On Fri, 5 Jan 2001, Philipp Schulte wrote: > On Fri, Jan 05, 2001 at 10:44:34AM +0100, Michal F. Hanula wrote: > > > On Fri, Jan 05, 2001 at 10:25:10AM +0100, Sebastiaan wrote: > > > On Fri, 5 Jan 2001, Philipp Schulte wrote: > > > > > KB = Kelvin Byte > > > > > > IIRC `K' as in KB means 1024 (2^10), while `k' as in kB (or kg, or almost > > anything else) means 1000 (10^3). Still not confused? > > That's true and this is well defined in the SI. > But does that mean, we have to distinguish between mb, Mb, mB and MB? > Phil
I think we have to. Reading reports in ordinary magazines about DSL speeds, they are mixing up bits and bytes. Sometimes I can not figure out if they mean Megabit or MegaByte. 'The connection has an average speed of 0.8mb per second, so per you can download with 6mb per minute. This is much more faster than your 56KBS modem!!!' When you read this, do you think the author knows what he is writing about? If we know what we are talking about, case sensitive does not matter. Better is to define first what you mean. Then you can use what you want. Even better is when we all use the same convention. For those who only use the units for computers, do not care much about MB or mB or Kb, but (partly) scientists think directly 'KB: Hey, that's a K, thats Kelvin, and the B, that are Bytes.' Just curious: when you write an article in which you use MegaBytes and MegaBits a lot, how do you distinguish between them? Greetz, Sebastiaan
