zlacker

One thing that annoys me is:

Why don’t kilobyte continue to mean 1024 and introduce kilodebyte to mean 1000. Byte, to me implies a binary number system, and if you want to introduce a new nomenclature to reduce confusion, give the new one a new name and let the older of more prevalent one in its domain keep the old one…

>>mc32+(OP)
Because kilo- already has a meaning. And both usages of kilobyte were (and are) in use. If we are going to fix the problem, we might as well fix it right.

>>gizmo6+g1
Sure outside of computing in other science it has a meaning but in binary computing traditionally prefix + byte implied binary number quantities.

Many things acquire domain specific nuanced meaning ..

>>mc32+N2
And yet in computing, a 1kHz clock is still 1000 cycles per second, and 1 MFLOP is still 1,000,000 floating-point operations per second.

>>mc32+N2
Even in computing the binary definition is only used with memory sizes. E.g. storage, network speeds, clock rates use the standard definition.

>>mc32+(OP)
> Why don’t kilobyte continue to mean 1024

Because it never did!

>>floren+J6
The comment you replied to explained that:

"in binary computing traditionally prefix + byte implied binary number quantities."

There are no bytes involved in Hz or FLOPs.

>>pif+u7
Which universe do you hail from? Because nobody except pedants have relented to this demand from non-computer scientists to conform to a standardization that has nothing to do with them or the work they do.