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Re: Using standardized SI prefixes



On Tue, Jun 12, 2007 at 09:20:30AM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote:
> Le lundi 11 juin 2007 à 19:56 -0500, Mark Reitblatt a écrit :
> > That's not "consistent". Kilobyte has always meant 2^10 bytes.
> 
> No, it has never. Kilo has always meant 10^3. Full stop. End of story.
> Bye bye. People didn't invent the SI just so that a small group of
> hackers decide that suddenly it is 2^10 just because it is more
> convenient. SI units are *universal*.
> 
Really?  Because there is no history of words being co-opted and being
assigned new meanings?  Pirate?  Hacker?  It is a fact that, lacking a
better work, people will take a word that is a close approximation in
some way and use it.  The kilo ≈ 2^10 is not the first, nor will it be
the last.

> 
> It has never been anything but a gross imprecision introduced by people
> incapable of following rigorous standards.
> 
It has never been anything more than people defaulting to a close
approximation.  Language is imperfect.  People make do.

Regards,

-Roberto

-- 
Roberto C. Sánchez
http://people.connexer.com/~roberto
http://www.connexer.com

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