Mebibyte is the new Megabyte..?

SolarNexus

note: I wanted to discuss this further, but instead of hijacking another thread, I started this.

ShiverinEskimo wrote:

"they" weren't doing anyone any favours when they created bits and decided to call a collection of 8 bits something beginning with "B" that it oh so similar to "bits".

Muppets I tells you.

taken from this thread: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054864050

I think they should never have invented the term 'byte' its so unnecessary (in memory size calculation, I mean), makes me think someone was high when they 'invented' that nonsense -- I mean, they even invented a "nybble" (1/2 a byte, 4bits), who are they kidding? everything can be expressed as bits, but not everything can be expressed as bytes, particularly data like images, executables etc. not to mention that if something isnt divisible by 8, that just messes everything up.

but now the damage is done, the only muppets I see are those advocating this new standard:

kilobyte -> kibibyte
megabyte -> mebibyte
gigabyte -> gibibyte
terabyte -> tebibyte
petabyte -> pebibyte
exabyte -> exbibyte
zettabyte -> zebibyte
yottabyte -> yobibyte

I dare anyone to mention "gibibyte" in general conversation without everyone thinking you've taken a hit or the head. Most of those are tongue twisters anyway, oh... if only they chose to make up words that werent inpronouncable

Capt'n Midnight

kibibyte - is that like 1,000 Bytes or 1,024 Bytes ?

Back in the early days there wern't always 8 bits in a byte, if they had put 10 bits in a byte then we wouldn't have to swap code pages and Unicode with 2 bytes wouldn't have to drop so many Chinese characters. Also a few Y2K problems would be deferred further.

BTW: Big K or little k ?

SolarNexus

kibibyte - is that like 1,000 Bytes or 1,024 Bytes ?

1,000 bytes

more info at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte
more confusion: http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html

I think the general rule is : mb, Megabyte and Mb for megabit.

Malafus

SolarNexus wrote:

1,000 bytes

more info at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte
more confusion: http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/kb_kilobytes.html

I think the general rule is : mb, Megabyte and Mb for megabit.

Sorry, but you're wrong on all counts.

A Kibibyte is 1024 bytes, and is written KiB. A Kibibit would be 1024 bits, and be written Kib
A Megabyte is written MB
A Megabit is written Mb.

All of the "bi"s are two to the power of something, starting at 2^10 for KiB, and increasing in powers of ten.

aidan_walsh

SolarNexus wrote:

I think the general rule is : mb, Megabyte and Mb for megabit.

Bytes are always expressed with an upper case "B" (the easy way to remember is that they are the larger value), and bits with a lower case. Leading letters are usually constantly upper case (an exception being kilos, which seem to be interchangable. Probably better to just use an upper there as well.)

Malafus

aidan_walsh wrote:

Bytes are always expressed with an upper case "B" (the easy way to remember is that they are the larger value), and bits with a lower case. Leading letters are usually constantly upper case (an exception being kilos, which seem to be interchangable. Probably better to just use an upper there as well.)

To be fair, the SI prefix for kilo is a lower case 'k', but no-one seems to bother following the rules on this one, including myself.

K.O.Kiki

They had a question like this on my Sem1 Hardware test. I got it wrong; can I cite "confusion"? :P

Khannie

Ah, confusion reigns.

The best /ever/ is the new UTV internet tv ad, which says they give you a 2 megabyte line. I could be wrong....but I don't think 16Mb DSL is available in the north yet.

WizZard

I noticed that too :rolleyes:
Wonder could one order it and complain when the service was not as advertised, and then not pay...??

jozi

EOA_Mushy

WizZard wrote:

I noticed that too :rolleyes:
Wonder could one order it and complain when the service was not as advertised, and then not pay...??

Get enough people to try it out and it may make for some fun at veary least...

As for:

SolarNexus wrote:

, makes me think someone was high when they 'invented' that nonsense -- I mean, they even invented a "nybble" (1/2 a byte, 4bits),

Full agreement... lol