Gibibyte

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
I really as a computer user should not clutter my head with stuff that
is of no real concern or value to me.

The concept is worth cluttering. And/But if you have no need for yotta,
you have no need for yobi.

--
Mike Easter

On 16/11/2019 07:13, Char Jackson wrote:
On Fri, 15 Nov 2019 19:52:40 -0800, Mike Easter wrote:

Ken Blake wrote:
If I talk about a kilobyte, I mean 1,024 bytes, and so on.

That is ridiculous. An 'amount' can't be ambiguous. There are 1000
amount kilobytes and 1000000 amount megabytes. So 1024 amount has to be
something else which is kibibyte and 1048576 amount has to be something
else which is mebibyte, which is also 1024 kibibytes.

Saying 'my kilobytes' are different from standard kilobytes is nuts/
misguided.

kilo has *always* been decimal. The introduction of its misuse as
something else is to be condemned. It should have never happened and it
is/ has/ been done away with.

I've been in telecom / IT / enterprise networking for 35-40 years and have
never run into anyone on the job who uses mebi/kibi etc., so neither do I.
It may be inaccurate, but at least we're all speaking the same language and
that's what communication is all about. 'We know what we mean.'

So why don't you know *EXACTLY* how long you've been working in the
industry? Being accurate and truthful is part and parcel of proper
communication.

On 2019-11-16 1:03 p.m., Mike Easter wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
I really as a computer user should not clutter my head with stuff that
is of no real concern or value to me.

The concept is worth cluttering.Â* And/But if you have no need for yotta,
you have no need for yobi.


Yes up to about tebibytes, more than that is beyond my pay scale. :-)

Rene

On 11/15/2019 3:52 PM, NY wrote:
"Ken Blake" wrote in message
...
Everything you say above is correct. But language is not fixed; the
meaning of words changes with time, and the prefixes kilo-, mega-, giga-,
tera-, etc. are an example of this. Today, they represent binary
magnitudes. Should that change have happened? As far as I'm concerned, no.
But it did.

For all practical purposes the prefixes like mebi-, with "b" inserted, are
almost never used, and should be dropped, even though they are
international standards. The only real exception to everyone's using the
decimal terms in a binary way is disk manufacturers. They use the terms in
a decimal way because it makes what offer for sale sound larger. As far as
I'm concerned, it's deceptive advertising. It confuses many people and
should be prohibited. They should be required to state the sizes of their
drives using powers of 2, as everyone else does.

Yes, I'm as heretical as you.


LOL! I didn't think I was being heretical, but now that you say it, I
guess I was.


I reckon that the meaning of "mega", "giga"
etc should vary with the context in which is is used: for example kilo in
kilometre means 1000, but kilo in kilobyte means 1024.


Yes, good point.


kibi, mebi sound utterly stupid (like someone whose had his mouth
anaesthetised at the dentist, as Rene Lamontagne put it so eloquently!). I
find it very difficult to use them without an involuntary smirk ;-)

I agree that disk manufacturers should be required to specify their disk
sizes in power-of-two definitions of mega, giga etc - or else to say
*prominently* both sizes (eg "2 TB equivalent to 1.86 TiB") which would make
people stop and think "what does TiB mean - ah it must be the conversion
between 1000- and 1024-based numbering".


Yes, both would be fine.


But to all intents and purposes, 1 TB is the "same" as 1 TiB (as a good
approximation), in the same way that a bit rate of 10 Mbit/sec is a
data-transfer rate of *approximately* 1 MB/sec [byte], allowing for
overheads etc.


It's close, but "approximately" isn't good enough. A very common
question in the forums is "I bough a 1TB drive and I can only see
931GB. What happened to the rest?" Disk manufacturers using powers of
10 when the rest of the computer world uses powers of two confuses large
numbers of people, and often makes them feel cheated.



--
Ken

On 11/16/2019 12:13 AM, Char Jackson wrote:
On Fri, 15 Nov 2019 19:52:40 -0800, Mike Easter wrote:

Ken Blake wrote:
If I talk about a kilobyte, I mean 1,024 bytes, and so on.

That is ridiculous. An 'amount' can't be ambiguous. There are 1000
amount kilobytes and 1000000 amount megabytes. So 1024 amount has to be
something else which is kibibyte and 1048576 amount has to be something
else which is mebibyte, which is also 1024 kibibytes.

Saying 'my kilobytes' are different from standard kilobytes is nuts/
misguided.

kilo has *always* been decimal. The introduction of its misuse as
something else is to be condemned. It should have never happened and it
is/ has/ been done away with.

I've been in telecom / IT / enterprise networking for 35-40 years


60 years for me.


and have
never run into anyone on the job who uses mebi/kibi etc.,


Nor have I


so neither do I.


And neither do I. If I were to use those terms, the vast majority of
people I was addressing would have no idea what I was talking about.


It may be inaccurate, but at least we're all speaking the same language and
that's what communication is all about. 'We know what we mean.'


Exactly. It's historically inaccurate, but language changes. It's one of
many historically inaccurate changes that have happened to English over
the years.



--
Ken

On 11/16/2019 8:57 AM, Mike Easter wrote:
Char Jackson wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:
Ken Blake wrote:
If I talk about a kilobyte, I mean 1,024 bytes, and so on.

That is ridiculous. An 'amount' can't be ambiguous. There are 1000
amount kilobytes and 1000000 amount megabytes. So 1024 amount has to be
something else which is kibibyte and 1048576 amount has to be something
else which is mebibyte, which is also 1024 kibibytes.

Saying 'my kilobytes' are different from standard kilobytes is nuts/
misguided.

kilo has *always* been decimal. The introduction of its misuse as
something else is to be condemned. It should have never happened and it
is/ has/ been done away with.

I've been in telecom / IT / enterprise networking for 35-40 years and have
never run into anyone on the job who uses mebi/kibi etc., so neither do I.
It may be inaccurate, but at least we're all speaking the same language and
that's what communication is all about. 'We know what we mean.'

I will grant that there has been 'popularization' of the 'misuse', but
there are numerous instances of the use of 'bad language' which needed
improvement and reform.

There are a few sentences on the wp article on this subject which are
worth mentioning; many of those footnotes cited are from the Wayback
Machine:

// The kilobyte has traditionally been used to refer to 1024 bytes (210
B), a usage still common.[5][6][7] The usage of the metric prefix kilo
for binary multiples arose as a convenience, because 1024 is
approximately 1000.[8] - The binary interpretation of metric prefixes is
still prominently used by the Microsoft Windows operating system,[9] but
is deprecated or obsolete in other operating systems.

In December 1998, the IEC addressed such multiple usages and definitions
by creating prefixes such as kibi, mebi, gibi, etc., to unambiguously
denote powers of 1024.[10] Thus the kibibyte, symbol KiB, represents 210
= 1024 bytes These prefixes are now part of the International System of
Quantities.


Yes, I know.


The IEC further specified that the kilobyte should only be
used to refer to 1000 bytes.
// https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobyte


Specifying something doesn't make it happen. It hasn't.


1998 was over 20 years ago. That is long enough for the workplace to
show reformation from obsolete language.


Yes, long enough, but it hasn't happened. As I said, language changes.



--
Ken

On 11/15/2019 9:25 PM, Paul wrote:


So when I'm buying a
steak tonight, it should be in kibigrams. Got it.



Oh, you eat very big steaks!


--
Ken

On 11/16/2019 4:26 AM, NY wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
...

Drives are listed in GB, so that's the 1,000,000,000 kind.

This is GB meaning GB - the power-of-10 unit. They are not lying, but they
are trading on the fact that people will think (wrongly) "this is computing,
so I *assume* it means GiB".


My point exactly. As I said, "it's deceptive advertising."


--
Ken

Ken Blake wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:

Thus the kibibyte, symbol KiB, represents 210
= 1024 bytesÂ* These prefixes are now part of the International
System of
Quantities.

Yes, I know.

The IEC further specified that the kilobyte should only be
used to refer to 1000 bytes.
// https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobyte

Specifying something doesn't make it happen.Â* It hasn't.

1998 was over 20 years ago.Â* That is long enough for the workplace to
show reformation from obsolete language.

Yes, long enough, but it hasn't happened. As I said, language changes.

I'm sortofa 'literal' type person who gets frustrated by language
ambiguities, so I like to see that 'get fixed'.

To me, it is a different thing than someone using 'old style' miles and
Fahrenheit and feet and inches.

I can 'think' or understand in both metric and 'US Customary', but
confusion over whether some term means one number vs another *different*
isn't the same kind of 'acceptable' usage.

Being pretty close doesn't get it. Numbers should be precise as opposed
to ambiguous.


--
Mike Easter

On 11/16/2019 8:51 AM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-11-15 4:52 p.m., NY wrote:
"Ken Blake" wrote in message
...
Everything you say above is correct. But language is not fixed; the
meaning of words changes with time, and the prefixes kilo-, mega-,
giga-, tera-, etc. are an example of this. Today, they represent
binary magnitudes. Should that change have happened? As far as I'm
concerned, no. But it did.

For all practical purposes the prefixes like mebi-, with "b" inserted,
are almost never used, and should be dropped, even though they are
international standards. The only real exception to everyone's using
the decimal terms in a binary way is disk manufacturers. They use the
terms in a decimal way because it makes what offer for sale sound
larger. As far as I'm concerned, it's deceptive advertising. It
confuses many people and should be prohibited. They should be required
to state the sizes of their drives using powers of 2, as everyone else
does.

Yes, I'm as heretical as you. I reckon that the meaning of "mega",
"giga" etc should vary with the context in which is is used: for example
kilo in kilometre means 1000, but kilo in kilobyte means 1024.

kibi, mebi sound utterly stupid (like someone whose had his mouth
anaesthetised at the dentist, as Rene Lamontagne put it so eloquently!).
I find it very difficult to use them without an involuntary smirk ;-)

I agree that disk manufacturers should be required to specify their disk
sizes in power-of-two definitions of mega, giga etc - or else to say
*prominently* both sizes (eg "2 TB equivalent to 1.86 TiB") which would
make people stop and think "what does TiB mean - ah it must be the
conversion between 1000- and 1024-based numbering".


But to all intents and purposes, 1 TB is the "same" as 1 TiB (as a good
approximation), in the same way that a bit rate of 10 Mbit/sec is a
data-transfer rate of *approximately* 1 MB/sec [byte], allowing for
overheads etc.

So what is the i series word for yottabyte?



Yobibyte. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix


--
Ken

On 11/16/19 12:40 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:

[snip]

Even the sector size is not 512, we forget other metadata that is there,
like checksums. I don't know what the actual figure is.

These headers explain how modern programs people call "low level format"
are NOT that, since they do not write headers.

BTW, my first hard disk (1990) had a real LLF program in ROM. IIRC the
first thing you do after connecting it was enter DEBUG and "g=C000:0CCC"
and answer a bunch of questions like "gap length".

My take on this was that calling 1024 bytes a kilobyte was an acceptable
approximation at the time, as long as everyone was aware that it was an
approximation. Aprox 1K=1000. As the units got bigger, the approximation
was no longer negligible, so better invent a different unit and avoid
the confussion. Yeah, some people hate change, but this is a needed change.

I also had to change after a lifetime of using the old units.

I had to change too, since I started using computers before the "bi"
prefixes.

Another thing people have trouble with is the difference between bits
(b) and bytes (B). I remember one of the RAM chips used in a home
computer (about 1982) that the manufacture called "16Kb" although most
people would call it "2KB". Sometimes you might hear both as "16Kb (8192
x 8)" (this chip has 8 data lines). Another chip was 1024 x 4 (requiring
2 chips to store bytes).

BTW, the Commodore VIC-20 had 11 of these 1024 x 4 chips.

--
38 days until the winter celebration (Wed, Dec 25, 2019 12:00:00 AM for
1 day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

Sign seen on a bus "Illiterate? Write for free help."

On 11/16/19 1:03 PM, Mike Easter wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
I really as a computer user should not clutter my head with stuff that
is of no real concern or value to me.

The concept is worth cluttering.Â* And/But if you have no need for yotta,
you have no need for yobi.

The current 64-bit CPU chips have a theoretical RAM capacity of 8
exbibytes (2^63). It'd still take about 6 more orders of magnitude (x10)
before we'd need to be talking about yobibytes.

BTW, my spell checker does recognize "exbibytes", "zebibytes", and
"yobibytes". "yobibytes".

BTW2, that 63-bit limitation on physical memory could lead to serious
trouble someday. It reminds me of the "A20 gate" problem.

--
38 days until the winter celebration (Wed, Dec 25, 2019 12:00:00 AM for
1 day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

Sign seen on a bus "Illiterate? Write for free help."

On 11/17/2019 10:05 AM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 11/16/19 12:40 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:

[snip]

Even the sector size is not 512, we forget other metadata that is there,
like checksums. I don't know what the actual figure is.

These headers explain how modern programs people call "low level format"
are NOT that, since they do not write headers.

BTW, my first hard disk (1990) had a real LLF program in ROM. IIRC the
first thing you do after connecting it was enter DEBUG and "g=C000:0CCC"
and answer a bunch of questions like "gap length".


Have you remembered what you entered into Debug for 29 years? If so I'm
impressed. I could never do that.

Or did you just Google it to refresh your memory? :-)



My take on this was that calling 1024 bytes a kilobyte was an acceptable
approximation at the time, as long as everyone was aware that it was an
approximation. Aprox 1K=1000. As the units got bigger, the approximation
was no longer negligible, so better invent a different unit and avoid
the confussion. Yeah, some people hate change, but this is a needed change.

I also had to change after a lifetime of using the old units.

I had to change too, since I started using computers before the "bi"
prefixes.


Way before for me--I started in 1961. But that doesn't mean that I now
use the "bi" prefixes.

The first computer I worked on (I programmed it) was an IBM 1401. It had
6-bit *characters*. They weren't called bytes in those days.


Another thing people have trouble with is the difference between bits
(b) and bytes (B).


*Some* people. Mostly noobies.


I remember one of the RAM chips used in a home
computer (about 1982) that the manufacture called "16Kb" although most
people would call it "2KB". Sometimes you might hear both as "16Kb (8192
x 8)" (this chip has 8 data lines). Another chip was 1024 x 4 (requiring
2 chips to store bytes).


Using Kb when KB is correct is very seldom a matter of confusing bits
and bytes. It's much more likely to be just not remembering what the
correct abbreviations are. Or in some cases, it's just a typo.

I'm very much aware of the difference between bits and bytes, but I've
probably mistyped Kb or kb for KB many times.

I don't remember ever seeing 16Kb instead of 2KB.


--
Ken

On Fri, 15 Nov 2019 19:00:09 +1300, Ralph Fox wrote:

Gibi is now 21 years old. https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html

:-D

--
s|b

On 11/17/19 12:52 PM, Ken Blake wrote:

[snip]

BTW, my first hard disk (1990) had a real LLF program in ROM. IIRC the
first thing you do after connecting it was enter DEBUG and "g=C000:0CCC"
and answer a bunch of questions like "gap length".


Have you remembered what you entered into Debug for 29 years? If so I'm
impressed. I could never do that.

I do remember that the added ROM (from the disk controller) would be in
segment C000. I'm not sure about the offset, but it was similar to that.

BTW, I no longer have that drive/controller, which was incompatible with
"386 mode". IIRC, Windows 3.1 would run in 286 mode.

[snip]

--
36 days until the winter celebration (Wed, Dec 25, 2019 12:00:00 AM for
1 day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"The minister must take his pious grasp off of the throat of Sunday."
[Lemuel K. Washburn, _Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays_]