Hans Witvliet wrote:
On Fri, 2007-01-12 at 01:14 -0600, Darryl Gregorash wrote:
On 2007-01-11 18:12, Randall R Schulz wrote:
> <snip>
>
> I still don't get why its authors didn't recognize lower-case 'm' as
> equivalent to upper-case 'M'.
Lower-case stands for 'milli' and there are no millibytes :-)
The 'k' can be upper or lower case, depending on context (eg. KB vs.
km/h, etc), though the lower case 'k' is the SI rule.
And btw, "B" is for bytes (octets) and "b" for bits
The term "Byte" comes from by-eight.
Do your have any reference for that?
A byte is the basic addressing unit of memory, that's all. I still
remember the CDC 6600 where a byte was only 6 bit; this was one of
the first computers that I worked with. I think I remember that the
6600-documentation referred to the IBM Stretch (the 7030, an earlier
supercomputer, built from 1961-1964) as having coined that word. But
I may be wrong, that's too long ago now.
Or the PDP-10, there were 9 bits per byte, giving a 36-bit word.
(I'm a bit older, as you might guess from my examples. :-) Since
these things were all named bytes in their time (late 70s and early
80s), I doubt your linguistic derivation.
Once upon a time, if one really wanted to emphasis the
8-bit-property, one used the correct technical term octet, that you
cited as well above. You still find it in many Internet Standards,
which were written before the 8-bit byte became so common.
Of course, for current usage, you're right. Nobody in their right
mind would expect a byte to be anything different than 8-bit today.
But I think you got your history wrong; or it was at least a
different history than the one I experienced personally.
Cheers,
Joachim
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Joachim Schrod Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Roedermark, Germany
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