bits and bytes

[Thing]

1 exabyte = 1.1529215 × 10^18 bytes

[Yoni]

http://yoni.valhallalegends.com/stuff/bytesize.txt

I wrote this 2 years ago for reference (file was dated 2002-06-21 on my HD).

[Thing]

That's why I'm saving up to be Jewish!  

[Yoni]

Btw, there's an extremely common misconception about unit prefixes.

The prefix "kilo" means 1000, "mega" means 1000000, etc. (10^n where n is in increments of 3).
Therefore, kilobyte = 1000 bytes, megabytes = 1000000 bytes, etc., even though most people think otherwise.

The correct prefixes are ones ending in "bi" (probably meaning "binary"). For instance, 1 kibibyte = 1024 bytes, 1 mebibyte = 1048576 bytes, etc. (2^n where n is in increments of 10).

BitTorrent for instance doesn't make this mistake (the download and upload speeds are given in "KiB/s", not "KB/s", at least in the version I have installed) but everything else does including Google (probably due to the popularity of the misconception):

http://www.google.com/search?q=1+petabyte+in+bytes
http://www.google.com/search?q=1+petameter+in+meters

[Adron]

Or, due to kilobyte being 1024 bytes for a very long time, until the committee decided to make a separate name for 1024 bytes...

[Thing]

Or, due to kilobyte being 1024 bytes for a very long time, until the committee decided to make a separate name for 1024 bytes...

That's the way I learned it in skool.

[Yoni]

Eh, "live in the now!"