From owner-freebsd-doc Wed Feb 20 21:24:31 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from lists.blarg.net (lists.blarg.net [206.124.128.17]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 642D237B405 for ; Wed, 20 Feb 2002 21:24:22 -0800 (PST) Received: from thig.blarg.net (thig.blarg.net [206.124.128.18]) by lists.blarg.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id EDF09BD52; Wed, 20 Feb 2002 21:24:21 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost.localdomain ([206.124.139.115]) by thig.blarg.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA24086; Wed, 20 Feb 2002 21:24:07 -0800 Received: (from jojo@localhost) by localhost.localdomain (8.11.6/8.11.3) id g1L5QHS01843; Wed, 20 Feb 2002 21:26:17 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from swear@blarg.net) To: Michael Wardle Cc: Tom Rhodes , Wouter Van Hemel , 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> <3C745639.8080509@adacel.com> <3C7463A5.5060204@pittgoth.com> <3C74673E.8010905@adacel.com> From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) Date: 20 Feb 2002 21:26:17 -0800 In-Reply-To: <3C74673E.8010905@adacel.com> Message-ID: <4r664rbe2u.64r@localhost.localdomain> Lines: 43 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0808 (Gnus v5.8.8) XEmacs/21.1 (Cuyahoga Valley) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii 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 Michael Wardle writes: > If computer scientists had wanted to define their own units for > computing, then they so be it. In adopting the SI prefixes (K, M, ...), > however, there was an implied decision to make computing units defacto > SI units. Does that mean they decided that "bytes" were SI units and that kBytes should mean 1000 bytes? Obviously, the used a non-SI factor of 1024 and I thing the implication (the inference anyway) would be that "bytes" are NOT SI units as the prefixes are not. They just share the same names, unfortunately. SI TI (french for "IT", I'm guessing) k = 1000^1 K = 1024^1 M = 1000^2 M = 1024^2 G = 1000^3 G = 1024^3 etc... > I am not aware of *any* standard that prescribes > 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes, as it is clearly incorrect. Other than the de facto standard, of course. Sorry; it's the standards that are incorrect if they presume to tell us that 1 kilobyte does not equal 1024 bytes. Now I've seen official standards (aerodynamic reference frame stuff) that required me to call "up" "down", and one must go along with such things sometimes. But this is not one of them. > The *only* official statement on this matter I am aware of is the one > the IEEE, IEC, and CIPM were involved in which clearly states: > > 1000 bytes = 1 kilobyte (symbol "kB") > 1024 bytes = 1 kibibyte (symbol "KiB") > > By continuing the current practise (which I must say is far from > uniform), we are continuing inaccuracy and ambiguity. But using "kB" to mean 1000 bytes would be worse than ambiguous; it would mislead most of the many FDP readers who don't take the time to memorize the FDP introductory material on documentation standards. I'd call such use inaccurate in an FDP context. (Maybe I wouldn't complain about an FDP standard that used two different sets of non-SI prefixes for these things, but I expect many others would complain.) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message