KB, MB, GB, and TB are all part of the metric system. What empirical measurements should we Free™️ Americans use for computer memory?
KB, MB, GB, and TB are all part of the metric system. What empirical measurements should we Free™️ Americans use for computer memory?
How about feet of IBM punch cards?
A 1 foot tall stack holds 1,647,360 bits of data if all 80 columns are used. If only 72 columns are used for data then it's 1,482,624 bits of data and the remaining columns can be used to number each card so they can be put back in order after the stack is dropped.
bit, Nibble, Byte, Word, doubleword, longword, quadword, double-quadword, verylongword, halfword
They check all Imperial criteria:
- confusing names
- some used only in some systems
- size depends on where you are
- some may overlap
- doesn't manage to cover all the possible needs, but do you really need more than 64 bits?
- would probably cause you to crash a rocket
1 tweet = 140 bytes
1 (printed) page = 60 lines of 60 characters = 3600 bytes
1 moa (minute of audio in 128000 bps mp3) = 960000 bytes
1 mov (minute of video) = typically around 30MB but varies by resolution and encoding, like ounces vs troy ounces vs apothecary ounces.
1 loc (library of congress, used for measuring hard drive capacity) = around 10TB depending on jurisdiction.
KiB, MiB, GiB etc are more clear. It makes a big difference especially 1TB vs 1TiB.
The American way would probably be still using the units you listed but still meaning 1024, just to be confusing.
Either that or maybe something that uses physical measurement of a hard-drive (or CD?) using length. Like that new game is 24.0854 inches of data (maybe it could be 1.467 miles of CD?).
Most people would use "word", "half-word", "quarter-word" etc, but the Anglophiles insist on "tuppit", "ternary piece", "span" and "chunk" (that's 5 bits, or 12 old bits).
A milebyte is 5280 bytes
Probably something based on 1/6 th of a byte that originates form old IBM systems that used 6 bits per byte that was then later never changed into 8 bit systems so you now have to convert between 6 bit and 8 bit systems and then fractions, gotta get those good fractions. So they'd say something like my SSD is 170⅔ GB for a 128GB drive
May I suggest OB for Ounce Byte, or 28.35 Byte, one 16th of a PB PoundByte which is 453,6 Bytes.
These measures are both practical as freedom units because it's base is close to 28, which is clearly more suitable than 32 as a freedom unit base number, and the Pound Byte can be easily halved 4 times to make an Ounce Byte. Which makes it about as convenient as other freedom units.1 bible = 69 porn clips = 420 feet (unrelated to the other measurement)
Imperial, obviously: F(reedom)T(ons) and fractions thereof. 1FT is the amount of data that it takes to store the entire King James edition of the New Testament and the Bill of Rights as a PDF.
A bit in Freedom units is 2 metric bits because it wouldn't be freedom units without unnecessary confusion. A metric bit is equivalent to a freedom unit lil'bit, because it's smaller than a bit. A bite (no relation to a byte) is 25 lil'bits because saying 25 ones and zeros outload is a mouthful. A hot dog is 4.2 bites or 105 lil'bits because that's how many bites it takes me to eat a hot dog. A hamburger is 6.4 bites because it takes more bites to eat. A double with cheese is 7.8 bites. A whole hog is 233 hot dogs. A stampede is 23146 hamburgers.
Those are units of discrete quantity, so couple, dozen, score, gross, grand, etc.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-numerical_words_for_quantities
As all your other measurements are based on the subjective measures of random people, I'd suggest using the amount of digits of pi a senior can remember in the time a new school shooting happens as a base, like a Bit. Then just multiply by a random amount for bigger sizes and prefix the name with random presidents names.
1TB can be Recommended Chrome Ram?
I'm surprised there aren't more suggestions which use intentionally-similar abbreviations. The American customary system is rich with abbreviations which are deceptively similar, and I think the American computer memory units should match; confusion is the name of the game. Some examples from existing units:
- millimeter (mm) vs thou (mil)
- meter (m) vs mile (mi)
- kilo (k) vs grand (G)
- kilonewtons (kN) vs knots (kn)
- statute mile (m/sm) vs survey mile (mi) vs nautical mile (NM/nmi) vs nanometer (nm)
- foot (ft) vs fathom (ftm)
- chain (ch) vs Switzerland (ch)
- teaspoon (tsp) vs tablespoon (tbsp)
- ounce (oz) vs fluid ounce (fl oz) vs troy ounce (ozt) vs Australia (Ozzie)
- pint (pt) vs point (pt)
- grain (gr) vs gram (g)
- Kelvin (K) vs Rankine (R; aka "Kelvin for Americans")
- short ton (t) vs long ton (???) vs metric tonne (t) vs refrigeration ton (TR)
Power of Two
1GB is 29.8975 pots
1MB is 19.9315 pots
I propose the base measurement is a Reagit - equal to 36 bit states, or half-bits (36 was the age of Ronald Reagan when the transistor was first invented in 1947)
The next smallest is the Nuclearyte equal to the quantity of times the United States has proven technological superiority in war by using an atomic bomb offensively. So 2 Reagits is 1 Nuclearyte.
After that is the number of US presidents to have survived an assassination attempt (8) known simply as the ‘Merit (and don’t forget the apostrophe). 8 nuclearytes is 1 ‘merit.
Next is the number of years after the birth of Our Lord when Americans landed on the moon. 1969 ‘merits is 1 L-unit (pronounced like Loon)
Even bigger still is the number of amendments it took for the damn commie government to realize that alcohol is essential for human survival. The 18th amendment was a mistake, but the 21st amendment was blessed by Our Father who Art in Heaven without a doubt. 3 L-units is 1 chug
Next is the number of young men who died fighting for the rights of our United States to remain unquestioned by the damn commie federal government during the great war for individually united liberties between 1860 and 1865. 490,309 chugs is 1 Right
And so far we haven’t needed any larger measurements.
We can use bits instead of bytes. That way it can look 8x bigger than it really is and have no real bearing to modern computing.
An Uvalde is the memory equivalent of PCM 48 kHz sample rate of children screaming.
Octal. Start expressing it in maga Octal with thoughts prayers and bullets for ones
These units are too logical and scientific for my free, spirited, emotional, irrational Christian brain so I need something that’s more intuitive.
Letter to Grandma, The Bible, Vacation photo album, and Video Collection
Bits per square inch?
No, those are not metric, they just borrowed some prefixes, although it's not like metric designers invented those anyways.
Dec = 10 Cent = 100 Mil = 1000
Using historical, global linear language sounds good to me
KiB, MiB, GiB, TiB
On the contrary.
KB = 1,000 bytes and MB = 1,000,000 is empirical.
KiB = 1024 bytes or 210 and MiB = 1,048,576 or 220 is Metric.
Remember, empirical is the miserable system the rest of the world abandoned because it made math and science difficult. KB makes storage miserable, never being clear whether your have the exact space your box claims it does. Please continue to FreeTM yourself from British "nonsense", while the rest of the world evolves.
Yes another person who doesn't understand why the metric system sucks. American's (fuck yea) use only useful and descriptive units, so obviously MiB, KiB, GiB, etc. because who cares what the closest rounded Ten's digit is? The computer world deals in Bits.
I use Kb, Mb, Gb, in my world (networking). And MiB GiB and TiB when I want to know the actual size something is.