From owner-freebsd-doc Wed Feb 20 18: 5:58 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from arnie.adacel.com.au (arnie.adacel.com.au [203.36.26.147]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 7B3FB37B402 for ; Wed, 20 Feb 2002 18:05:34 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 3116 invoked from network); 21 Feb 2002 02:19:02 -0000 Received: from intmail.adacel.com (HELO proton.adacel.com.au) (root@203.8.85.90) by arnie.adacel.com.au with SMTP; 21 Feb 2002 02:19:02 -0000 Received: from hera.wodonga.adacel.com.au ([192.168.75.251]) by proton.adacel.com.au (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with SMTP id NAA01796 for ; Thu, 21 Feb 2002 13:05:45 +1100 (EST) Received: (qmail 7649 invoked from network); 21 Feb 2002 01:57:14 -0000 Received: from selene.wodonga.adacel.com.au (HELO adacel.com) (192.168.75.20) by hera.wodonga.adacel.com.au with SMTP; 21 Feb 2002 01:57:14 -0000 Message-ID: <3C745639.8080509@adacel.com> Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 13:06:49 +1100 From: Michael Wardle Organization: Adacel Technologies User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.8) Gecko/20020204 X-Accept-Language: en-au, en-us, en-gb, en, eo, de- MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Wouter Van Hemel Cc: Giorgos Keramidas , doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: inconsistent use of data units References: <3C743707.3080505@adacel.com> <20020221003116.GA11893@hades.hell.gr> <3C744D39.1020308@adacel.com> <1014256250.304.66.camel@cocaine> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Wouter Van Hemel wrote: >>>>There is a standard on how to represent data sizes here: >>>>http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html >>>> >>>>I suggest that the document is updated to consistently use this standard. [...] >>>I would probably prefer it if we consistently used KB for Kilobyte(s), >>>and MB for Megabytes, but having different symbols for units that are >>>multiples of 1024 and other symbols/contractions for multiples of 1000! >>>No, please no. >>> >>Like it or not, 1000 bytes != 1024 bytes. KB (or preferably kB) means >>1000 bytes, and that's not the units we usually talk about. >> > > So you think this would make things _less_ confusing... Interesting. It would follow a standard, and would remove ambiguity. The current kludge of calling 1024 a kilobyte is incorrect, and is actually rather confusing to anybody who is familiar with metric/SI, which defined kilo as exactly 1000 quite some time ago. You'll also notice that those from an engineering, physics, networking, or hard disk manufacture prefer kilobyte = 1000 bytes (as it should do). > If we consistently use kb and mb (_with_ space...), You meant "KB" and "MB", right? (kb = kilobits, mb = millibits)... > and mention somewhere that all units are powers of 2, wouldn't that > settle it... It wouldn't be ideal in my mind, but at least it would be consistent. Thanks everybody for your interest and prompt responses. Regards -- MICHAEL WARDLE | WORK +61-2-6024-2699 SGI Desktop & Admin Software | MOBILE +61-415-439-838 Adacel Technologies Limited | WEB http://www.adacel.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message