How many KB's are in a GB??



  • It's amazing what people come up with...

    http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061109164339AAaDG8X

     

     



  • I quote davco:

    a KB is 1000 bytes
    a GB is 1,000,000 bytes

    therefore 1000KB = 1GB

     

    Now can anyone send me the source code for that? 

     

    One of the problems users face is that they are not used to dealing in powers of 2, instead they round. However most users don't even know that so they assume the rounded numbers ARE the correct numbers. I just never knew that someone start a form of mis-information about it.



  • That's simply amazing.  Reminds me of the computer experts that came in to buy a computer from me when I worked at Best Buy.

    Customer:  "I need at least 80 GB of memory."

    Me:  "Yeah, me too.  Come back in 15 years."

    Good find.


     



  • @dlikhten said:

    One of the problems users face is that they are not used to dealing in powers of 2, instead they round. However most users don't even know that so they assume the rounded numbers ARE the correct numbers. I just never knew that someone start a form of mis-information about it.

    Well it's not just that -- there are some cases where the rounded numbers are what they actually mean.  DVD capacity, for example, is listed as 4.7 GB, and is roughly equal to 4,700,000,000 bytes of storage (not 4.7 * 2^30, which is over 5 billion).  This can get you in trouble if you mouse over a directory to get it's size in windows and it reads 4.6 GB -- this will actually translate to the larger number, and wont fit on a DVD.

    To further confuse things, they technically are supposed to use kB, MB, GB for the decimal versions, and kiB (kibibyte), MiB (mebibyte), GiB (Gibibyte) for the binary versions.  But nobody actually seems to do this.



  • "Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
    bit (b)
    1 byte (B) = 8 bits
    1 Kilobyte (K / KB) = 10^3 bytes = 1,000 bytes
    1 Megabyte (M / MB) = 10^6 bytes = 1,000,000 bytes
    1 Gigabyte (G / GB) = 10^9 bytes = 1,000,000,000 bytes
    1 Terabyte (T / TB) = 10^12 bytes = 1,000,000,000,000 byte
    1 Megabyte = 1,024,000 bytes."

    How the hell does that add up? Last time I checked, 1,000,000 != 1,024,000.
     



  • @freelancer said:

    "Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
    bit (b)
    1 byte (B) = 8 bits
    1 Kilobyte (K / KB) = 10^3 bytes = 1,000 bytes
    1 Megabyte (M / MB) = 10^6 bytes = 1,000,000 bytes
    1 Gigabyte (G / GB) = 10^9 bytes = 1,000,000,000 bytes
    1 Terabyte (T / TB) = 10^12 bytes = 1,000,000,000,000 byte
    1 Megabyte = 1,024,000 bytes."

    How the hell does that add up? Last time I checked, 1,000,000 != 1,024,000.

    I think you should check in Excel, just to be sure.



  • @freelancer said:

    "Best Answer - Chosen by Voters
    bit (b)
    1 byte (B) = 8 bits
    1 Kilobyte (K / KB) = 10^3 bytes = 1,000 bytes
    1 Megabyte (M / MB) = 10^6 bytes = 1,000,000 bytes
    1 Gigabyte (G / GB) = 10^9 bytes = 1,000,000,000 bytes
    1 Terabyte (T / TB) = 10^12 bytes = 1,000,000,000,000 byte
    1 Megabyte = 1,024,000 bytes."

    How the hell does that add up? Last time I checked, 1,000,000 != 1,024,000.
     

    I'll show you how he did it.  It reminds me of "Plz send me teh codez" logic:

    1 KB = 1024 bytes.

    1 MB = 1,000 KB

    1 MB = 1,024,000 bytes

    1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes so

    1,000,000 = 1,024,000

    QED 


     

    While we're at it, it should really be 1,048,576 




  • >To further confuse things, they technically are supposed to use kB, MB, GB for the decimal versions, and kiB (kibibyte), MiB (mebibyte), GiB (Gibibyte) for the binary versions.  But nobody actually seems to do this.

     
    GNOME does. 



  • @shadowman said:

    To further confuse things, they technically are supposed to use kB, MB, GB for the decimal versions, and kiB (kibibyte), MiB (mebibyte), GiB (Gibibyte) for the binary versions.  But nobody actually seems to do this.

     

    As I've said before, there's no way to actually say "gibibyte" without sounding like a fuckin' tool.

     



  • @emurphy said:

    As I've said before, there's no way to actually say "gibibyte" without sounding like a fuckin' tool.


    Very correct. I can't say it without laughing.



  • The correct answer:

    It depends on who you ask. 



  • @shadowman said:

    To further confuse things, they technically are supposed to use kB, MB, GB for the decimal versions, and kiB (kibibyte), MiB (mebibyte), GiB (Gibibyte) for the binary versions.  But nobody actually seems to do this.

    Who says people are "supposed" to? Answer: some irrelevant committee that nobody gives a damn about. If it hadn't got posted on slashdot, nobody would even know their gibbering existed. Why are you paying the least bit of attention to these clowns?



  • @garyman99 said:

    That's simply amazing.  Reminds me of the computer experts that came in to buy a computer from me when I worked at Best Buy.

    Customer:  "I need at least 80 GB of memory."

    Me:  "Yeah, me too.  Come back in 15 years."

    Good find.



    That's a common error.  People fail to differentiate between RAM and hard drive space.  There's not much call for being a dick about it.  If you're really that much of a misanthrope, at least be smart about it: sell the customer more than they need, and enjoy the extra commission.



  • @asuffield said:

    @shadowman said:

    To further confuse things, they technically are supposed to use kB, MB, GB for the decimal versions, and kiB (kibibyte), MiB (mebibyte), GiB (Gibibyte) for the binary versions.  But nobody actually seems to do this.

    Who says people are "supposed" to? Answer: some irrelevant committee that nobody gives a damn about. If it hadn't got posted on slashdot, nobody would even know their gibbering existed. Why are you paying the least bit of attention to these clowns?

     Maybe because it would reduce the confusion about how many KBs are one GB.

    TRWTF is that somewhen someone thought "It would be brilliant to use powers of two, but instead of using new prefixes I will just use the decimal ones and redefine them for me!"

    Wouldn't it be fun if we had 1GJ = 1205KJ, 1Gm = 1098Km and 1GW = 981.64444.. KW? Oh wait.. we could just use the imperial system instead.



     



  • Sorry to spoil the fun here, but please scroll down a bit at that page. There are actually a lot of answers that got it right. And the weren't chosen as the "best answer" only because for that whole question ONLY ONE GUY actually voted. And that single vote... was wrong...



  • @asuffield said:

    @shadowman said:

    To further confuse things, they technically are supposed to use kB, MB, GB for the decimal versions, and kiB (kibibyte), MiB (mebibyte), GiB (Gibibyte) for the binary versions.  But nobody actually seems to do this.

    Who says people are "supposed" to? Answer: some irrelevant committee that nobody gives a damn about. If it hadn't got posted on slashdot, nobody would even know their gibbering existed. Why are you paying the least bit of attention to these clowns?

    Note that it's "KiB" not "kiB" because, obviously, in the interests of standardising, they've "corrected" the defective k prefix. And of course, people are taking notice and using the new prefixes. The funniest but saddest case is of course Wikipedia where you get to watch people reverting the changes back and forth from k/M/G to Ki/Mi/Gi.

    Something that is probably less apparent to anyone who's spent a long time in IT is that terms like "killer bite" and "terror bite" probably sound just as ridiculous to non-technical folk as "kibby bite" and "mebbe bite" do to us now. IT is full of silly-sounding words but we can but accept them. I resisted saying "Gooey" for years, insisting it was "G. U. I." but my resistance was futile. I still say GIF with a hard G and always will. To do otherwise is silly. (Compuserve's Giraffic Interchange Format; that's the real reason for Apple calling their browser Safari.)



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Note that it's "KiB" not "kiB" because, obviously, in the interests of standardising, they've "corrected" the defective k prefix. And of course, people are taking notice and using the new prefixes.

    For any idea, no matter how stupid, you can find somebody doing it. Only a handful of fringe nutters are wasting time on this inanity. It solves no real-world problems. 



  • @asuffield said:

    Only a handful of fringe nutters are wasting time on this inanity.

    It warms my heart to know that the Linux kernel has fringe nutters working on it.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    I resisted saying "Gooey" for years, insisting it was "G. U. I." but my resistance was futile.

    It really is pronounced G.U.I. though. How is your resistance futile? It's not like the pronunciation police will go after you.

    The binary prefixes are an utter joke. They were made so that hard drive manufacturers had an excuse to lie about the actual storage capacity of their disks.



  • @aythun said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:
    I resisted saying "Gooey" for years, insisting it was "G. U. I." but my resistance was futile.

    It really is pronounced G.U.I. though. How is your resistance futile? It's not like the pronunciation police will go after you.

    As far as I was aware, everyone else pronounces "GUI" as "gooey". I hated this, but gave in, even if to non-technical people it sounds completely ridiculous.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    @asuffield said:
    Only a handful of fringe nutters are wasting time on this inanity.

    It warms my heart to know that the Linux kernel has fringe nutters working on it.

    All kinds of idiots submit patches and drivers. Nobody wastes time cleaning up the spelling and syntax of debugging messages, comments, and documentation. There are plenty of better things to do. The word 'fuck' appears in the kernel more frequently than that nonsense.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    @aythun said:
    @Daniel Beardsmore said:
    I resisted saying "Gooey" for years, insisting it was "G. U. I." but my resistance was futile.

    It really is pronounced G.U.I. though. How is your resistance futile? It's not like the pronunciation police will go after you.

    As far as I was aware, everyone else pronounces "GUI" as "gooey". I hated this, but gave in, even if to non-technical people it sounds completely ridiculous.

    I find this a useful property, because it reminds you what a ridiculous notion the term embodies. For some reason, we declare certain kinds of colours and shapes to be "graphical" and certain other kinds of shapes to be "not graphical", with no apparent reason or logic behind this, and with no two people ever agreeing on the specifics of what it means. Any place this term appears, you should be thinking "this person is being hopelessly vague and probably hasn't thought about what they're saying". It carries no useful information content.

    The only non-graphical output mechanism on your computer is the speakers.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    I resisted saying "Gooey" for years, insisting it was "G. U. I." but my resistance was futile. I still say GIF with a hard G and always will. To do otherwise is silly. (Compuserve's Giraffic Interchange Format; that's the real reason for Apple calling their browser Safari.)



    Same here.  I also refuse to pronounce SQL as sequel.



  • @Cap'n Steve said:

    Same here.  I also refuse to pronounce SQL as sequel.

    Me too. I wonder who came up with such a pronunciation.
    I pronounce GUI as gooy, though. It sounds funny. 8=]

    On a related note, how do you pronounce 'geek' (I'm not a native speaker)? I always thought it was with /dʒ/, but I'm unsure.



  • The binary/decimal prefixes business is confusing.



    How it used to be:

    1 kB = 1024 B

    1 MB = 1024 kB

    1 GB = 1024 MB

    etc



    This arose in part because the design of memory chips was commonly conducive to capacities in powers of two.



    How the hard-drive manufacturing liars did things:

    1 kB = 1000 B

    1 MB = 1000 kB

    1 GB = 1000 MB

    etc



    Someone then decided to let the liars become truthful, by inventing

    1 kiB = 1024 B

    1 MiB = 1024 kiB

    1 GiB = 1024 MiB

    etc



    also, to cause further confusion, I believe floppy disks (and maybe some of the naughty hard drive manufacturers) use:

    1 kB = 1024 B

    1 MB = 1000 KB



    So the answer to the question "How many KB's are in a GB??" can be any of several things:



    1,000,000

    1,024,000

    1,048,576

    ~60,000,000 (KeyBoards in Great Britain :-P )



  • And you aren't counting kilobits and megaWords yet!



  • Megavolt FTW!



  • @Cap'n Steve said:

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    I resisted saying "Gooey" for years, insisting it was "G. U. I." but my resistance was futile. I still say GIF with a hard G and always will. To do otherwise is silly. (Compuserve's Giraffic Interchange Format; that's the real reason for Apple calling their browser Safari.)



    Same here. I also refuse to pronounce SQL as sequel.

     Yeah i resisted for ages but nearly everyone i meet calls it sequel and being a total follower just jumped on the bandwagon
     



  • Pronouncing "SQL" as "sequel" was a pet hate of mine that eventually got dulled in to reluctant acceptance because of its common use.  I still don't tend to use it myself but it doesn't make my blood boil any more.



  • @Spectre said:

    On a related note, how do you pronounce 'geek' (I'm not a native speaker)? I always thought it was with /dʒ/, but I'm unsure.

    With a hard g, like goatse.



  • @Spectre said:

    On a related note, how do you pronounce 'geek' (I'm not a native speaker)? I always thought it was with /dʒ/, but I'm unsure.

     

    So you make it sound like "jeep"? 

    Beware of Geeks bearing GIFs! (=Greeks bearing gifts) 



  • @TDC said:

    TRWTF is that somewhen someone thought "It would be brilliant to use powers of two, but instead of using new prefixes I will just use the decimal ones and redefine them for me!"

    k is 1000

    K is 1024

    So when it started it was a new prefix! (ref M=1000000 vs m=0.001 so case does matter)

    It all went wrong when computers got more than 1MB, although it is still less than 5% difference. TB vs TiB is still less than 10% difference.


     



  • @Zemm said:

    @Spectre said:

    On a related note, how do you pronounce 'geek' (I'm not a native speaker)? I always thought it was with /dʒ/, but I'm unsure.

     

    So you make it sound like "jeep"? 

    Only if "k" is pronouced like "p" in his country, which is conceivable. That would make KB "pig-a-bytes" (to go with jigga-bytes), but the k == p may only apply to terminal k's.



  • @asuffield said:

    @shadowman said:

    To further confuse things, they technically are supposed to use kB, MB, GB for the decimal versions, and kiB (kibibyte), MiB (mebibyte), GiB (Gibibyte) for the binary versions.  But nobody actually seems to do this.

    Who says people are "supposed" to? Answer: some irrelevant committee that nobody gives a damn about. If it hadn't got posted on slashdot, nobody would even know their gibbering existed. Why are you paying the least bit of attention to these clowns?

    LOL!  I don't even read slashdot, but good point.  Gibibyte does sound a lot like 'gibberish'
     



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    @Zemm said:
     

    So you make it sound like "jeep"? 

    Only if "k" is pronouced like "p" in his country, which is conceivable.

    Heh. 

    @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    That would make KB "pig-a-bytes" (to go with jigga-bytes)

    One point twenty-one jiggawatts!!?! How am I going to generate that sort of power!?!
     



  • @Zemm said:

    It all went wrong when computers got more than 1MB

    And who could've thought that would EVER happen :)
     



  • @Spectre said:

    @Cap'n Steve said:
    Same here. I also refuse to pronounce SQL as sequel.

    Me too. I wonder who came up with such a pronunciation.
    I pronounce GUI as gooy, though. It sounds funny. 8=]

    On a related note, how do you pronounce 'geek' (I'm not a native speaker)? I always thought it was with /dʒ/, but I'm unsure.

    or how do you pronounce WYSIWYG .. Like in I hate WYSIWYG ?


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Nelle said:

    @Spectre said:
    @Cap'n Steve said:
    Same here. I also refuse to pronounce SQL as sequel.

    Me too. I wonder who came up with such a pronunciation.
    I pronounce GUI as gooy, though. It sounds funny. 8=]

    On a related note, how do you pronounce 'geek' (I'm not a native speaker)? I always thought it was with /dʒ/, but I'm unsure.

    or how do you pronounce WYSIWYG .. Like in I hate WYSIWYG ?

    Usual pronunciation that I've heard is 'wizzy wig'


  • @Nelle said:

    or how do you pronounce WYSIWYG .. Like in I hate WYSIWYG ?

    Like "wizzy-wig", although Wikipedia offers two similar pronunciations and my knowledge of IPA is very weak.



  • @Nelle said:

    @Spectre said:
    @Cap'n Steve said:
    Same here. I also refuse to pronounce SQL as sequel.

    Me too. I wonder who came up with such a pronunciation.
    I pronounce GUI as gooy, though. It sounds funny. 8=]

    On a related note, how do you pronounce 'geek' (I'm not a native speaker)? I always thought it was with /dʒ/, but I'm unsure.

    or how do you pronounce WYSIWYG .. Like in I hate WYSIWYG ?

    1. Wizzywig. But ugh.

    2. Jeek! Jeek! (note to the non-native speaker: jeek is wrong.)

    3. And I declare "sequel" as factually wrong, because it's an actual word, and SQL doesn't have any relaiton to "sequels" unless you think SQL consists of ORDER BY and DECLARE CURSOR. But that's just nuttering.



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    Only if "k" is pronouced like "p" in his country, which is conceivable.

    Yep, and 'milk' is pronunced like 'beep'.

    Just kidding.



  • @dhromed said:

    1. Wizzywig. But ugh.

    Another good one, in that it reminds you that this idea is not really a very nice idea.

     

    3. And I declare "sequel" as factually wrong, because it's an actual word, and SQL doesn't have any relaiton to "sequels" unless you think SQL consists of ORDER BY and DECLARE CURSOR. But that's just nuttering.

    I believe "Sequel" is actually the product name of one of the old SQL implementations, although I can't remember what happened to it.



  • @emurphy said:

    As I've said before, there's no way to actually say "gibibyte" without sounding like a fuckin' tool.

    True, which is why I usually call them "gibs", e.g. "That machine has a gib of RAM and 500 gibs of disc."  It's analogous to shortening gigabytes to "gigs".

     


     



  • @Cap'n Steve said:


    Same here.  I also refuse to pronounce SQL as sequel.

    An ex-colleague of mine pronounced it 'squirrel'.  He had an elaborate backstory for this, where data values were considered 'nuts' and the squirrel code would go out foraging for the nuts and bring it back for you...

    I still have to consciously stop myself from saying 'squirrel' when talking to the suits...



  • @Critter said:

    @emurphy said:

    As I've said before, there's no way to actually say "gibibyte" without sounding like a fuckin' tool.

    True, which is why I usually call them "gibs", e.g. "That machine has a gib of RAM and 500 gibs of disc."  It's analogous to shortening gigabytes to "gigs".

     But if you're talking RAM, it's going to be a 'gig', not a 'gib'.  Only disk space comes in 'gibs'.



  • @Cap'n Steve said:


    Same here.  I also refuse to pronounce SQL as sequel.

    I think SEQUEL was the original language that was developed, but isn't used anymore. IBM seems familiar here, possibly them that developed it? 

    SQL is the language today, a different entity. So I'm in agreement with you, keep on saying SQL!



  • @Crispy Duck said:

    RAM, it's going to be a 'gig', not a 'gib'.  Only disk space comes in 'gibs'.

    I may have that wardsback... but you know what I mean.  The binary ones are the only 'proper' ones, and RAM size will always be based on powers of two.  Due to the recent politically-correct re-branding of certain prefixes, it would be 1 gib of RAM and 500 gigs of disk.

    I'm tired, that's my excuse.



  • @shadowman said:

    @dlikhten said:

    One of the problems users face is that they are not used to dealing in powers of 2, instead they round. However most users don't even know that so they assume the rounded numbers ARE the correct numbers. I just never knew that someone start a form of mis-information about it.

    Well it's not just that -- there are some cases where the rounded numbers are what they actually mean.  DVD capacity, for example, is listed as 4.7 GB, and is roughly equal to 4,700,000,000 bytes of storage (not 4.7 * 2^30, which is over 5 billion).  This can get you in trouble if you mouse over a directory to get it's size in windows and it reads 4.6 GB -- this will actually translate to the larger number, and wont fit on a DVD.

    To further confuse things, they technically are supposed to use kB, MB, GB for the decimal versions, and kiB (kibibyte), MiB (mebibyte), GiB (Gibibyte) for the binary versions.  But nobody actually seems to do this.

     

    Exactly.

     

    They use whatever number makes the capacity seem bigger. The use the confusion between Gigabytes Gigabits and etc... to confuse ANYONE because there is no standard. Nobody can sue because GB and GB can mean 2 different things. We need a real standard. and the thing is, most people don't WANT to know the details. My wife does not care what bytes are nor does she want to know what bits are, its just "an extra headake" for most people. So the confusion prevails.

     

    Notice how ISPs give you numbers in BITS for internet speed because in bits things seem bigger. Not to mention that they add up/down. 56k modems, thats 7kilobytes speed, thats 4 down 3 up or 5/2, most people didn't realize that the numbers were right in front of them.
     



  • @merreborn said:

    @garyman99 said:

    That's simply amazing.  Reminds me of the computer experts that came in to buy a computer from me when I worked at Best Buy.

    Customer:  "I need at least 80 GB of memory."

    Me:  "Yeah, me too.  Come back in 15 years."

    Good find.



    That's a common error.  People fail to differentiate between RAM and hard drive space.  There's not much call for being a dick about it.  If you're really that much of a misanthrope, at least be smart about it: sell the customer more than they need, and enjoy the extra commission.

     

    Best buy don't give commisions... 



  • @Daniel Beardsmore said:

    I resisted saying "Gooey" for years, insisting it was "G. U. I." but my resistance was futile. I still say GIF with a hard G and always will. To do otherwise is silly. (Compuserve's Giraffic Interchange Format; that's the real reason for Apple calling their browser Safari.)

    Actually, I think Gooey is the best pronounciation for that term.  Think about it, a user interface is just like some sort of goo substance.  You have to carefully place all the parts, using tools that sometimes try to wreck your carefully placed layout.  If you just click in the wrong spot some tools will cause it to spill over.  Even if you get it right in development, different browsers might smear the thing all over the screen.  At the end of the day, you might have something that stands on its own until some unforseen css quirk causes it to implode in a sticky mess.  Yes, Gooey is the right pronounciation.


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