On Mon, 2006-01-16 at 15:30 +1030, Tim wrote: > On Sun, 2006-01-15 at 09:18 -0500, Gregory Pittman wrote: > > > But MB, KB, GB are not SI units. I think they're more like the words > > millipede and centipede, which defy any strict mathematical meaning. > > Nonsense! M, K, G, etc., *are* SI. They were paired up with bits and > bytes to try and express the same sort of thing (millions, thousands, > etc., of them). My physics teacher would have flunked you that. They are metric, not SI. In SI you do not change the prefix, that leads to mistakes. The SI units are m (meter), k (kilogram), s (second) - and I think they have some others (ampre, newton, etc.) - but mks is SI units - you do not use G for Giga, you use 10^9 to express Giga. There is also cgs (what chemists prefer) - which is centimeter, graham, and second - etc. But pico, nano, milli, centi, kilo, mega, etc. are metric abbreviations - not SI abbreviations. SI defines the standard units of measure, which in some cases happens to have a metric prefix. -=- Anyway - 1024 bytes being a kilobyte makes sense. Note that a byte isn't necessarily 8 bits - there were other systems too - so a kilobyte isn't necessary the same number of bits from one system to another. I think that is part of the justification for using metric to describe space - so it doesn't assume an 8 bit byte.
