to be lost on us Canadians (we primarily use standard metric but also use Imperial units for many things) as well as our American friends. See ISO paper

:)
Cheers,
Carsten

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A kB by anyother name...
Authored by: WillyT on Apr 13, '03 08:27:11AM

To me a 45 year computer user:

1 kB = 1000 bytes
1 KB = 1024 bytes

1 kb = 1000 bits
1 Kb = 1024 bits

Due to the way serial data is transmitted 50Kb/sec is approx 5kB/sec.
(1.5 start bits + 7 or 8 data bits + 0 or 1 parity bit + 1 or 2 stop bits = somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 or 11 bits)

Of course I learned things in the "wrong order":
English
Latin
Fortran IV
Ladder Logic
Machine Language
Assembler Language
Basic
C
Logo
Forth
Lisp
Boopsi
C++
Objective C

I don't claim to be any good at any of these (I'm just a user who has a dealer and I can do my own fix).

I program in Ladder logic.



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A kB by anyother name...
Authored by: WillyT on Apr 13, '03 08:36:49AM

Oops I'm not that old I can't even count on my fingers. I've been using computers for only 35 years.



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