Re: Phone lines

[CUTjefbla@bconnex.net (Jeff Blakeney)]

On Fri, 02 Mar 2001 02:26:35 GMT, "Simon Biber"
<simon@basilisk2.cjb.net> wrote:

>You're right, kb _correctly_ means kilobits. Exactly 1000 bits.
>
>But it was clear that the original poster assumed he could get 27 kibibytes
>per second out of his "27 kb/sec" modem.
>
>All this confusion could be avoided if people stuck to the case-sensitive
>NIST/IEC approved forms:
>
>b is bits, B is bytes.
>k (kilo) is 10^3=1000, M (mega) is 10^6=1000000, G (giga) is
>10^9=1000000000, etc.
>Ki (kibi) is 2^10=1024, Mi (mebi) is 2^20=1048576, Gi (gibi) is
>2^30=1073741824, etc.

Well, I too have always used b to mean bits and B to mean bytes but I
still use K, M and G when referring to large numbers of bits or bytes.
I've been doing this for 20 years and don't see myself stopping any
time soon.  When we are talking about RAM, ROM or disk storage, I've
always felt that K = 1024 was implied.

After all, when I say I have a 540 MB drive on my IIgs, I'm actually
saying the words "I have a five hundred and forty megabyte drive on my
IIgs".  I'm certainly not going to say "I have a five hundread and
forty mebibyte drive on my IIgs" as that just sounds silly and will
confuse the heck out of 99% or more of the people I say it too.  :-)

By the way, when it comes to modems, I usually prefer to write their
speeds in bps as in 9600 bps or 57600 bps rather than confuse people
by using 57.6 kbps.  Seeing as there is no difference in the number of
characters I have to type in the case of modern modem speeds, I don't
see any reason to do any division.  :-)

--
 Jeff Blakeney - Dean of the Apple II Unversity on A2Central.com