In <[email protected]>, on 05/02/2013
at 10:13 PM, "Joel C. Ewing" <[email protected]> said:
>The "correct" meaning of "K" (kilo) from its Greek origins was
>"1000". But, even before the PC weenies took over, "K" was used
>ambiguously in the computer industry and required one to understand
>the context conventions: At least by the 1960's and S/360 IBM
>"officially" (documented in manuals) used "K" to be "1024 "when
>talking about binary-addressed memory and to be "1000" when talking
>about external storage, which was not binary addressed. For
>non-binary-addressed machines (like IBM 1620), "K" still meant
>"1000" for memory as well; and on a few machines where octal rather
>than hex notation was typically used for memory addresses I have
>even seen "K" used for 8^3=512 . PC folks didn't understand those
>conventions and made things even more confused by ambiguously using
>the "1024" definition in inappropriate contexts that did not involve
>binary addressing.
Perhaps the absolute worst was the M=1024000 aberration.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT
Atid/2 <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>
We don't care. We don't have to care, we're Congress.
(S877: The Shut up and Eat Your spam act of 2003)
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