Comment by array_key_first

20 days ago

It means that is fine for Kilo to mean 1024 in the context of computers and 1000 in the context of distances, because you're never going to be in a situation where that is ambiguous.

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array_key_first

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crazygringo  20 days ago

Except it's not because it's constantly ambiguous in computing.

E.g. Macs measure file sizes in powers of 10 and call them KB, MB, GB. Windows measures file sizes in powers of 2 and calls them KB, MB, GB instead of KiB, MiB, GiB. Advertised hard drives come in powers of 10. Advertised memory chips come in powers of 2.

When you've got a large amount of data or are allocating an amount of space, are you measuring its size in memory or on disk? On a Mac or on Windows?

  • kazinator  20 days ago

    It's the forced revisionism of what "kilobyte", "megabyte" and "gigabyte", that has caused most of the confusion.

    Especially that it was only partially successful.

    Which is not to say that there had been zero confusion; but it was only made worse.

    • crazygringo  19 days ago

      What forced revisionism?

      Things like hard drives often used decimal/metric sizing from the start. Because their capacity has always been based on physical platter size and density, not powers of two the way memory is.

      So this confusion has been with computing since the beginning. The attempt to introduce units like KiB isn't revisionism, it's an attempt at clarity around something that has always been ambiguous.

      And obviously, if you need two separate prefixes, you're going to change the one whose unit of measurement differs from all the rest of science and technology.

      4 replies →

  • thayne  20 days ago

    And that is because some people didn't like that a kilobyte was 1024 bytes instead of 1000, so they started using 1000 instead, and then that created confusion, so then they made up new term "kibibyte" that used 1024, and now it's all a mess.

    And in most cases, using 1024 is more convenient because the sizes of page sizes, disk sectors, etc. are powers of 2.

  • fc417fc802  20 days ago

    > Macs measure file sizes in powers of 10 and call them KB, MB, GB.

    That doesn't conform to SI. It should be written as kB mB gB. Ambiguity will only arise when speaking.

    > Advertised hard drives come in powers of 10.

    Mass storage (kB) has its own context at this point, distinct from networking (kb/s) and general computing (KB).

    > When you've got a large amount of data or are allocating an amount of space, ...

    You aren't speaking but are rather working in writing. kb, kB, Kb, and KB refer to four different unit bit counts and there is absolutely zero ambiguity. The only question that might arise (depending on who you ask) is how to properly verbalize them.