For American numbers

[Michael Hoffman]

My mistake - IEC, not ISO

For all intents and purposes an IEC standard should be as good as an
ISO one. They usually develop standards for different areas, or jointly
if it is an overlapping area (but ISO/IEC standards are usually referred
to as "ISO standards").

 

[Erik Max Francis]

I'll be one of the last holdouts, too... it's really not
so hard to work in powers of two if you try...

The difficulty isn't with working in powers of 1024, it's that the terms
are used inconsistently even within the computing industry. Memory is
measured in kibibytes, but disk space is measured in kilobytes.
Something as basic as "1 meg" has different numeric meanings depending
on whether you're talking about memory or disk space or metered
bandwidth usage. And a 1.44 MB isn't 1000^2 bytes or 1024^2 bytes, but
rather 1024*1000 bytes!

 

[Dave Brueck]

Yeah, saw the link. The IEC doesn't speak for me, I'm afraid.
And as the wikipedia notes, "As of 2005 this naming convention
has not gained widespread use."

I suspect I and many others will go to our graves not being
comfortable mebbling and gibbling over our bytes, though
we'll probably spend a lot of time kibbling over the issue...

Indeed - it's a little early to say that we've missed a changing of the guard!

Multiple definitions aside, "kilo" and "mega" are far too entrenched - even if I
could manage to say "kibibyte" with a straight face, I'd get nothing but blank
stares in return.

-Dave

 

[JanC]

Peter Hansen schreef:

Given the clear "units='bytes'" default above, and my restricting
my comments to "the rest of the computer world", it should be
clear I was talking about a very limited subset of the planet.

A subset, however, which has an extremely strong attachment to
1024 instead of 1000 (for very good reasons), and which is
less likely to abandon backwards compatibility and widely accept
1000 than the US is likely to adopt metric widely in the near
future...

The problem is that that 'subset' uses kilo for both 1000 (at least hard
disks & some network transmission speeds) and 1024 in computer science.

 

[Peter Maas]

Multiple definitions aside, "kilo" and "mega" are far too entrenched -
even if I could manage to say "kibibyte" with a straight face, I'd get
nothing but blank stares in return.

This kibi-mebi thing will probably fail because very few can manage
to say "kibibyte" with a straight face

 

[Michael Hoffman]

This kibi-mebi thing will probably fail because very few can manage
to say "kibibyte" with a straight face

I agree, I can't do it yet. I can write kiB and MiB though with a
straight face, and find that useful.

 

[Nick Coghlan]

I agree, I can't do it yet. I can write kiB and MiB though with a
straight face, and find that useful.

And written communication is where avoiding the ambiguity tends to matter more -
in a conversation, if the difference actually matter, you can just ask. With a
written document, requesting clarification often isn't so simple.

Cheers,
Nick.

 

[Peter Hansen]

I agree, I can't do it yet. I can write kiB and MiB though with a
straight face, and find that useful.

And here I thought MiB meant "Men In Black"... ;-)

 

[Neil Benn]

Kind of fun exercise (no good for British English).

<snip>

what's American about it? If anything, it's more French than American ;-)

N

--

Neil Benn
Senior Automation Engineer
Cenix BioScience
BioInnovations Zentrum
Tatzberg 46
D-01307
Dresden
Germany

Tel : +49 (0)351 4173 154
e-mail : (e-mail address removed)
Cenix Website : http://www.cenix-bioscience.com

 

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

I agree, I can't do it yet. I can write kiB and MiB though with a
straight face, and find that useful.

"kibibyte" sounds too much like pet food... "Kibbles and Bits"
anyone...

OTOH, "MiB" has been poisoned by association with a certain Will
Smith movie (or two)... "Men in Black"...

--

 

[Scott David Daniels]

what's American about it? If anything, it's more French than American ;-)

Well, actually this started with scaling integers, and I was worried
about a billion / billionth (and up / down). In mid-task I switched
to ISO prefix without bothering to update my mental state. So I
warned about a problem that a former version of this code had. As I
hit send, I realized my stupidity, but figured I was better off not
wasting more bandwidth (which I now have done). If I had it to do
over again, I'd have made the default unit something like meters --
again non-British, and it avoids the issue of 1024 / 1000 altogether.

grinning-stupidly,

Scott David Daniels
(e-mail address removed)