* Paul Johnson (baloo@ursine.ca) [030604 02:35]: > On Tue, Jun 03, 2003 at 01:56:58PM +0100, Pigeon wrote: > > So a megabyte *is* 1048576 bytes, etc, and I don't think this usage is > > particularly likely to change. > > I know I'm not switching just because some industry marketroids think > they can bastardize several decades of standardization, and I really > think it's a bad plan to change now. "several decades of standardization"? The only "standard" usage of mega is 1.0e6. When people started calling 2^10 bytes a megabyte, it was for convenience, not "standardization". Also, I don't know how far it goes back, but I'm sure that the 1e6 usage of the mega- prefix was in use long before the SI came around ~1 centuries ago. I'd call several decades of the 2^10 usage pretty meager. 1 KiB is unambiguously 1024 bytes. The terms "MB" and "megabyte" have been overloaded, and are clumsily ambiguous. The stubborn "well, I'm not changing now!" attitude is the same reason why the US still uses archaic units of measurement for damn near everything, and why we crash-landed on Mars a few years back =p good times, Vineet -- http://www.doorstop.net/ -- http://www.anti-dmca.org/
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