Comment by jerf
7 years ago
Star Trek: The Next Generation referred to data sizes as "quads", which has the advantage that it has actually future-proofed the series a bit. It's fairly clear that whatever a "quad" is, it isn't just two bits smashed together, but what it is? Who knows.
It's true that most of Star Trek uses vague or made-up terms for computing measures, but Data formally refers to his own storage in units of "quadrillion bits", and apparently using that as a definition of "quad" makes for a reasonable order-of-magnitude estimate for other uses, even today.