OFF: Re: Y2K

[Paul Mather]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2000, Johan Edlundh wrote:

=> there's a slight difference between 'K' and 'k'.
=>
=> 1000 grams = 1 kg
=> 1000 meters = 1 km
=>
=> and the recent computer bug should therefore be titled correct as Y2k.

Hey, I've seen it written like that.  "10K cross-country run in Y2k!" >;-)

=> isn't the capital 'K' is used for the 'binary thousand' 10000000000 - which
=> is decimal 1024? - in that case Y2K is making perfect sense as Y2048.

(This thread is getting stupider by the minute, but, heck, it's a slow
day...;)

Last I checked, "K" was the SI symbol for Kelvin, a base unit of
thermodynamic temperature.

As far as computers are concerned, I've only noticed a serious
differentiation between the suffixes "b" (bit) and "B" (byte), e.g., 10
Mb (megabit)  is not the same as 10 MB (megabyte).

And even the prefixes are not standard in the computer arena. Purchasers
of hard drives should take care to determine whether the manufacturer of
his or her chosen hard drive uses powers of 10 or powers of 2 for their
size prefix.  For example, I believe a Maxtor "megabyte" is 1 million
(10^6) bytes, whereas a Seagate "megabyte" is 1,048,576 (2^20) bytes.
So, if you have the choice of a 540 MB drive of either of those
manufacturers, all else being equal, choose the Seagate, because you'll
actually be getting more storage. ;-)

Cheers,

Paul.

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

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