All words are made up. They weren’t handed down from a deity, they were made up by humans to communicate ideas to other humans.
“Kilo” can mean what we want in different contexts and it’s really no more or less correct as long as both parties understand and are consistent in their usage to each other.
I find it concerning that kilo can mean both 10^3 and 2^10 depending on context.
And that the context is not if you're speaking about computery stuff, but which program you use has almost certainly lead to avoidable bugs.
That latter part is only true since marketing people decided they knew better about computer related things than computer people.
It's also stupid because it's rare than anyone outside of programming even needs to care exactly how many bytes something else. At the scales that each of kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte etc are used, the smaller values are pretty much insignificant details.
If you ask for a kilogram of rice, then you probably care more about that 1kg of rice is the same as the last 1kg of rice you got, you probably wouldn't even care how many grams that is. Similarly, if you order 1 ton of rice, you do care exactly how many grams it is, or do you just care that this 1 ton is the same as that 1 ton?
This whole stupidity started because hard disk manufacturers wanted to make their drives sound bigger than they actually were. At the time, everybody buying hard disks knew about this deception and just put up with it. We'd buy their 2GB drive and think to ourselves, "OK so we have 1.86 real GB". And that was the end of it.
Can you just imagine if manufacturers started advertising computers as having 34.3GB of RAM? Everybody would know it was nonsense and call it 32GB anyway.
Not as far as I can tell. There's power of 10 bits and power of 2 bytes. I've never seen the inverse of those in an actual real world scenario outside of storage manufacturers gaming the numbers but even then the context is once again perfectly clear.
The "which program you use" confusion was instigated by the idiots insisting that we should have metric kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes (cheered on by crooked storage manufacturers).
Before all that nonsense, it was crystal clear: a megabyte in storage was unambiguously 1024 x 1024 bytes --- with the exception of crooked mass storage manufacturers.
There was some confusion, to be sure, but the partial success of attempt to redefine the prefixes to their power-of-ten meanings has caused more confusion.
> We agree to meaning to communicate and progress without endless debate and confusion.
We decidedly do not do that. There's a whole term for new terms that arbitrarily get injected or redefined by new people: "slang". I don't understand a lot of the terms teenagers say now, because there's lots of slang that I don't know because I don't use TikTok and I'm thirty-something without kids so I don't hang out with teenagers.
I'm sure it was the same when I was a teenager, and I suspect this has been going on since antiquity.
New terms are made up all the time, but there's plenty of times existing words get redefined. An easy one, I say "cool" all the time, but generally I'm not talking about temperature when I say it. If I said "cool" to refer to something that I like in 1920's America, they would say that's not the correct use of the word.
SI units are useful, but ultimately colloquialisms exist and will always exist. If I say kilobyte and mean 1024 bytes, and if the person on the other end knows that I mean 1024 bytes, that's fine and I don't think it's "nihilistic".
> Yes, and the made up words of kilo and kibi were given specific definitions by the people who made them up
Kilo was generally understood to mean one thousand long before it was adopted by a standards committee. I know the French love to try and prescribe the use of language, but in most of the world words just mean what people generally understand them to mean; and that meaning can change.
> Yes, and the made up words of kilo and kibi were given specific definitions by the people who made them up
Good for them. People make up their own definitions for words all the time. Some of those people even try to get others to adopt their definition. Very few are ever successful. Because language is about communicating shared meaning. And there is a great deal of cultural inertia behind the kilo = 2^10 definition in computer science and adjacent fields.
I don't think that the xkcd is relevant here, because I'm arguing that both parties know what the other is talking about. I haven't implicitly changed the definition because most people assume that kilobyte is 1024 bytes. Yeah, sure, it's "wrong" in some sense, but language is about communicating ideas between two people; if the communication is successful than the word is "correct".
If Bob says "kilobyte" to Alice, and Bob means 5432 bytes, and Alice perceives him to mean 5432 bytes, then in that context, "kilobyte" means 5432 bytes.
Such a myopic view when reality and marketing is messier than dramatic self-righteousness. This unnecessary bikeshedding nonsense has already been solved by using mebi, kibi, etc. to disambiguate sloppy abuse of SI units.
All words are made up. They weren’t handed down from a deity, they were made up by humans to communicate ideas to other humans.
“Kilo” can mean what we want in different contexts and it’s really no more or less correct as long as both parties understand and are consistent in their usage to each other.
I find it concerning that kilo can mean both 10^3 and 2^10 depending on context. And that the context is not if you're speaking about computery stuff, but which program you use has almost certainly lead to avoidable bugs.
That latter part is only true since marketing people decided they knew better about computer related things than computer people.
It's also stupid because it's rare than anyone outside of programming even needs to care exactly how many bytes something else. At the scales that each of kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte etc are used, the smaller values are pretty much insignificant details.
If you ask for a kilogram of rice, then you probably care more about that 1kg of rice is the same as the last 1kg of rice you got, you probably wouldn't even care how many grams that is. Similarly, if you order 1 ton of rice, you do care exactly how many grams it is, or do you just care that this 1 ton is the same as that 1 ton?
This whole stupidity started because hard disk manufacturers wanted to make their drives sound bigger than they actually were. At the time, everybody buying hard disks knew about this deception and just put up with it. We'd buy their 2GB drive and think to ourselves, "OK so we have 1.86 real GB". And that was the end of it.
Can you just imagine if manufacturers started advertising computers as having 34.3GB of RAM? Everybody would know it was nonsense and call it 32GB anyway.
Not as far as I can tell. There's power of 10 bits and power of 2 bytes. I've never seen the inverse of those in an actual real world scenario outside of storage manufacturers gaming the numbers but even then the context is once again perfectly clear.
The "which program you use" confusion was instigated by the idiots insisting that we should have metric kilobytes, megabytes and gigabytes (cheered on by crooked storage manufacturers).
Before all that nonsense, it was crystal clear: a megabyte in storage was unambiguously 1024 x 1024 bytes --- with the exception of crooked mass storage manufacturers.
There was some confusion, to be sure, but the partial success of attempt to redefine the prefixes to their power-of-ten meanings has caused more confusion.
2 replies →
That's a terribly nihilistic outlook on language.
We agree to meaning to communicate and progress without endless debate and confusion.
SI is pretty clear for a reason.
> We agree to meaning to communicate and progress without endless debate and confusion.
We decidedly do not do that. There's a whole term for new terms that arbitrarily get injected or redefined by new people: "slang". I don't understand a lot of the terms teenagers say now, because there's lots of slang that I don't know because I don't use TikTok and I'm thirty-something without kids so I don't hang out with teenagers.
I'm sure it was the same when I was a teenager, and I suspect this has been going on since antiquity.
New terms are made up all the time, but there's plenty of times existing words get redefined. An easy one, I say "cool" all the time, but generally I'm not talking about temperature when I say it. If I said "cool" to refer to something that I like in 1920's America, they would say that's not the correct use of the word.
SI units are useful, but ultimately colloquialisms exist and will always exist. If I say kilobyte and mean 1024 bytes, and if the person on the other end knows that I mean 1024 bytes, that's fine and I don't think it's "nihilistic".
2 replies →
> That's a terribly nihilistic outlook on language.
I'm pretty sure any linguist will agree with this definition. All language normalisation is an afterthought.
3 replies →
> “Kilo” can mean what we want in different contexts
Fair enough.
1000 watts is a kilowatt
1000 hertz is a kilohertz
1000 metres is a kilometre
1000 litres is a kilolitre
1000 joules is a kilojoule
1000 volts is a kilovolt
1000 newtons is a kilonewton
1000 pascals is a kilopascal
1024 bytes is a kilobyte, because that's what we're used to and we don't want to change to a new prefix
It's not even inconsistent if we consider kilo as meaning 10^3 in base 10 and 2^10 in base 2, rather than just '1000 times' always.
4 replies →
Watt, hertz, meter, joule, volt, newton and pascal are all SI units, a byte is not.
>> It doesn't matter. "kilo" means 1000. People are free to use it wrong if they wish.
> All words are made up.
Yes, and the made up words of kilo and kibi were given specific definitions by the people who made them up:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_prefix
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix
> […] as long as both parties understand and are consistent in their usage to each other.
And if they don't? What happens then?
Perhaps it would be easier to use the words definitions as they are set up in standards and regulations so context is less of an issue.
* https://xkcd.com/1860/
> Yes, and the made up words of kilo and kibi were given specific definitions by the people who made them up
Kilo was generally understood to mean one thousand long before it was adopted by a standards committee. I know the French love to try and prescribe the use of language, but in most of the world words just mean what people generally understand them to mean; and that meaning can change.
1 reply →
> Yes, and the made up words of kilo and kibi were given specific definitions by the people who made them up
Good for them. People make up their own definitions for words all the time. Some of those people even try to get others to adopt their definition. Very few are ever successful. Because language is about communicating shared meaning. And there is a great deal of cultural inertia behind the kilo = 2^10 definition in computer science and adjacent fields.
2 replies →
I don't think that the xkcd is relevant here, because I'm arguing that both parties know what the other is talking about. I haven't implicitly changed the definition because most people assume that kilobyte is 1024 bytes. Yeah, sure, it's "wrong" in some sense, but language is about communicating ideas between two people; if the communication is successful than the word is "correct".
Yes!
(And by that I mean "what the fuck, no...")
All you've done is created a homonym for no good reason at all.
If Bob says "kilobyte" to Alice, and Bob means 5432 bytes, and Alice perceives him to mean 5432 bytes, then in that context, "kilobyte" means 5432 bytes.
What are the odds of Charlie meeting Bob and Alice?
Is charlie a marketing exec?
No, in that context, kilobyte means 1024 bytes, like in every other context. :)
Man let a drug dealer give me a binary 'kilo' of some drug. That's almost a free ounce included!
In North America blackmarket drugs are often sold in pounds and ounces but measured in grams so you do see some rounding.
Such a myopic view when reality and marketing is messier than dramatic self-righteousness. This unnecessary bikeshedding nonsense has already been solved by using mebi, kibi, etc. to disambiguate sloppy abuse of SI units.
Fortunately SI doesn’t get to own terms or prefixes and trying to enforce different usage by fiat fails in the real world, exactly as it should.
Exactly.
If you're talking loosely, then you can get away with it.