Have you ever heard of or used "Kibibytes"
Monday, June 23rd, 2008 - 4:54pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte
We develop software and there is some discussion at work now about this term.
On one hand it makes some sense since it avoids confussion and if it actually is a recognized standard we should be using it.
On the other hand, if no one else recognizes it then it is just as confusing.
The discussion section on the Wiki page has some good plus/minus points but what are your thoughts on this?
Kibble stealing hack!
(@)
Never used it, probably have heard it once or twice in passing.
The only people who assert that kilobyte = 1,000 bytes are storage manufacturers.
Fedaykin98 wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:
*$^&#*$ storage device manufactures and their marketing ploys!!
Chumpy wrote:
Malor wrote:
I don't think I've ever seen it used outside of situations where everyone would have understood what kilobyte meant anyway. Other developers know what you mean without it, and generally the rest haven't heard of it so it won't help them.
Computers don't make errors. What they do, they do on purpose. By now your name and particulars have been fed into every laptop, desktop, mainframe and supermarket scanner that collectively make up the global information conspiracy.
-- Dale Gribble
In sort, no.
Fear the flames...
I've long understood the root 'issue' but didn't realize some organization was out there trying to make a new term(s if you count Mebi and Gibi as well) to try to rectify the situation.
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
I thought I had, but I was way off. Now I'm just hungry.
If I'd known it was harmless, I would have killed it myself
I try to use it whenever possible. It cuts back on the confusion in my opinion. The more it gets used the more it will be accepted.
"What do you think you're doing?"
"I'd say I was joining the winning team, but that'd imply there existed a time when I wasn't on team evil."
What about in other algorithms?
Gaming / PC Tech Blog: www.blastprocessing.net
Xbox Live: Legion SB / PSN: Legion_SB / Steam: legion028
Follow me! http://twitter.com/legion
Hmmm... It isn't on this list
XBL - CavemanGamer | Steam - Paleospieler | Twitter - Paleogamer | Blog - The Paleogamer
This is my experience as well. Usually we just joke about how we should be using "Kibibytes" in the current conversation.
Its abbreviation is there though!
I've seen that abbreviation, KiB used fairly often, though I think its always still been stated as 'kilobyte'.
Much how most irregular verbs come about because ease of use overrides 'correctness', I'm hoping we keep incorrectly using the current terms. It does give manufacturers a little bit of room for shadiness, but most anyone if not everyone who will care one way or the other will know the difference anyway.
private String paula = "Brillant";
Good list.
Anyway, no, I've never heard of it. And almost all people that don't have IT experience (and some who do) don't even know the difference between a bit and a byte, let alone this. The average person would just get more confused and people in the know just wouldn't care since they've always used powers of 2 for kilobyte, gigabyte, etc. It's what all major operating systems have been using forever, after all. Also, I always thought a Kilobyte was KB, not kB.
Edit:
I guess 'KB' is the Binary JEDEC standard. Cool, I wasn't wrong!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte
So how about kB =1000, and KB = 1024?
The people who decided to fight this fight are a good example of people with too much time on their hands and and an overly developed desire for useless consistency.
Xbox Live: psu13, PSN: psu_13
Yep, it's another great example of a solution looking for a problem. Well, perhaps that's a little unfair... engineers do like to be explicit about things, and with good reason, but even though lawsuits have been fought over the difference (oh noes! my 8GB iPod only has a bit less than 8GB of storage!), it's usually pretty easy to determine from context whether someone is talking about "real" power-of-2 kilobytes and "hard drive manufacturer" power-of-10 kilobytes.
Xbox Live: pneuman | my tech/games/rant blag
I've heard the prefixes kibi-, mebi-, and gibi- used to differentiate between 2^10 and 10^3, and their multiples for some time now, but never really used them myself. Force of habit, I guess. I know when people are talking about RAM, they're talking about 2^10, and when they're talking about drive space, they're talking about 10^3.
No, man. Sh*t, no, man! I believe you'd get your ass kicked for sayin' something like that, man.
XBLive: Ruckus
I'm sorry, but regardless of whether you've heard of it these guys fail in their nonmenclature creation. I mean, kibibyte? That rolls off the tongue as easily as Raxacoricofallapatorius. That break in the word with the two 'b' sounds is really off-putting - not to mention a minefield for us shy, stuttering nerds out here...
If anything they should redefine kilobyte as 1,000 bytes since, by definition kilo equates to a thousand.
If they want to keep the 1,024 unit then they should rename that the kibibyte.... or even better change it to kinabyte (Kilo Binary byte....
Bah... damn kids and their changes...
[edit] - changed my suggestion
A blog: by me!
Worryingly I used it yesterday. df -h returned a pathetic amount of hard drive space on my primary partition and someone asked me how much I had left. Since it was printing it out in bytes it made sense to tell him in kibibytes rather than try and divide by 1024 in my head. Given that I've worked with other engineers for 15 years I have become accustomed to being precise in my terminology. My colleague would probably have asked for clarification if I hadn't.
Yes, I know that df -kh or df -mh would've done it for me.
It will do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.
- AE Houseman, trailblazing XBL user
XBox Live
I suggest "kiloripoff" or "shortchangebyte", myself. "Liar's Kilobyte" could be fun too.
If wishes were trees the trees would be falling, Listen to reason, Reason is calling
Your feet are going to be on the ground, Your head is there to move you around -- REM
I don't believe I've said 'kilobyte' for years ... if it ever comes up, I say 'K', so I'm not too keen on trying to introduce kibibytes to the office. There's no confusion here, either, since none of us manufacture or sell hard drives.
I know what it means, but the only people I've ever heard use it are the people who were trying to convince people to use it. It's not going to stick.
Xbox Live: MNGwinn | Spore: MNGwinn
Sitting in a network technology lecture right now. They use the 10³-definition of 'kilo', which confused my (social science) co-students somewhat. Had they introduced another term, that confusion would not have been reduced. Stay away from it if you are trying to communicate with non-engineers.
And if I haven't seen further, it's because those bloody giants blocked my sight.
I worry about the utility of any networking lecture that uses the 10³ definition of kilo.
XBLive: Ruckus
Actually if you do a "mouse-over" it says
And I agree that anything with the prefix "kilo" should mean 1000 of said item.
Xbox Live : Aries GWJ PSN : AriesGWJ Spore : Ariesgwj
Until they send a $200mil probe to Mars, and after 6 months of waiting they crash the damn thing because one system designer used 10's while the another used 2's as a base for re-entry calculations.
(@)
As long as they're not imperial kibibytes, we're hopefully safe.
Xbox Live: pneuman | my tech/games/rant blag
That may apply DISTANCE but not likely to BYTES.
There is no confusion about a km. Do you want kibimeters?
Exactly! I mean who can forget that definition of 1050m?
A blog: by me!
What if two designers are working on two separate parts of the control module. They need to pass 1 kilobyte of data between them. One guy passes an array of 1000 bytes across and the other guy writes a loop to read and write to 1024 bytes of it. All of a sudden you're overwriting memory represending your descent vectors and... well, we can all imagine how that goes.
(@)