[MEncoder-users] Using SI units in mencoder

[asym]

At 06:40 2/9/2005, Trent Piepho wrote:
>On Wed, 9 Feb 2005, asym wrote:
> > At 19:06 2/8/2005, Trent Piepho wrote:
> > >On Tue, 8 Feb 2005, asym wrote:
> > > > Software won't change either, too much of it from too many different
> > > > authors for it to be corrected within our lifetimes.  And software
> > > > developers, like the one responding, have "staked a claim" that 
> they are
> > > > unwilling to give up.  Years ago the IEEE recommended people call 1024
> > > > bytes a "kibibyte" and abbreviate it "KiB" but to this day nobody
> > > does.  SI
> > >
> > >Probably because the use of kilobyte to mean 2^10 bytes was around for 
> decades
> > >before IEEE came up with a new name.  The IEEE basically told 
> programmers that
> > >they need to stop using the terms they've used since bytes were invented
> > >because hard drive manfacture's marketing departments want them.
> >
> > The is just so much BS.  The use of kilobyte to mean 10^3 bytes was around
> > long long long before software developers and self righteous technophiles
>
>Really?  The datasheet for the 4004 microprocessor,
>http://www.piercefuller.com/collect/i4004/, from 1971 uses K to mean 1024 when
>referring to numbers of bytes or bits.  Do you have a reference to kilobytes
>meaning 1000 bytes that predates that?

Try every storage device or mainframe from IBM produced in the roughly 15 
years prior to the 4004.  All of these, like the RAMAC (~1956), Ramkit, etc 
predate the microprocessor, not just the 4004.  All of them listed 
capacities in kilobytes or megabytes using the standard, correct SI 
notation -- multiples of 1000.

The 2310 Ramkit had "1.024 megabytes" of storage -- obviously a 
power-of-two design, but they didn't just call it a "1 megabyte" drive 
because it had significantly more storage space than 10^6.