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Megabytes (MB) or Mebibytes (MiB)?
An anonymous reader says: "KernelTrap has an interesting story about megabytes versus mebibytes. Though the article refers to Linux, the topic is applicable to all computers. Will there be a time when all computer users will talk about adding mibibytes of RAM, rather than a megabytes?
From the article: '[the kernel patch] changes references from the familiar MB (megabyte) and GB (gigabyte) to the NIST standard MiB (mebibyte) and GiB (gibibyte). According to these standards, technically a megabyte (MB) is a power of ten, while a mebibyte (MiB) is a power of two, appropriate for binary machines. A megabyte is then 1,000,000 bytes. A mebibyte is the actual 1,048,576 bytes that most intend.'"
"Maybe Byte"?
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
And that alone will hinder its acceptance.
And will hard drive manufacturors decide to stop lying about the size of their drives? Magic 8 ball says doubtful.
ostiguy
People have been trying to push this for years but there is no chance of it ever happening in my opinion for two reasons - Everyone is already used to the current names and we don't need new ones, and secondly the proposed names sound really stupid.
Sig is taking a break!
We have a potential conflict here. Megabytes and gigabytes are often referred to as "megs" and "gigs", right? Problem is, gibs is taken.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
Hm... on second thought, maybe not. I'm not getting much productive work done lately and I still don't care about either of the above...
-------------------------------------------------
charlton heston is more of a man than yo
Most users don't know how many bytes are in a megabyte or a kilobyte, or think (naturally) 1000 rather than 1024.
However, hard drive manufacturers already use Megabyte to specifically mean 1,000,000 bytes, Before long computer OS's and RAM manufacturers will use the same definition.
Why come up with a new 'Mebibyte' system? What does 'kilo-' and 'mega-' actually mean? Answer: 1000 and 1,000,000, not the perversion of the computer scientists.
Now that computers are becoming more popular, the meaning of the terms megabyte and kilobyte are shifting back to compatibility with normal English usage.
There is no need for new terms at all, IMHO.
Alan Cox offers support to this change, "Eric using MiB seems the right thing. Its an ugly but appropriate unit, its at least recommended as a solution by a standards body. We can either redefine SI units ("You cannot change the laws of physics") or find a better label. What better than a recommended one others use.".
That's right: ugly it just doesn't sound right, but it is a more accurate description. I don't see the computer world moving away from MB and GB anytime soon though.
chad
ERROR 404: sig not found
How come we don't use numbers like
10E9
10E12
and
2E15
2E20
and so on.... No confusion
After all our car tires can work with sizes like 175-70 R13 and son on and we do not mess them up.
Let's see here;
I already have a hard time convincing other people of the distinction between hacker and cracker.
to them: hacker is a criminal, cracker is a southern, white, klansman-criminal.
I give up, and try and express that every computer hacker is not a criminal, they are all computer science researchers, doing sometimes unpopular work.
Now you want to change the terms for measuring storage? The normal aim for changing terms is to clarify the matter, but this is just obfuscation for 99% of the people in the world, who already suffer at understanding the difference between 1024 and 1000. Please, do not do this.
Flash: a sudden rash of brutal murders by IT managers has shocked the country. Already strained relations between managers and tech workers exploded into violence in late December with news the "megabytes" are actually "mibibytes."
Just a little holiday fantasy, folks. Intended to be fictional and humorous. Neither character in any way represents real people, living or dead, and I am not in high school, so I believe it is still legal for me to write violent fantasies.
Cheers
-b
If I wanted a sig I would have filled in that stupid box.
The thing is, people have adopted the terms megabyte and gigabyte to mean what they do now, the power of two unit insted of the proper power of ten. This is how language evolves - the improper becomes accepted.
The same thing happened with the word Judaism. It's supposed to be pronounced jew-DUH-ism, but in America we call it jew-DEE-ism. While it's not technically correct, everyone knows what you're talking about, and it's the standard, accepted way to talk about the Jewish faith.
Basically this is an effort to reverse linguistic evolution. The current terminology isn't broken for the public which understands gigabyte and megabyte, so don't fix it.
~q of course
contre.org. fighting crime since 1985.
we should pronounce them "mibs"
MIBs are already taken, too.. by SNMP. Unless you pronounce them "emm eye bees".
Intelligent Life on Earth
The different between a gigabyte and a gibibyte is pretty small (7%), but once terabyte and larger arrays become more common, the distinction becomes more and more important. The different between a petabyte and a pebibyte is 13%. An exbibyte is more than 15% larger than an exabyte, which will surely lead to worse confusion than today's "80GB" hard drive specificiations...
emm eye bees?
Quick, call Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones!
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Instead of fixing the symptoms, we should address the underlying problem: our silly use of decimal numbers.
If we used base 8 like God intended (after all, He gave us 8 finger and 2 thumbs, not ten fingers!) this wouldn't be an issue.
As an extra benefit, the sudden conversion of account balances from decimal to octal numbers will be much need shot in the arm economically. Everyone will be richer! (or owe more money, but we can't all be winners unless we're competing in the Special Olympics.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Traipsing through dictionary.com, we find the following definitions for "gigabyte"...
The American Heritage dictionary can't decide:
gigabyte (jg-bt, gg-) n.
1. A unit of computer memory or data storage capacity equal to 1,024 megabytes (230 bytes).
2. One billion bytes.
Princeton University's WordNet decided to decide:
gigabyte n : a unit of information equal to one billion (1,000,000,000) bytes or one thousand megabytes.
The Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing chose the power or two, but went "outside the box" when it came to a definition:
2^30 = 1,073,741,824 bytes = 1024 megabytes.
Roughly the amount of data required to encode a human gene sequence (including all the redundant codons).
Mega-ma-bytes
Giga-ma-bytes
Saxa-ma-phone
etc.
Is to coin a term based on the word 'bit':
1st: 'Bitches', this refers to 8 bits.
2nd: 'MegaBitches', Obviously, in oldschool terms this would be a Megabyte.
3rd: 'GigaBitches', following the entire byte-to-bitches theme, this would previously have been a Gigabyte.
Some suggested slang based on 'bits-n-bitches':
'Slap'N'ThemBitches', this is what you do when you add any amount of space (memory or harddrive) to your computer.
'StankBitches', bad RAM or a crappy harddrive.
'BadAssMofoBitches', this is any amount of space greater than what you have.
'UglyBitches', this is typically an embarrassingly small amount of space, so much so that you don't tell anyone that's how much you have.
Thanks to our so hip words, now your everyday average IT guy can have a conversation like this with his boss:
"Yo man, yesterday I found some UglyBitches over at the office, and yo, some of them were some StankBitches, yo! So I got rid of them StankBitches and got me some BadAssMofoBitches, and yo, I slap'n'themBitches early this morning. That shit was shweet!"
-- Dan
Quote: "Why not just call them "bibbity-bobbity-boo" bytes?"
Unfortunately Dragonball Z (Funimation) has already licensed the term "bibbity-bobbity-boo" from Disney for the naming of several bad guys.
.
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
There's no difference in efficiency between mallocing 1048576 bytes and mallocing 1000000 bytse. Powers of 2 are useful for efficiency now only because they match multiples of the register size of the CPU (but 1000000 does that too).
Also, computers need not be based on powers of 2 anyway, so chaining everything to 2 is losing a level of abstraction (eg. quantum computers, ternary computers, EBCDIC computers (9 bits per byte), etc.)
What abbreviation do you use for "million bytes"?
For some reason, people who grew up in router land use GB to mean 10^6, while most software developers use GB to mean 2^20.
To resolve this, my group prepared a document that explains the use of the binary nomemclature and we refer readers to this base document in all of our prepared documentation. The document also explicitly states what the accepted abbreviations are (KiB, MiB, GiB, etc.). We also explicity define the capital B to mean byte, while a lower case 'b' is a bit. Therefore, Mib means mebibit.
This has reduced confusion to a great amount and now various groups looking at our performance testing results can make an accurate assesment.
* As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
You need to a soldier to really fight soldiers. You need to be a hacker to really fight hackers.
In the world of hackers, there are attackers, and there are defenders. It's easy to attack. It's much more interesting and important to defend.
--Dan
No, I've never seen anyone selling 40 gigabit hard drives.
.... "NEW! 40Gb DRIVES! For the SAME PRICE as your crappy old 5GB drive!"
Oh, how quickly we forget....
Bytes = bits/8 (not accounting for ecc etc)
Equals 5 GigaBytes (in the proper sense of Giga)
5 gig drives were all the rage back in '95
Good thing the marketing droids didn't pick up on the confusion with B and b
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Will people change their usage? Mebi, mebi not.
1. A megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes. Always has been, always will be. It is a unit of measurement specific to its science, like the Mole is to Chemistry, and like the Newton is to Physics. It is not meant to be a general metric measurement, in other words, a megabyte isn't 1,000,000 anymore than a "dozen" is 10. Ever since the term was coined, it has meant that value, specifically. Anyone who tells you otherwise is trying to sell you something, namely marketing idiots who are responsible for great advancements in human culture like MTV and the Home Shopping Network.
2. By accepting this "mebibytes" crap, you're allowing marketing people to revise history. The number 1,048,576 is an important value in Computer Science, similar to 8, 256, 1024, and other commonly-used powers of 2. An understanding of the powers of 2 is integral to having an understanding of the underlying principles that form the foundation of this discipline. If you cant think in anything but base 10, you should consider a different line of work, as most computer scientists have no problem thinking in terms of binary, octal, hexidecimal and otherwise. A failure to understand the basic nature of the device you intend on working with for the rest of your career is tantamount to unprofessionalism and neglect. After all, you can't be expected to code competently by using incorrect measurements any more than a carpenter can be expected to build a house competently if his tape measure is made out of elastic rubber.
3. Its just plain stupid. A megabyte is a megabyte. Its not less than a megabyte, or more than a megabyte. If you for some reason feel the need to apply a term to "1,000,000" an essentially meaningless number in terms of the machine, we already have a word for it. Its called "million", as in "a million bytes." Call a spade a spade. A megabyte is 1,048,576. A million bytes is 1,000,000 bytes. They are not equal, and never will be.
Bowie J. Poag