Re: Types of numerals; bases in natlangs.

veritosproject@gmail.com wrote:
> I'm not saying it's logical, or that it's halfway usable.  (I use them
> like you said.)  But Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MiB) says
> otherwise.
I should have said that in all the years I've been programming, I've
_never_ heard anyone use "kilobyte" to mean 1000 bytes. Never. Maybe
left-handed Lithuanians use it that way; I don't know. But the phony
"confusion" issue is never a problem with "kilobyte" in practice (and
never would have been an issue with "megabyte" if not for those *!$(#
hard disk manufacturers).

Wikipedia is a great resource, but Wikipedia authors don't own the
language. Vague claims about using "kilobyte" to mean 1000 bytes really
ought to have some documentation behind them if they want to be believed
(an example of actual usage from a published source). I'll continue to
use "kilobyte" and "megabyte" to indicate 1,024 and 1,048,576 bytes
respectively, which until very recently was the only correct usage, and
ignore the pedantic prescriptivists. In some cases, language change
really can be detrimental.

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