Yeah, American stuff makes sense unlike the metric system which is completely unintuitive /s
This whole post is meant to be a joke. The metric prefixes are perfectly understandable even if they’re technically off the decimal benchmarks by a handful of bytes
Metric is intuitive, but also shit. Just because you have 10 fingers doesn’t mean you should formulate a measurement system out of it. In fact if you actually give a shit about intuitiveness you’d go back to the American system which is roughly base 12 and therefore easier for division and manual estimations.
Sampled at what resolution, though? It’s a physical painting and the true, atomic-scale resolution would make this whole system useless.
May I suggest the entire constitution in ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) instead? Bonus points if any future amendments change the whole system.
KiB, MiB, GiB etc are more clear. It makes a big difference especially 1TB vs 1TiB.
The American way would probably be still using the units you listed but still meaning 1024, just to be confusing.
Either that or maybe something that uses physical measurement of a hard-drive (or CD?) using length. Like that new game is 24.0854 inches of data (maybe it could be 1.467 miles of CD?).
As far as I know, RAM only comes in GiB sizes. There is some overhead that reduces the amount you see in the OS though. But that complaint is valid for storage devices if you don’t know the units and expect TB/GB on the box to match the numbers in Windows
The American way would probably be still using the units you listed but still meaning 1024, just to be confusing.
American here. This is actually the proper way. KB is 1024 bytes. MB is 1024 KB. The terms were invented and used like that for decades.
Moving to ‘proper metric’ where KB is 1000 bytes was a scam invented by storage manufacturers to pretend to have bigger hard drives.
And then inventing the KiB prefixes was a soft-bellied capitulation by Europeans to those storage manufacturers.
Real hackers still use Kilo/Mega/Giga/Tera prefixes while still thinking in powers of 2. If we accept XiB, we admit that the scummy storage vendors have won.
Note: I’ll also accept that I’m an idiot American and therefore my opinion is stupid and invalid, but I stand by it.
Kilo comes from greek and has meant 1000 for 1000’s of years. If you want 2^10 to be represented using greek prefixes, it better involve “deca” and “di”. Kilo (and di) would be usable for roughly 1.071508607186267 x 10^301 byte. KB was wrong when it was invented, but they were only wrong for decades at least.
Computers have ruled the planet for longer than the Greeks ever did. The history lesson is appreciated, but we’re living in the future, now, and the future is digital.
No the correct way is to use the proper fucking metric standard. Use Mi or Gi if you need it. We have computers that can divide large numbers now. We don’t need bit shifting.
In general integer division is implemented using a form of long division, in binary. There is no base-10 arithmetic involved. It’s a relatively expensive operation which usually requires multiple clock cycles to complete, whereas dividing by a power of two (“bit shifting”) is trivial and can be done in hardware simply by routing the signals appropriately, without any logic gates.
In general integer division is implemented using a form of long division, in binary.
The point of my comment is that division in binary IS bitshifting. There is no other way to do it if you want the real answer. You can estimate, you can round, but the computational method of division is done via bitshifting of binarary expansions of numbers in an ALU.
The metric standard is to measure information in bits.
Bytes are a non-metric unit. Not a power-of-ten multiple of the metric base unit for information, the bit.
If you’re writing “1 million bytes” and not “8 million bits” then you’re not using metric.
If you aren’t using metric then the metric prefix definitions don’t apply.
There is plenty of precedent for the prefixes used in metric to refer to something other than an exact power of 1000 when not combined with a metric base unit. A microcomputer is not one one-thousandth of a computer. One thousand microscopes do not add up to one scope. Megastructures are not exactly one million times the size of ordinary structures. Etc.
Finally: This isn’t primarily about bit shifting, it’s about computers being based on binary representation and the fact that memory addresses are stored and communicated using whole numbers of bits, which naturally leads to memory sizes (for entire memory devices or smaller structures) which are powers of two. Though the fact that no one is going to do something as idiotic as introducing an expensive and completely unnecessary division by a power of ten for every memory access just so you can have 1000-byte MMU pages rather than 4096 also plays a part.
The meter is an French fascist measurement made by the court jester.
"Since 2019 the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of
1/299792458 of a second ..." [Wikipedia]
What is wrong with this definition?
The metre claims to be a 'non-imperial' basis of measurement.
But the basis of the metre is the imperial or ephemeral second, which is the ultimate imperial measurement. Seconds are an imperial unit. The measurement of time is fundamental to the ruler ... get it?
So the arbitrarily devised metre is founded upon the imperial second. Oops. Now why again did you say the metric system is 'superior' to the imperial system?
Metric supremacists are fascist rubes who don't realize they were pwnd by the empire before their rebellion even had a name or gang sign. They wanted to overthrow the king and based their coup on the king's fundamental unit of regal measurement: time. Oops. This is a case of killing the baby in the cradle.
Imperial units of measurement are based upon things found in nature. The second is a division of the solar and astronomical day. A second is 1/86400th of a day, and is based again on sexigesimal math, which is found EVERYWHERE in nature.
Every good programmer should already know where this is going.
There is nothing arbitrary about this. The imperial measurement is neatly aligned to solar and astronomical cycles and to the latitudes and longitudes of the earth. In short, the imperial system of measurement had already measured the equatorial and tropical circuits of the earth and the sun's path over 3000 years ago, and based measurements upon that.
Then along came the metric aristocrats, who pretended this had never been done before, speculated a false circumference of the earth, and came up with a flawed metre based on that false measurement, then changed it decades later to the distance traveled by light in an imperial second, unaware that no constant speed of light has yet been proved conclusively, but only assumed.
Whereas the imperial system is based upon measurements which have been observed unchanged, verifiable, and reproducible, FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS.
Tell me again why the metric system is, 'superior'?
The metre is merely a speculation and the so-called speed of light has NOT been conclusively proven, considering special relativity and all that other aristocratic bollocks. Also complicating the matter is the specific definition of, "light traveling in a vacuum." OK, sparky, how are you going to locate a laboratory in a vacuum at least 1 light second in length to conduct this experimental measurement and prove it?
This fallacy is called an 'unfalsifiable' claim. Yup, The metric system is based upon a pseudo-scientific conjecture and fallacy. Whereas the imperial system is based upon thousands of years of repeatable observation. And yet 'scientists' somehow are confused about the reality of the situation.
As I've said elsewhere, worldwide science and academia have been growing progressively more delusional for the past couple of centuries.
In the end the aristocrats will bow to the king they hate. Thank God Americans have refused to bow to this dumb idol. Stay strong Murrikanz.
Here's a shout out to the limeys who still weigh in stones! Long live the king's foot!
This is such a weird take to me. We don’t even colloquially discuss computer storage in terms of 1000.
The Greek terms were used from the beginning of computing and the new terms of kibi and mebi (etc.) were only added in 1998 when Members it the IEC got upset. But despite that, most personal computers still report in the binary way. The decimal is only used on boxes for marketing terms.
Calling 1048576 bytes an "American megabyte" might be technically wrong, but it's still slightly less goofy-looking than the more conventional "MiB" notation. I wish you good luck in making it the new standard.
As all your other measurements are based on the subjective measures of random people, I’d suggest using the amount of digits of pi a senior can remember in the time a new school shooting happens as a base, like a Bit. Then just multiply by a random amount for bigger sizes and prefix the name with random presidents names.
These are all rough averages, of course, but Tweets can be rather bigger than 140 bytes since they’re Unicode, not ASCII. What’s Twitter without emoji?
I propose the base measurement is a Reagit - equal to 36 bit states, or half-bits (36 was the age of Ronald Reagan when the transistor was first invented in 1947)
The next smallest is the Nuclearyte equal to the quantity of times the United States has proven technological superiority in war by using an atomic bomb offensively. So 2 Reagits is 1 Nuclearyte.
After that is the number of US presidents to have survived an assassination attempt (8) known simply as the ‘Merit (and don’t forget the apostrophe). 8 nuclearytes is 1 ‘merit.
Next is the number of years after the birth of Our Lord when Americans landed on the moon. 1969 ‘merits is 1 L-unit (pronounced like Loon)
Even bigger still is the number of amendments it took for the damn commie government to realize that alcohol is essential for human survival. The 18th amendment was a mistake, but the 21st amendment was blessed by Our Father who Art in Heaven without a doubt. 3 L-units is 1 chug
Next is the number of young men who died fighting for the rights of our United States to remain unquestioned by the damn commie federal government during the great war for individually united liberties between 1860 and 1865. 490,309 chugs is 1 Right
And so far we haven’t needed any larger measurements.
What do you mean? In what way am I being ignorant? I thought the whole idea was satirical and satire only works if you’re painfully aware of that which is being satirized. I think the empirical system of measurement is absurd since all the metrics are based off of completely subjective concepts. The only thing the empirical system is good for is being relatable to human minds. A foot is roughly a foot’s length. 100 degrees F is “hot” and 0 degrees F is cold. A cup is about a fistful. Etc.
Base 10 is a completely subjective concept as well. Why 10? Why not 12?
As far as those “subjective” concepts you are poorly satirizing, the reason they exist is because they are human-centric. 100f is “roughly” the temperature of the human body. A cup is roughly the size of your fist, etc. That is the value, not “the only thing” but THE THING. It is the reason the units exist!
A meter could just as easily be the length of my dick and a kilogram the weight of me balls, then we could create a whole system out of it and relate to all sorts of other arbitrary measurements based on water or an ideal hydrogen atom or the exact amount of time a carbon crystal oscillates in one rotation of the earth, or whatever. But all of those are so divorced from human’s, you know the people who this measurement system is ostensibly for, as to be 100% arbitrary. Why do I care how long it takes light to travel from the moon and back, when I just want to buy a rope that I can use to tie my mule to a fence post out of range of my garden? I paced off 25 feet, so I’ll take that length of rope please.
No I don’t know what 833cm is. Please just give me 25feet.
We should be using KB, MB, GB, and TB. Also we should adopt the entire International System of Units and stop with the shit we use. The army uses metric. Why can’t the rest of the population?
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