Bjorn Simonsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
>COMING TO TERMS WITH BYTES
>Computer terminology is becoming more precise: the International
>Electrotechnical Commission, which creates standards for electronic
>technologies, is adopting new prefixes to describe data values. The new
>term "kibibyte" will more accurately describe the number of bytes in a
>kilobyte -- rather than being 1,000, as could be inferred by the prefix
>"kilo," a kilobyte actually has 1,024 (2 to the 10th power) bytes. The
>metric prefixes currently employed -- kilo, mega, giga, etc. --
>accumulate as a power of 10, rather than the binary system used in
>computer code. Thus, the Commission will use kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi ,
>pebi and exbi to express exponentially increasing binary multiples (2 to
>the 10th power, 2 to the 20th power, etc.). "There was a need to
>straighten this out," says Barry Taylor of the National Institute of
>Standards and Technology. (Science 12 Mar 99) [...]
I see they still haven't accepted the new prefixes for quantities beyond
exa- (pardon, exbi-.) Too bad; the grouchobyte, chicobyte, and harpobyte
would add the kind of flavor that the usual metric prefixes lack.
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