5 ms·

I agree that consistency is critical. It was always confusing that "kilo" meant 1000 everwhere else but for some reason it meant 1024 when it came to storage si

by Flimm 11y ago

I agree that consistency is critical. It was always confusing that "kilo" meant 1000 everwhere else but for some reason it meant 1024 when it came to storage sizes (but not bandwidth speeds). To eliminate ambiguity in one fell swoop we should use the KiB MiB units.

kazinator 11y ago
It was never confusing. Bandwidth speed is in bits. Storage is in bytes. When the unit is anything-bytes, it is powers of 1024. Note that the byte itself is a power of two already. This obnoxious KiB MiB nonsense is a non-solution in search of a problem. Wikipedia on MiB: The binary prefixes have been accepted by all major standards organizations and are part of the International System of Quantities. Many Linux distributions use the unit, but it is not widely acknowledged within the industry or media. Basically, we only need this type of unit in a context where dishonest and ignorant people are involved, in order to protect the latter from the former.
- creshal 11y ago
  > Storage is in bytes. Floppy disk storage is in byte, and doesn't use 1024. CD storage is in byte, and doesn't use 1024. DVD storage dito. BluRay storage dito. Hard disk storage dito. SSD storage dito. Memory card and USB stick storage dito. The sole exception is RAM. (But not NVRAM. Because that would be silly.) > a non-solution in search of a problem Really now.
  - kazinator 11y ago
    Which floppy disk? My Apple II floppy drives had 256 byte sectors, groups of which were called a kilobyte. Wikipedia quote: An MFM-based, "high-density" format, displayed as "HD" on the disks themselves and typically advertised as "1.44 MB" was introduced in 1987; the most common formatted capacity was 1,474,560 bytes. (Why is it 1.44 MB? That's a bit of silliness: it's the result of dividing 1,474,560 by 1024, and then just moving the decimal point by three places instead of dividing by 1024 once again. The beginning of idiocy.) All the storage examples you're giving are due to dishonest mass storage manufacturers who confused things sometime in the 1990's simply by lying. All other storage uses 1024. A gigabyte of RAM is 512 megabytes times two. RAM is not the "exception"; RAM is fundamental. A computer can operate without mass storage, but not without some RAM. A good reason to use powers of two sizes whenever bytes are involved is that the byte itself is a power of two unit already: it has historically settled on 8 bits. A kilobit of data already does not correspond to a power of ten byte value. If you want metric byte storage sizes, then first redefine a byte as 10 bits. Then a bit can be a centibyte, a byte can be a decabyte. Ten megabits will be exactly a megabyte, and so forth.
    - creshal 11y ago
      > Which floppy disk? IBM 53FD, 1977. Apparently the "idiocy" started really early… > All other storage uses 1024. What "all" other? Only RAM. > A kilobit of data already does not correspond to a power of ten byte value. That's not the problem of the SI prefixes, which are used for all units. IT does not operate in a vacuum. > If you want metric byte storage sizes Bullshit, nobody wants that. That's what IEC binary prefixes are for.
      - kazinator 11y ago
        What quantity has two SI units such that one is 8 times the other, and are kilo-, mega-, etc used for both?
        creshal 11y ago
        Neither bit nor byte are SI units. What, exactly, is the problem with using IEC binary prefixes for multiples of 1024?
    - brucedawson 11y ago
      > If you want metric byte storage sizes, then > first redefine a byte as 10 bits. I think this is the funniest rationale for using base-2 that I have come across. It makes no sense. Memory works conveniently with base-2 because of the address lines. n address lines can select 2^n addresses. The size of the bytes stored at those addresses is completely irrelevant. Your logic would suggest that US gallons, which contain exactly 256 tablespoons, should use binary units, as in "%1010 gallons of gas please" or "that tanker truck can carry 11.3 KGallons (where K equals 1,024)". Base-2 definitely works most neatly for memory capacity, because memory chips are exactly a power of two, always. There's no need to invoke the (irrelevant) size of the byte.
1ace 11y ago
> "kilo" meant 1000 everwhere else but for some reason it meant 1024 when it came to storage sizes Only when using storage. They sell storage by 1000 to inflate the number shown to customers.

by Flimm 11y ago

kazinator 11y ago

It was never confusing. Bandwidth speed is in bits. Storage is in bytes. When the unit is anything-bytes, it is powers of 1024. Note that the byte itself is a power of two already. This obnoxious KiB MiB nonsense is a non-solution in search of a problem. Wikipedia on MiB: The binary prefixes have been accepted by all major standards organizations and are part of the International System of Quantities. Many Linux distributions use the unit, but it is not widely acknowledged within the industry or media. Basically, we only need this type of unit in a context where dishonest and ignorant people are involved, in order to protect the latter from the former.

creshal 11y ago
> Storage is in bytes. Floppy disk storage is in byte, and doesn't use 1024. CD storage is in byte, and doesn't use 1024. DVD storage dito. BluRay storage dito. Hard disk storage dito. SSD storage dito. Memory card and USB stick storage dito. The sole exception is RAM. (But not NVRAM. Because that would be silly.) > a non-solution in search of a problem Really now.
- kazinator 11y ago
  Which floppy disk? My Apple II floppy drives had 256 byte sectors, groups of which were called a kilobyte. Wikipedia quote: An MFM-based, "high-density" format, displayed as "HD" on the disks themselves and typically advertised as "1.44 MB" was introduced in 1987; the most common formatted capacity was 1,474,560 bytes. (Why is it 1.44 MB? That's a bit of silliness: it's the result of dividing 1,474,560 by 1024, and then just moving the decimal point by three places instead of dividing by 1024 once again. The beginning of idiocy.) All the storage examples you're giving are due to dishonest mass storage manufacturers who confused things sometime in the 1990's simply by lying. All other storage uses 1024. A gigabyte of RAM is 512 megabytes times two. RAM is not the "exception"; RAM is fundamental. A computer can operate without mass storage, but not without some RAM. A good reason to use powers of two sizes whenever bytes are involved is that the byte itself is a power of two unit already: it has historically settled on 8 bits. A kilobit of data already does not correspond to a power of ten byte value. If you want metric byte storage sizes, then first redefine a byte as 10 bits. Then a bit can be a centibyte, a byte can be a decabyte. Ten megabits will be exactly a megabyte, and so forth.
  - creshal 11y ago
    > Which floppy disk? IBM 53FD, 1977. Apparently the "idiocy" started really early… > All other storage uses 1024. What "all" other? Only RAM. > A kilobit of data already does not correspond to a power of ten byte value. That's not the problem of the SI prefixes, which are used for all units. IT does not operate in a vacuum. > If you want metric byte storage sizes Bullshit, nobody wants that. That's what IEC binary prefixes are for.
    - kazinator 11y ago
      What quantity has two SI units such that one is 8 times the other, and are kilo-, mega-, etc used for both?
      - creshal 11y ago
        Neither bit nor byte are SI units. What, exactly, is the problem with using IEC binary prefixes for multiples of 1024?
  - brucedawson 11y ago
    > If you want metric byte storage sizes, then > first redefine a byte as 10 bits. I think this is the funniest rationale for using base-2 that I have come across. It makes no sense. Memory works conveniently with base-2 because of the address lines. n address lines can select 2^n addresses. The size of the bytes stored at those addresses is completely irrelevant. Your logic would suggest that US gallons, which contain exactly 256 tablespoons, should use binary units, as in "%1010 gallons of gas please" or "that tanker truck can carry 11.3 KGallons (where K equals 1,024)". Base-2 definitely works most neatly for memory capacity, because memory chips are exactly a power of two, always. There's no need to invoke the (irrelevant) size of the byte.

1ace 11y ago

> "kilo" meant 1000 everwhere else but for some reason it meant 1024 when it came to storage sizes Only when using storage. They sell storage by 1000 to inflate the number shown to customers.