You are right, K is short for Kilo (or 1000) and only has the meaning
of 1024 to computer types like myself. Same is true for M (1,000,000)
instead of 1024*1024 = 1,048,576.
The computer company I worked for use to advertise this as 1.048M
instead of one megabyte order to make it look bigger. Either way is
accurate (?) depending on your audience.
Dick
bluestreak86001 wrote:
> In the recent digests there was a missing "K" reference. It is my
> understanding that "K" actually means two to the tenth power
which is
> 1024 in the decimal system, but is an approximation of ten to the
> third power in base ten.
<shrug> I don't know. The only time I ever seriously considered
powers
of two is in regard to the binary system typified by computers.
Before
computers came about, I'd bet few people gave much thought to 1 "k"
as
somehow _actually_ being 1,024 ... as in 1,024 bytes in a kilobyte,
or
"kb". Personally, I would have thought that "kilo" is something
that
just came about as part of the _metric_ system, which has been
around a
heck of a lot longer than computers and binary files. When I was
in
school, back when we used slide rules, and no one was even
imagining
pocket calculators and such, "kilo" was associated with just two
things
as far as I can recall -- kilogram, which is exactly 1,000 grams
(NOT
1,024 grams), and kilometer, which is exactly 1,000 meters (NOT
1,024
meters) ... so I'd say it's a pretty good bet that kilo never meant
1,024 ... and that notion is just some youngster in the computer
age
transferring his computer-ease over to other things.
Now, you mention (snipped stuff) the ease of digital; well, since
you
brought it up, let me go further off topic and express how stupid
most
Americans are to be so resistant to the metric system. What a
shame,
... really. And for newbies on this group, I _am_ a proud
American --
but I am math/science-minded, and it is idiotic to stick to an
awkward,
cumbersome, inefficient measurement system that we have, especially
with
ยทยทยท
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, Bill Velek <billvelek@a...> wrote:
most of the rest of the world using metric.
Cheers.
Bill Velek