• @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          22 years ago

          No the ‘da’ is universal for ‘×10’. In german for example it’s also Mikro and languages can translate their prefixes as they want, as long as 1 km means 1000 meters and 1 ng means 1×10^-9 grams it is right by the International System of Units.

  • ZILtoid1991
    link
    fedilink
    62 years ago

    I wait to the day the US rejects the metric completely, and invents a new system for Voltage measurement (proposed unit names: cell, shock, spark).

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      12 years ago

      IIRC the US already uses metric (technically). The imperial units are defined in terms of metric units.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        12 years ago

        We aren’t unitist when it comes to naming ammo. Half (ratio pulled from my ass) gets named based on US Customary units and half on Metric units. Most calibers get named in whatever unit sounds coolest. Seven point six two PRC (or any variation of the 7.62 verbalization) doesn’t have the same ring or implied power as three hundred PRC.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            12 years ago

            Which 9mm ammo?

            If the common 9mm cartridge, 9x19 Parabellum, were designed in the US back in 1901 it would be a .38 caliber.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              12 years ago

              No idea, man, I’m European, I have no idea about ammo. I said 9mm because it’s literally the only one I “know”.

  • Mubelotix
    link
    fedilink
    152 years ago

    This is wrong. Some identifiers should start with a lowercase letter (like kilo)

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      72 years ago

      Correct, except in Computing, there the Kilo, Mega, Giga …are in uppercase, to differentiate it from the decimal system as it is based on powers of 2. 1 km is 1000 meters but 1 Kb is 1024 bytes

      • Mubelotix
        link
        fedilink
        20
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        That is no correct. You are talking about kibi, mebi and gibi. The corresponding identifiers are Ki, Mi and Gi, not K M and G. K would mean Kelvin, M is 10⁶, G is 10⁹

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          222 years ago

          You’re both right, and that’s the problem.

          And it only gets more complicated from there.

          In storage 1GB is 1000MB and 1MB is 1000KB and 1KB is 1000 bytes… This is almost exclusive to hard drives. The rest of the industry uses what is now known as KiB, MiB and GiB, or kebibytes, mebibytes, and gibibytes. 1GiB is 1024MiB, and 1MiB is 1024KiB, and 1KiB is 1024 bytes.

          If you’re not talking about disk storage, then 1MB is 1MiB (1MB can be either 1024KB or 1000KB depending on context). The terms GiB/MiB/KiB were created because of the confusion between 1024 and 1000 for each jump in size, it’s a relatively new term created to increase clarity between the various definitions, where MiB will always be the 1024 KiB version, and MB can be either; in this way, HDD manufacturers don’t need to change anything that they are doing, and the industry can have a pure term, free of the confusion created by the disk drive industry.

          To bake your brain even more, datacom uses 1000 instead of 1024 for increments, so 1Kbps is 1000bits/s and 1Mbps is 1000Kbits/s. So data transfer, link speeds and throughputs are generally going by the 10base numbering instead of the powers of 2.

          The whole thing is a mess, and everyone wants to be the “will acktually” person to correct people about MB vs MiB and none of it actually matters, it’s an entirely stupid situation created because the data storage jerks wanted to be able to put a slightly bigger number on their box to say how much capacity their drives had by just omitting the extra 24 bytes per KB, and extra 24 KB per MB, etc. So their product would look like it’s bigger than it is.

          Arguing about it is pointless.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            32 years ago

            It is not the result of inflating the data, but the consequence of the base 2 (binary system). 2^2 =4 2^3 = 8 …16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 (1Kb), 2048, 4096, 8192, …

            I know of the new designations, but they are in my opinion unnecessary. It is true that K is the abbreviation for Kelvin, but in computing, if you don’t use a liquid-cooled super game computer, it’s clear to anyone that Kb has nothing to do with temperature.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              62 years ago

              The power of 2 version 2^10 or 1024, is indeed a result of the binary system, and since that’s how computers work, that’s what everyone used, but by listing a 1 billion byte disk as “1GB” instead of its actual, measured quantity, which, in gibibytes, I billion bytes is actually 953.67 MiB, companies can artificially inflate the perceived size of a disk, instead of buying a 953 MB disk, you’re buying a 1GB disk and only getting 953 MiB as a result.

              It makes the disk look larger than it is on paper and almost every newcomer to technology has questioned this at some point, and been disappointed that the x GB disk is nontrivially smaller than they expected.

              It’s a technicality that is disengenious, and creates confusion. All the disk makers had to do was conform to the same number of bytes per kB, and kBs per MB… Etc, that literally everyone else was using, but they wanted to deceive people about it, I guess. Make their marketing look better than the competition… There’s a few disk makers out there that are more or less reversing the trend, but the damage is done. It’s why the MiB and GiB (etc) terms even exist.

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                22 years ago

                K being 1024 only makes sense for RAM and ROM which are addressed with a particular number of address lines where the addressable size is 2^(number of address bits). Flash memory, and rotating media have entirely different addressing structures so normal SI units work bettor for them, and just about everything else.

  • 001100 010010
    link
    fedilink
    English
    8
    edit-2
    2 years ago

    As an American, I upvoted.

    Edit: Wait, why am I awake at 5am?

  • MrMobius
    link
    fedilink
    English
    102 years ago

    Damn, I did 2 years of physics studies but I never heard about atto and exa. Though I did spend a lot of time to try to memorise the other ones.

    • Pitri
      link
      fedilink
      English
      142 years ago

      Just wait until you hear about zetta (10^21) and yotta (10^24) and their inverses zepto (10^-21) and yocto (10^-24). :D

      Huh, neat! When fact-checking my statement, I just learned that there are even two more prefixes on each side of the scale: ronna (10^27), quenna (10^30), ronto (10^-27) and quecto (10^-30). They got added last year.

  • Dizzy Devil Ducky
    link
    fedilink
    English
    442 years ago

    God, I wish we used this here. It is such a better system than our system of potholes being measured in washing machines in some parts of the country.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      82 years ago

      Me head has a dent the size of two small pollocks, or a couple elderly bonobo tits, if you like.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      12 years ago

      We do use it where necessary; in science, engineering and the military, for example. Some of our imperial units suck, but others, like pounds and feet and inches are superior because they are more intuitive. The reality is that it’s a non-issue for most people and because of that we will almost always have some version of a mixed system, as do most of the other Anglophone countries.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        12 years ago

        What? How is feet and pounds more intuitive? To me metric is more intuitive and imperials are whole another language, because I only learnt metric in school and only remember very few things in imperial (such as some dimensions on specific parts of bicycles).

        Converting yards to inches in your head is near damn impossible, but you don’t even need to count to know 5.25km is 5250m or 525000cm

  • wander1236
    link
    fedilink
    English
    252 years ago

    I don’t think I’ve ever seen thousands separators in decimals

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      12 years ago

      Where are you from if I may ask? As far as I’m aware they are are pretty common, I know only of India which does them differently and maybe US / Canada? Although I think the point and the comma are switched in some countries, so a thousand Euros would be 1.000,00€

      • wander1236
        link
        fedilink
        52 years ago

        I’m from the US, but I’m not talking about thousands separators in the whole number. I guess a better word would be thousandths separators.

        • @[email protected]
          link
          fedilink
          English
          4
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          This just made me think, why haven’t those damn commie Europeans with their fancy metric system come up with a better system for measuring time yet?

          People like to talk a lot of shit about how subjective the definitions for an inch or a mile are, but I never hear complaints about how a second or an hour are antiquated and based on things that only make sense from an Earth-centric point of view.

          I just feel like someone be mad at Americans for still using hours (ugh, trivially decided on the amount of time it takes the Earth to rotate) and not something like the amount of time it takes for 1 kilogram of water to decay via natural radiation when under a vacuum.

          By the way, before downvoting, this post is heavy with /s in case it wasn’t obvious.

          Edit: I just looked up the formal definition of a second and it is “the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom”.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            6
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            It’s all so arbitrary is funny. People get so passionate, but then I’ll bring up,“Why aren’t we using Swatch Time?” Or, why don’t we have 13 months of exactly 28 days (With a bonus vacation day or two)?

            They’ll usually fall back on what people are used to or tradition or something that just supports staying on imperial measurements. To be clear, I don’t give a shit what measurement system is used. It’s not like it takes a big brain to figure out what is going on when you travel.

          • @[email protected]
            link
            fedilink
            English
            3
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            Measures weren’t standard before the french revolution, so picking something and getting buy-in was easy. Time keeping was well established, and the French moved to a metric calendar, and proposals for metric time were made, but all were eventually rejected.

            • @[email protected]
              link
              fedilink
              English
              22 years ago

              Honestly, that explains perfectly why America will never likely switch to the metric system.

              • @[email protected]
                link
                fedilink
                English
                32 years ago

                It will happen because there is so much traction on metric, but it will be slow and both systems will be marked for a long time.