Lars Hamren wrote: > Download speeds are reported as "K/s", where, I assume, "K" is short for "kilobytes". > > The correct SI prefix for thousand is "k", not "K": > > http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/prefixes.html
SI units are for decimal-based numbers (that is powers of 10) whereas computer programs typically use binary-based numbers (powers of 2). It's convenient for humans to equate 10^3 (1,000) with 2^10 (1,024) but with large numbers, these values quickly diverge: 999k or 999 * 10^3 = 999,000, but 999K or 999 * 2^10 = 1,022,976. For what it's worth, according to Wikipedia either k or K is acceptable for 1024: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix
