Re: Types of numerals; bases in natlangs.

Herman Miller wrote:

> I understand the problem, but language doesn't always make sense. If
> you're making up your own language, you have the luxury of getting it
> right in the first place, but everyone else just has to learn the
> language the way it's used, with all of its idiosyncrasies. Saying that
> a kilobyte really always means 1,000 bytes and nothing else sounds like
> a foreigner criticising the illogical aspects of your native language.
> They may be right in some sense, but their own language most likely has
> things that are just as bad. And I shouldn't have got upset at the hard
> disk manufacturers, but I guess I felt like a foreigner was criticizing
> my native language and I got emotional about it.
Ahkay, and I suppose I thought the same when you said "A kilobyte is
never 1000 bytes".

 >But it's trivial to look at a
> number like 0x3000 and mentally convert it to "12K" (where "K" doesn't
> even mentally stand for "kilobytes", it's just the way it's said). In
> the back of my mind I know that "K" (always capitalized) stands for
> "kilobytes", but I don't think "kilobytes" any more than I think "big
> thousand" for "million". That's just the etymology of the word.
"K" is such a versatile word. It means "kilobyte", "kibibyte",
"kilometre", "kilometers an hour", "thousand", at least.

>> (BTW: When is "very recently"? It's been over six years since the IEC
>> created the binary prefixes, and I doubt that the confusion started on
>> that day; at any rate, six years is a long time, especially in computers.
>
>
> I don't know; six years seems like "very recently" to me, when you
> consider how long "kilobyte" has meant 1,024 bytes.
Well I think I exaggerated how long I think of the six years, but it's
certainly long enough that I don't consider it "very recently". And
AFAIK all that it did was standardise *new* words with old meanings, and
didn't redefine old words with new meanings. "Kilobyte" before and after
meant 1000 bytes; all that happened was new words were created to
unambiguously specify 1024 bytes and so forth. (I'd be happy to do the
same the other way round too, with an unambiguous word meaning 1000
bytes, but I think the only way to do that is to make a new word for
"byte" that only combines with decimal prefixes. Maybe "kiloctet" (etc.)
is suitable for that.)

> What I'm objecting to is the statement that "unlike what you have heard,
> a kilobyte and megabyte are really exactly 1000 and 1000000 units." As
> I've said, when you're dealing with RAM, a kilobyte is always 1,024
> bytes and a megabyte is always 1,048,576 bytes.
Indeed, and I think anyone who cares understands that. It's just that
it's confusing having disk-space measured in both decimal *or* binary
measurements, depending on the context.

(OTOH, a kilobit a second is always 1000 bits a second, and I belive a
kilobyte a second is also always 1000 bytes a second, but speeds are
usually measured in bits not bytes anyway.)

 >If the standardizers had come
> up with something less silly than "kibibyte" and "mebibyte" it might
> have caught on (why not "kilibyte" and "megibyte"?),
Well those particular suggestions I think are bad because "kilibyte" and
"megibyte" are likely to be pronounced the same as "kilobyte" and
"megabyte"---or at least I would do so. Perhaps that's an advantage, but
it looks like a spelling error to me. Probably that only demonstrates
your point ;)

>but as it is, it
> hasn't, and artificial attempts to change the language aren't always
> successful (think of all the attempts to add gender-neutral third person
> pronouns to English).
What, like "they" :)

--
Tristan.