On Tue, 16 Mar 1999, Chuck McManis wrote:
> >From Edupage:
>
> COMING TO TERMS WITH BYTES
> Computer terminology is becoming more precise: the International
> Electrotechnical Commission, which creates standards for electronic
> technologies, is adopting new prefixes to describe data values. The new
> term "kibibyte" will more accurately describe the number of bytes in a
> kilobyte -- rather than being 1,000, as could be inferred by the prefix
> "kilo," a kilobyte actually has 1,024 (2 to the 10th power) bytes. The
> metric prefixes currently employed -- kilo, mega, giga, etc. --
> accumulate as a power of 10, rather than the binary system used in
> computer code. Thus, the Commission will use kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi ,
> pebi and exbi to express exponentially increasing binary multiples (2 to
> the 10th power, 2 to the 20th power, etc.). "There was a need to
> straighten this out," says Barry Taylor of the National Institute of
> Standards and Technology.
> (Science 12 Mar 99)
Great, let's solve an annoying but minor issue with a majorly annoying and
hard to pronounce prefix system. Whoever came up with these should be
dragged out into the middle of the street and beat with a crowbar. They
obviously watch too many children's television shows. I don't know where
else one would come up with such stupid prefixes.
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar_at_siconic.com
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Received on Wed Mar 17 1999 - 01:32:28 GMT