27 Jul
2006
27 Jul
'06
4:55 p.m.
On Thu, 27 Jul 2006, Allison wrote:
much confusion as a result for those that a marginally
technical. As a result
in documentation I tend to insist that some context help such as K_bytes_ or
Meg_ohms_ be there to keep some sense of If it's powers of 10 or 2.
Whats a millibyte? Saw that once!
That would have to be one one thousandth of a byte (or 1/125th of a bit)
It would probably require special circuitry to access it.
There once was a Bureau of Standards attempt (too little too late) to deal
with the problem, that led to the development of:
Kibibyte (binary K) 1024
Mebibyte (pronounce "maybe byte", binary meg) 1048576
Gibibyte (binary gig) 1073741824
If it were to have been done BEFORE "computer science" standardized on
Kilobyte being 1024, it could have prevented the confusion.
But then again, not everybody agrees on the number of bits in a byte, and
many use their computer's word size, not 8, for "byte".
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com