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On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 7:59 PM, Douglas Dunn <djdunn.safety@×××××.com>wrote: |
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> On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 7:54 PM, Rich Freeman <rich0@g.o> wrote: |
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>> On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 7:44 PM, Douglas James Dunn |
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>> <djdunn.safety@×××××.com> wrote: |
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>> > The system you are most familiar with really depends on what Operating |
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>> > System you use. if you don't use computers you probably were exposed to |
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>> > either the SI units or imperial base 10 units. |
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>> |
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>> SI units ARE in base 10. Most imperial units aren't in base 10, and |
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>> the SI prefixes aren't generally used with imperial units. You don't |
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>> usually report height in centiyards, etc. |
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>> |
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>> There seems to be some kind of misconception that this has something |
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>> to do with imperial vs metric units. |
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>> |
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>> Bits and bytes are such a modern concept that they were pseudo-metric |
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>> from the start, but programmers tended to use the SI prefixes in |
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>> non-SI ways - defining a kilobyte as 1024 bytes. "Kilo" is an SI |
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>> prefix, but the SI defines it as 1000, not 1024. |
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>> |
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>> The 1024-byte kilobyte was never metric or SI or imperial. Fairly |
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>> recently JEDEC codified the 1024-byte kilobyte, but also endorsed the |
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>> 1024-byte kibibyte, and the usage obviously predates that standard. |
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>> Before then, programmers never really had a "standard" for the |
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>> kilobyte. Since programmers don't tend to do a lot of compound units, |
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>> getting their terms endorsed by a standards body was probably not much |
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>> of a priority. If they had gone to the SI/ISO (or whatever was around |
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>> in the 60s) they'd almost certainly have been shot down on having a |
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>> 1024-byte kilobyte. |
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>> |
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>> Rich |
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> I called it imperial base 10, in the fact that you count 1-9 before |
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> hitting 10 then 10-19 before hitting 20, rather than base 2, or whatever |
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> base you apply, not the fact that the units themselves are, and i realize |
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> that SI are in base 10 also. |
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> |
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the real issue though seems to be asking if we want the default to be in |
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base 2 aka IEC, or base 10 aka SI, it seems that almost everywhere the JDEC |
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binary units are being phased out in favor of IEC to avoid confusion with |
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the SI. I believe that the NIST, the national institute and standards and |
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technology, in the usa, require the IEC units and not the JDEC for binary |
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byte multiples since about 2008 |
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now whether you want to use base 2 or base 10, it probably comes down to |
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what you are doing, how you are doing it, and in some cases, HEX might be |
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even better or easier to work with. in the spirit of gentoo, i foresee some |
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eselect setting switching between binary and decimal systems? |