Not to put too fine a point on it, but computer math is
in any one of several representations of powers of 2.
You can use Octal (base 8, 2^3) as was common in the
days of kit computers, or hexadecimal (base 16, 2^4),
or whatever.
Yes "kilo" was adopted to mean "the closest power of 2
to 1000" (that's 2^10).
And yes, a lot of "fiddling" with the real meanings goes on.
For example, since 64k (64 * 2^10) = 65536, there were
computer makers that began saying "our machine has 65k of
memory." The same happens with disk drive makers, who will
sometimes say that a 4gb (4 * 1024^3 = 4294967296) drive
is "4.2" gb.
Caveat Emptor,
~Garry
-------------------------
JAMES WEBSTER wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> >
> > >I seem to recall that some people confuse things a bit by
> > >saying that a kiloByte is 1024 Bytes. ...
> > >
> > >Bob
> > That's because they add up in octodecimal but we count them in decimal,
> > hence the discrepancy. In bits and bytes, 1024 is the nearest
> > equivalent to 1,000. So, 1024 bytes make a Kilobyte, and 1024 kilobytes
> > make a megabyte. I don't wanna do the mathing for how many bytes in a
> > megabyte but it's 1024x1024. That's why numbers come out in 16, 32, 64,
> > on up to 256 and so on, that eight count thing.
>
> Just adding my 2 cents in here. Computer math is in Hexidecimal,
> which is base 16. Versus our normal base 10. Some old PCs had
> Octal (base 6). The Hexidecimal being a way for us to view
> and write in a 16-bit format. Computers themselves are binary.
> And binary numbers will always be a power of 2. So you have:
> 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, etc.
> So, your friend is correct in a KiloByte being 1024 bytes.
> And a MegaByte is 1024 x 1024.
> Jim Webster
>
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