From owner-freebsd-doc Wed Feb 20 19: 6:48 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from arnie.adacel.com.au (arnie.adacel.com.au [203.36.26.147]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 8C76937B402 for ; Wed, 20 Feb 2002 19:06:44 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 8216 invoked from network); 21 Feb 2002 03:20:49 -0000 Received: from intmail.adacel.com (HELO proton.adacel.com.au) (root@203.8.85.90) by arnie.adacel.com.au with SMTP; 21 Feb 2002 03:20:49 -0000 Received: from hera.wodonga.adacel.com.au ([192.168.75.251]) by proton.adacel.com.au (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with SMTP id OAA05401 for ; Thu, 21 Feb 2002 14:07:31 +1100 (EST) Received: (qmail 7702 invoked from network); 21 Feb 2002 02:59:00 -0000 Received: from selene.wodonga.adacel.com.au (HELO adacel.com) (192.168.75.20) by hera.wodonga.adacel.com.au with SMTP; 21 Feb 2002 02:59:00 -0000 Message-ID: <3C7464B4.70004@adacel.com> Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 14:08:36 +1100 From: Michael Wardle Organization: Adacel Technologies User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:0.9.8) Gecko/20020204 X-Accept-Language: en-au, en-us, en-gb, en, eo, de- MIME-Version: 1.0 To: parv Cc: Giorgos Keramidas , Wouter Van Hemel , doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: inconsistent use of data units References: <3C743707.3080505@adacel.com> <20020221003116.GA11893@hades.hell.gr> <3C744D39.1020308@adacel.com> <1014256250.304.66.camel@cocaine> <3C745639.8080509@adacel.com> <20020221022225.GA12900@hades.hell.gr> <3C745D8B.9090808@adacel.com> <20020221025358.GB2678@moo.holy.cow> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org parv wrote: > in message <3C745D8B.9090808@adacel.com>, > wrote Michael Wardle thusly... > >>Despite there being some disagreement with what the prefixes (K, M, ...) >>are, (byte = "B") and (bit = "b") are the most used notations. In this >>light, I would suggest "Kb" and "Mb" for kilobyte and megabyte in your >>notation. > > "b" for "byte"? are you mad? even 'B' & 'bit' example given earlier > is saner. See? Even I'm getting confused! :-P As the first part of my comment suggested, lowercase for bit, uppercase for byte. Sorry for any confusion. > i don't have problem using either 'k' or 'K' for representing 'kilo' > (1024). i have seen/used 'k' for 'kilo' but haven't seen any usage > 'm' for 'mega' only 'M'. > > (note to self: having said that, i feel very odd that i had used 'k' > instead of 'K' while using 'M' for 'mega'. so, to be self > consistent, i will use 'K' instead henceforth.) The SI prefixes define {k,M,G,T,...}. I don't know why lowercase "k" was chosen, while the rest were uppercase. (I suspect it's to do with kelvin ("K") being the unit of absolute temperature, but this has made the standard inconsistent. Nonetheless, that's how it is.) > and ... unless noted otherwise, in computer context, i do not ever > assume 'kilo' to represent 1000 number, only 1024. This is part of the problem. kilo only ever means 1000, and to use it otherwise is incorrect. You can not steal SI prefixes and redefine them how you wish. -- MICHAEL WARDLE | WORK +61-2-6024-2699 SGI Desktop & Admin Software | MOBILE +61-415-439-838 Adacel Technologies Limited | WEB http://www.adacel.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message