1 kilobyte is ***OFFICIALLY*** (IEEE/IEC/CIPM standard) 1000bytes.

[BenSkywalker]

does the IEEE have any authority you say....

newbie.

Well, IEEE had a shader standard set some years ago that a vid card company decided to follow. That company was nVidia with their FX line of boards. The IEEE is important, but it certainly isn't the be all end all.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
I don't like it because it goes against the traditional meaning. Just as bob said "0 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 256 512 1024 2048"; it's 1024 because computers work with numbers with a base of 2. Switches are on or off; 1 or 0; 2 options. Those switches when put into a row (binary) make numbers like 2^0, 2^1, 2^2 and so on. You'll notice that 1000 cannot be expressed as 2^x, the closest thing is 1024. Instead of selling things that are 1.024kb they just made 1kb mean 1024 bytes then everything works out. 1024 is 1kb, 2048 is 2kb.
I also don't like it because just as scott said, it will make users even dumber than before. When the world went GUI, computer users got dumber. They went from words (commands) to pictures (icons) - like going from an adult to a 3 year old. Now we're trying to go from a mathematically correct system to a more convenient system. Since when is being correct a bad thing? People will forget the math behind binary and base 2 numbers.


What I think they should do is make a standard not for what 1kb means but for how to sell things. Selling things in mb means they REALLY SHOULD BE in mb, not 1000kb. I have a "60gb" hard drive but Windows says it's only 55gb, what the hell? We need to put standards on the listed size of things, not change what the size number actually means.

I just thought though - so what if computers think in binary? Does that mean that we need to also measure them in binary? The memory storage devices they use have a certain number of locations to store data (many billions of locations) - they are simply something to be counted. Use base 10 to count them.