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We should use imperial units since they're more natural/intuitive/(insert rationalization here): 1 InchByte = 2.54 bytes = approximately pi bits (Edit: oops, i

We should use imperial units since they're more natural/intuitive/(insert rationalization here): 1 InchByte = 2.54 bytes = approximately pi bits (Edit: oops, it's about 20 bits. I divided where I should have multiplied.) 1 FootByte = 30.5 bytes 1 YardByte = 91.4 bytes 1 RodByte = 503 bytes 1 MileByte = 160,934 bytes 1 AUByte = 14.7 terabytes 1 LightYearByte = 841 petabytes So 1 megabyte is almost exactly 2^15 footbytes. (1MB = 6.2 milebytes = 10,941 yardbytes = 32,786 footbytes) Fun fact I learned while doing these calculations: There are 63,239 AUs in one light-year and 63,360 inches in one mile. So if you want to get a better idea of interstellar distances, imagine everything scaled down. E.G. if Earth was 1 inch from the Sun then Alpha Centauri would be 4 miles away.

geocar 17y ago
That doesn't make any sense. You need to be using imperial volumes. 1 tablespoonbyte is approximately 36 bits (I just counted, with couscous, the universal measure), which makes a pintbyte is 1152 bytes- about a kilobyte, but also the number of pixels across on my screen. It also gives us a gallonbyte - just shy of 10 kilobytes at 9216 bytes. That's even more convenient, because it's square root is 96. Of course, having a hogsheadbyte at 442368- well, I think even you will find it difficult to argue the usefulness of finally being able to use a multiple of 442368. Finally, we've got the tunbyte: 2322432. Nobody will ever need more than about 28% of a tunbyte of memory, so you see it scales out at just the most convenient point for us here.
axod 17y ago
Using measurements appropriate to the thing you're measuring makes far more sense than trying to standardize everything into some cludgy unuseful system just so it's "standard". FWIW, if you're basing things on imperial, you would more likely base your measurements on useful measurements that come up frequently in the domain you're measuring - file sizes etc. For instance, you'd probably have some unit of measurement that pretty much equates to an average mp3 file of a song - say 3MB. Call it an mp3byte... etc Then you could say "Yeah this file upload is 10mp3bytes", and people would know what you're talking about.

geocar 17y ago

That doesn't make any sense. You need to be using imperial volumes. 1 tablespoonbyte is approximately 36 bits (I just counted, with couscous, the universal measure), which makes a pintbyte is 1152 bytes- about a kilobyte, but also the number of pixels across on my screen. It also gives us a gallonbyte - just shy of 10 kilobytes at 9216 bytes. That's even more convenient, because it's square root is 96. Of course, having a hogsheadbyte at 442368- well, I think even you will find it difficult to argue the usefulness of finally being able to use a multiple of 442368. Finally, we've got the tunbyte: 2322432. Nobody will ever need more than about 28% of a tunbyte of memory, so you see it scales out at just the most convenient point for us here.

axod 17y ago

Using measurements appropriate to the thing you're measuring makes far more sense than trying to standardize everything into some cludgy unuseful system just so it's "standard". FWIW, if you're basing things on imperial, you would more likely base your measurements on useful measurements that come up frequently in the domain you're measuring - file sizes etc. For instance, you'd probably have some unit of measurement that pretty much equates to an average mp3 file of a song - say 3MB. Call it an mp3byte... etc Then you could say "Yeah this file upload is 10mp3bytes", and people would know what you're talking about.