~ eclectic content ~
Discussing topics at http://lyberty.com/encyc/.
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NAME McoreD
E-MAIL (Optional) {archived}
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html

COMMENTS

 Please don't blame the Hard Disk manufacturers because they are correct!

200 GB is 200 000 000 000 Bytes. (roughly 186 GiB).
300 GB is 300 000 000 000 Bytes. (roughly 279 GiB).

You don't have to edit that Hard Disk Box because the notation is right.
[See]
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

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McoreD
http://microsoftuse.temp.powweb.com/mcored/
DATE Friday, September 30th 2005 - 10:51:37 PM

NAME lyberty
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html

COMMENTS

 McoreD-

It depends on your definition of "right", doesn't it?

That's the whole point of the article, which I can only assume you either 1) didn't read, or 2) are ignoring?

If I put a hard drive in my computer, and it shows me that I've got 111 GB to work with, and I paid for 120 GB (listed on the box), who's right?

Let me point out some things from the URL you pointed to (which I link to, twice, on the article already):
1. "It is suggested ..."
2. "It is important to recognize that the new prefixes for binary multiples are not part of the International System of Units (SI)..."

Lastly, the French IEC can declare things standards all they want to; but if they are not adopted by the major industry players, then they are not _really_ standards now, are they?

-lyberty
DATE Saturday, October 1st 2005 - 01:47:16 AM

NAME Elias Bats
E-MAIL (Optional) eliasbats.nospam[at]hotmail.com
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html

COMMENTS

 The conversions {archived} are WRONG! I was surprised to find such mistakes after the repetitive "1kbps = 1000bits, 1KB=1024 bytes".
DATE Sunday, October 9th 2005 - 04:54:32 AM

NAME lyberty
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html

COMMENTS

 Elias_Bats-

You are right! I'm suprised to find such a mistake too!

Thanks for pointing that out. I'm not sure how that got included; in retrospect, I think I got lazy and used the Google calculator instead of just doing the math. So the lesson here, I guess, is that the Google calculator does the math incorrectly. See Google: "convert 512 kbps to KB/s"...

I've fixed the article.

-lyberty
DATE Tuesday, October 11th 2005 - 11:57:35 PM

NAME McoreD
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://microsoftuse.temp.powweb.com/mcored/

COMMENTS

 I believe you are still mistaken lyberty.

A 120 GB Hard Disk is indeed 111 GiB. You get what you have paid for! It's that you are reluctant to accept the new standards. 1 GB is 1 billion Bytes. 1 GiB is 1024*1024*1024 Bytes. Learn.
DATE Tuesday, November 1st 2005 - 04:46:29 AM

NAME lyberty
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://re: "learn"

COMMENTS

 quote:"It's that you are reluctant to accept the new standards."
Actually, this isn't about me. There is a reason that Hard Drive manufacturers were sued for false advertising (and it was not me that sued them).

What is more relevant to the millions
of PC users running Windows or Linux? The fact that they have files in base-1024, and drive capacities listed in base-1024, or the obscure declaration of a French standards body (which most people have never heard of)?

re: "learn"
Obviously, I have researched the subject. But this isn't about me. If you want to tell someone to "learn", go tell Microsoft :-)

The actual definition of a "standard" is the process/nominclature/etc shared across companies and used by the majority of people in a field. (c.f. an "industry standard").

So what definition of KB/MB/GB is shared across corporations and used by the majority of people?

Q.E.D. [-:

Regardless of whether a standards organization agrees with itself about what should be the standard, its not really a standard unless it's widely adopted. There are plenty of examples of things declared as "standards" that were never adopted, and eventually forgotten. It remains to be seen if the "Kibi-"/"GiB" proposal is one of those, but it _has_ been 6 or 7 years already...
DATE Tuesday, November 1st 2005 - 04:04:51 PM

NAME John
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html

COMMENTS

 This is what happens when you use more than one standard for something. If it was all kept the same then none of this would happen.

When you store a file, that file uses the 1024-Base. Now why would someone want to create a system to say otherwise when transfering? When transfering its using the 1000-Base. The file doesn't change size but it reads differently. This will ultimatly effect users by confusing them. As I remember simpler users don't like being confused. Anyway, it's dumb, it is adding complexity to something that doesn't need to be there. If any of you are auto mechanics then you would know exactly what I mean. Why don't they just abolish the 1000-Base? Since everything works on the 1024-Base in the end.

As for the size of Hard Drives, that is another dumb thing that has been done. Once again.. why would anyone want to put a different system of measurement on the box when the actual device uses another system? The manufacturer makes there Hard Drive with a storage of, lets say, 80 GB (*ON THE PACKAGE). Now the actual HD Space is only about 74 GiB. Why change it??? Wouldn't it make more sense to say 74 GiB On the Hard Drive? I don't know, maybe since the HD uses that system. Make a true 80 GiB HD, is that so hard?

I think we should all learn to recognize stupid things.
DATE Tuesday, November 8th 2005 - 01:38:49 PM

NAME kilo means thousand
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html

COMMENTS

 A funny page, probably written by an American.
Most of the world knows about the advantages of the metric system, that 25600 m equals 25.6 km. Of course when one is
used to work with inches, yards, furlongs and miles one is
used to ugly conversion factors, and does not notice that these are inconvenient. Footnote [7] is a rather convincing demo of how inconvenient the proposed MB=2^20 B is - it leads to confusion and ugly computations. No pocket calculator is needed to decide that 150000000 B/s equals 150 MB/s, that is, 0.15 GB/s.
Now why do you want to introduce this inconvenience - two different meanings for M and ugly conversion factors? I see only one argument: Microsoft does it. Since the use of non-SI units is against the law in several countries, I suppose also Microsoft will eventually have to change, and life will be convenient again for everybody.
DATE Wednesday, January 11th 2006 - 11:18:45 PM

NAME Ben
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://typo http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html

COMMENTS

 "This is easily done by indicating in your document what notation you are using; for example, as a footnote: "* In this document 1 MB = 1,024 Bytes;..."

Explicit clarifications are good, but I don't think anyone should be defining 1 MB = 1,024 Bytes.

{LOL. Good point. Corrected. -lyberty]
DATE Tuesday, February 7th 2006 - 03:43:38 PM

NAME G K
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html

COMMENTS

 This is silly. Use SI prefixes when you refer to decimal quantities, and the new, standardized binary prefixes when referring to binary quantities. Simple.

The only place binary quantities are important is computer memory (and maybe file sizes, but maybe not). Everything else (including other computer measurements) are decimal.

The new prefixes have been adopted by NIST, IEC, IEEE, Linux kernel, Bittorrent, etc. You should adopt them, too. Unless you can come up with a truly better prefix for the binary multiples.
DATE Wednesday, February 22nd 2006 - 03:57:55 AM

NAME G K
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html

COMMENTS

 "But kilobyte has always meant 1024 bytes! It will always mean 1024 bytes!" No way. First, it's used to mean both 1024 and 1000, in different contexts. Second, ask the average guy on the street how many bytes are in a kilobyte. He'll say 1000, because that's the way kilo is used *everywhere* except silly computer classes. No one except computer dudes needs to unlearn anything, and it's really simple to do.
[Editor: if you think it's easy to do, then you don't know anything about computers, operating systems, and coding. You heard about the amount of work required to fix the Y2K problem, right? Now image that multiplied by a thousand (and 24)...]
DATE Wednesday, February 22nd 2006 - 04:00:24 AM

NAME Barb
E-MAIL (Optional) bdlexington-at-aol.com
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://Ratio of Kilo Bytes to Mega Bytes

COMMENTS

 Just an advanced computer user here and glad to have some beginning idea of the ratio of memories. Started on a Mac 30 back in the day, but never clearly understood memory and how it translated. I agree that it's easy to remember 1000KB to 1 MB. Thanks, Barb
[Editor: easier to remember doesn't make it work mathematically, though...]
DATE Wednesday, June 13th 2007 - 12:18:00 PM

NAME Daniel B.
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html

COMMENTS

 Someone said something about "written by an American". First, remember that "America" is a continent, not a country, spanning from Canada to Chile/Argentina.

That said, I'm from Mexico, I use the metric system, and I use 1024-base for anything related to computing. My ISP agrees, as my modem clearly shows my 1Mbps DSL link runs at "1024 kbps" and not that travesty of "kirbybytes" some dork who doesn't know how computers work invented.

The only application I remember of the SI 1000-base is on data transfer, when measured in BAUDs. Baud != bit.

The IEC "standard" defines that data storage MUST be measured in KB, and memory in KiB ... so I suppose they don't know that typically files are loaded to/stored from memory mappings. There's a reason files are still measured in 1024-base.

I for one commend Micro$oft for not changing into this stupid standard, which makes my kilobytes sound like Nintendo videogame characters or my megabytes look like Men in Black (MiB).
DATE Monday, July 9th 2007 - 03:28:53 PM

NAME Erick
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html

COMMENTS

 Wikipedia has great discussions about the difference between kilobits and kibobytes. A bit is a single unit and is in 1000's and base 10, A byte is in units of 8 and base 2.

Yes you saw that right above,
A ki"b"obyte is 1024 bytes.
A ki"l"obit is 1000 bits.

It makes conversions a bit akward but its explained very well here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_rate_units#kibibit_per_second

Cheers
I hope this clears things up for you

[Wikipedia is wrong; that's the problem. It's being used as an advocacy platform rather than a reflection of facts/reality.
At least here I don't try to hide the fact that the proposals and opinions are my own (whereas wiki authors just pretend to be unbiased.) - Editor]
DATE Monday, January 21st 2008 - 06:59:46 AM

NAME sepultribe
E-MAIL (Optional) songoku_ssj_3[at]hotmail.com
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://www.lyberty.com/tech/terms/usb.html

COMMENTS

 In the ethernet section u say : " 100 mbps Ethernet =~ 50 mbps data transfer =~ 4.7 MB/s (max) 1000 mbps Ethernet =~ 500 mbps data transfer =~ 476 MB/s (max) " data transfer gets multiplied by 10 in the second example, yet max rate gets muliplied by 100. [ Thanks for pointing that out! You are correct, of course. I'll update it now. BR, - Lyberty
DATE Thursday, February 28th 2008 - 05:07:10 PM

NAME Daniel B.
Regarding (Subject or URL): http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html

COMMENTS

 Ok, its been some time since my last comment. I had totally missed a fine point on this: someone else mentioned that we who use metric systems like the idea of having 22.6 Km = 22,6000 m. While this is true for us humans working in base-10, computers work in base-2, so anyone who has done memory operations is inclined to use 1024. Why?

1024 base-10 = 0x0400 = 010000000000 (base-2)
1000 base-10 = 0x03e8 = 001111101000 (base-2)

Notice something? When managing memory-mapping, using base-1024 multiples makes more sense, as 1024 byte blocks can be managed bit-wise without much trouble. This is true for *any* binary storage device, RAM or secondary storage. Because files are eventually loaded to main memory for processing, and main memory is managed by some kind of 1024 multiple. HD manufacturers have thrived in the ambiguity of the prefixes, and might even shield themselves on the IEC standard against future lawsuits.

RAM manufacturers, however, stand on the 1024 standard ... and I haven't seen 512 MiB sticks ... only 512MB ones.
DATE Thursday, March 6th 2008 - 06:50:39 PM

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