Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 14:19:26 +1100 From: Michael Wardle <michael.wardle@adacel.com> To: Tom Rhodes <darklogik@pittgoth.com> Cc: Wouter Van Hemel <wouter@pair.com>, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>, doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: inconsistent use of data units Message-ID: <3C74673E.8010905@adacel.com> 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>
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Tom Rhodes wrote: > This is confusing me... Let me throw my "vision" in here... > > 1000 is very easy for a human to work with, mainly newbies, but I like > the 1024. The reason I think that is because 1024 is more "realistic" > because there are 1024 numbers from 0 to 1023, and 1023 seems to be 10 > bits in binary: 11 1111 1111, which is a very convient binary value. So, > whilist 1000 may be a very easy decimal value for a human to work with > (1111101000) I don't feel that it looks "nice" for a binary machine. > > Yes, a bit of thought went into this, and I understand that standards > are standards, but I am trying to put understand this from, what I feel, > is a "logical" view point... Although my view alone Systeme International (SI) (a.k.a. "metric"), is not designed to necessarily correspond exactly to real-life phenomena. It is designed to be an aribitrary, accurate, unambiguous system. I feel that "inch" is a far nicer unit than "millimeter" for measuring small distances, and "mile" may well be nicer than "kilometer" for measuring long distances, but the reality is that more and more countries, and more and more disiplines are choosing to adopt SI for clarity. 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. At first, because sizes were so small, and the distinction between kilobyte (1000 bytes) and binary kilobyte (1024 bytes) was fairly unimportant, as they were so close many regarded them as being the same. Unfortunately, when you extend the units to larger sizes, the factor of error becomes larger, and a distinction between the two must be made. Modifying these prefixes for any one field substantially weakens the SI standard. I am not aware of *any* standard that prescribes 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes, as it is clearly incorrect. 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. -- 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
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