> For the SI-Definitions Mega equals to 10^6. Mega is only a prefix and
> is completely independent from the unit its used with. In that sense
> this is perfectly correct.

Yes, this all started when some ignorant computer people thought that 1024 is 'nearly' 1000 (kilo) and therefore began to call 1024
byte a kilo byte. Not only that these both notations are meanwhile departing more and more (starting with 2,4% deviation for kilo,
then 4,8% for Mega, 7,3% for Giga and already 10% for Tera byte) there where even mixed notations (floppy size)!

What also confuses is that when the same number of bytes is indicated with different prefixes in base 2 notation the numbers can
look very different. For example, 1012 Mega byte would not be 1.012 Giga byte but only 0,988! That's ridiculous!

> Also you should notice: science and computer stuff is getting closer
> all time. It's getting more dangerous to confuse the binary and
> non-binary prefixes even for skilled people. So its really useful and
> needed to have a clean definition.
> Computer-only people may find this useless, but there is a world
> outside of computers. And there are a lot of people who *need* to work
> with that machines even if they're not programmers.

Yes, I fully agree.

Jürgen Hestermann.
Received on Tue Mar 7 20:28:23 2006