The pico bite Computers thread.

[BlueLight]

So since the thread this was posted in kinda started a discussion about computers or more the way we count memory, i requested that this post and all follow up on the subject of computers be split up into a new thread. The orginal post i'm quoting form can be found here viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3508#p223018

I haven't been up to date on my neurology, but I think humans may have a combination of RAM and SAM. (Sequential access memory).

IIRC, a study of people with photographic memory led a couple of neurologists to estimate our total memory at around 200 terabytes. One terabyte is 1000 GB, and the typical computer hard drive made today has 1 TB of capacity.

*Glares at Zeus and starts to decided if slapping Zeus silly is worth the Mod abuse warning... totally worth it!*

My pet peeve is when some blasted, annoying, want to be techy does the honest mistake of claiming something like 1000GB is 1 terabyte. I am here to inform you that it is not!
^("want to be techy" describes most techies!)

it's 1024 or 2^10. Now one might say, well 24 isn't a big deal except for the fact that if 1000 is your base number than all you other base numbers are 1000 which mean's you have made the same mistake at least 3 times which is going to change your number drastically . Moving on from that, imagine a huge skyscraper and think if you'd have a problem if one of the steel beams was a foot too small. Now what about 2 feet? I'd tell you that'd at the very least , you'd have to weld on a new end piece and i don't think they're allowed to do that in skyscrapers construction.

( You have 8 bits per byte, 1024 bytes per kb, 1024kb per mb, 1024mb per gb, followed by 1024gb per tb; in pseudo math 8bit*1024byte*1024KB*1024MB*1024GB = 1TB)
for instance 200 terabytes is equal to 1,024 * 1,024 * 1,024 * 1,024 * 200 *8 bits
= 1,048,576 * 1,024 * 1,024 * 200 *8 bits
= 1,048,576 * 1,024 * 1,024 * 1,600bits
= 1,048,576 * 1,048,576 * 1,600 bits
= 1,099,511,627,776 * 1,600 bits
= 1,759,218,604,441,600 bits

okay now what was that, 1000 gb per 1 tb, right zeus. well that's 200 terabytes is equal to 1000 * 1000 * 1000 * 1000 * 200 *8 bits
= 1,000^4 * 200 * 8 bits
= 1,000^4 * 1600 bits
= 1,000,000,000,000 * 1600 bits
= 1,600,000,000,000,000 bits

so zeus' Answer is off by
CorrectAnswer - zuesAnswer = 1,759,218,604,441,600 bits -1,600,000,000,000,000 bits
= 159,218,604,441,600 bits
= 159,218,604,441,600/8 byte
= 19,902,325,555,200/1024 Kilobyte
= 19,435,864,800/1024 Megabyte
= 18,980,336.71875/1024 Gigabyte
= 18,535.485076904296875/1024 Terabyte
= 18.1010596454143524169921875 Terabyte
or
= 18TB rounded to the nearest integer. Zues... that's a 9% error zues! 9%....




























edit
200TB... i call bull. There is very little you can do to estimate how much storage space of anything. Here, i'll give you a example with computers.
Okay, i have a game that takes 25 GB (Fuck, why do games have to be so huge, and where is my god damn mod support!), now how much space is it taking on my hard drive. If you guess 25 GB, you're wrong. Now add into the fact that the human brain remembers things by similarities; that mean's if you learn to count prime numbers while drunk, you'll strangely enough have a better time (Debateable) remembering how to count prime numbers while drunk.

[Zeus Kabob]

Ugh, Bluelight you're clueless. 1 KiB is 1024 bytes, 1 MiB is 1024 KiB, 1 GiB is 1024 MiB, 1 TiB is 1024 GiB. These units are "Kibibytes" "Mebibytes" "Gibibytes" "Tebibytes". The regular SI prefixes "Kilo" "Mega" "Giga" and "Tera" can be applied to computational data just the same as any other unit, and the only reason there's any confusion is because the data note names "Kibi" "Mebi" "Gibi" are typically shown without the i. KB is Kilobyte MB is Megabytes, GB is Gigabytes, TB is Terabytes.

Also as I said, I have no clue. 200 TB might be entirely off, but I'm just parroting what I heard in a video about memory.

[LoneWolf]

Ugh, Bluelight you're clueless. 1 KiB is 1024 bytes, 1 MiB is 1024 KiB, 1 GiB is 1024 MiB, 1 TiB is 1024 GiB. These units are "Kibibytes" "Mebibytes" "Gibibytes" "Tebibytes". The regular SI prefixes "Kilo" "Mega" "Giga" and "Tera" can be applied to computational data just the same as any other unit, and the only reason there's any confusion is because the data note names "Kibi" "Mebi" "Gibi" are typically shown without the i. KB is Kilobyte MB is Megabytes, GB is Gigabytes, TB is Terabytes.

That's ... not entirely true.

The original definition of 'kilobyte' was '1024 bytes'; 'megabyte' was '1024 kilobytes'; and so on. In 1998 the IEC proposed a new standard that would change 'kilobyte' to '1000 bytes' and introduced 'kibibyte' with the meaning you've given there. Wikipedia suggests that these new meanings are the 'official standard' in a lot of places, but they're far from universally accepted.

I don't think any of my lecturers or tutors have ever used 'kibibyte' or 'mebibyte', but they definitely are referring to powers of 1024 rather than 1000. 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes is the definition that Windows and Linux use, as well.

[Duplicity]

When I was talking about my RAM I meant Random Access Memory. Meaning I only get random access to my memory.
I thought 'kilo' meant thousand in Greek or something. How is it we have a kilometre, kiloletre, kiloherz, kilobuad and kilojoules all equaling a thousand of the suffix.(what ever you call the opposite of a prefix)
Yet the computers all have the base of normal + 24. Maybe the person who invented computer size/code/memory or whatever the whole thing is about just didn't know?
"Uh the meaning of life is 42, so I um divide by 2, then add the number of quarks I cheered for Muster Mark and I get 24." Perfect.
Hmm I was so sure there was a quote of someone saying they had many many quarks in their pocket.

[LoneWolf]

A useful measure of computer memory pretty much has to be a power of two, so the standard kilo=1000 system doesn't help much. 1024 is 2^10, so it's very convenient; and it's fairly close to 1000 so the prefix got hijacked despite technically not being quite accurate.

[Zeus Kabob]

I don't know about Windows, but Linux uses KiB, MiB, GiB, and TiB. Still, that's an important piece of history.

[LoneWolf]

Windows definitely uses KB, MB, GB. Wikipedia claims that Linux does as well, but talking about 'Linux' as a single unified OS is always a bit risky. It's entirely possible that it varies depending on which version you've got.

Also, apparently the capacity of a 1.44 MB floppy disk was calculated using 1MB = 1,024,000 bytes for some unexplained reason.

[MiscChaos]

As requested, these posts have been split off from the pet peeves topic.

[BlueLight]

okay now for a post about this topic where i don't have to try my hardest to go full insane geek.

Ugh, Bluelight you're clueless. 1 KiB is 1024 bytes, 1 MiB is 1024 KiB, 1 GiB is 1024 MiB, 1 TiB is 1024 GiB. These units are "Kibibytes" "Mebibytes" "Gibibytes" "Tebibytes". The regular SI prefixes "Kilo" "Mega" "Giga" and "Tera" can be applied to computational data just the same as any other unit, and the only reason there's any confusion is because the data note names "Kibi" "Mebi" "Gibi" are typically shown without the i. KB is Kilobyte MB is Megabytes, GB is Gigabytes, TB is Terabytes.

Just asked someone who i consider would know this information even if i didn't, and they never heard of it. It seem it's recognizes "officially" as the new Kilobyte but it's might as well be obscure slang because no one (and this is why statements like everyone is a lying sack of scum are true!) uses it. So in other words use kikobyte or no one is going to understand what you're talking about and they're going to think you're clueless (Which might be a good thing!).

Also as I said, I have no clue. 200 TB might be entirely off, but I'm just parroting what I heard in a video about memory.

I completely understand. Not your research. The point i was trying to make was the fact that even if you were able to figure out how much information some one can hold perfectly, you then have to apply the concept of compression which can vary so drastically based on so many different variables. I wouldn't even attempt to make a guess like that with a computer because there is no way to predict it.

When I was talking about my RAM I meant Random Access Memory. Meaning I only get random access to my memory.
I thought 'kilo' meant thousand in Greek or something. How is it we have a kilometre, kiloletre, kiloherz, kilobuad and kilojoules all equaling a thousand of the suffix.(what ever you call the opposite of a prefix)
Yet the computers all have the base of normal + 24. Maybe the person who invented computer size/code/memory or whatever the whole thing is about just didn't know?
"Uh the meaning of life is 42, so I um divide by 2, then add the number of quarks I cheered for Muster Mark and I get 24." Perfect.
Hmm I was so sure there was a quote of someone saying they had many many quarks in their pocket.

So the way I understand which I’m not going to pretend is true but it's a possibly true is this. I'm going to just lay this out there that I made little attempt at making it sound reasonable. If you disagree with how I heard/remember this, that's fine and I'm perfectly fine with you correcting me.
First off, memory is base 2(in other words it has 2 values for 1 bit of memory. on or off. 1 or 0); it's kind of a fact with most memory systems. Some have 3 settings but that's rare and I don't know if kilo applies anymore or even how that works. Think switches; bits are the switch but they can have one of two values.
When entering commands into the computer in machine language they look something like "00001011" which would be I believe "11" (Hard to do this basic math in my head, and I’m not sure I started from the correct side but that's beside the point.) which has 8 digits or switches in it.

Anyways you needed to know that information for my bull shit reason how they got the number 1024.

Okay so they took 2 which is the required minimum number of values you can have and they basically kept multiplying it by itself until they found a number that was nearly 1000.
The number was 2^10 = 1024. Aren't you glad you were around for this intelligent conversation?

Ah but there more. We count values as bits; but we don't count kilo bits (Well yes we do but the average Joe has trouble whenever that happens.) but kilobytes. Well a byte is equal to 8 bits of information. Take 11 that I had up above. 11 is equal to "00001011"; now count the numbers of 0s and 1s and you'll notice they equal 8. in other words that is a byte of information. Now computer users have been using 1024 for so long that it makes no sense to change now even if the SI metric maniacs have their panties in a knot because we're not being "Correct" about their terms. Besides, it's easier if I have 2^10 to count the information, than (2^10)-24 because... well one is just plain simpler.


Okay I’m done.

*waits for people to tear that nonsensical last part to pieces.*

[Jesus]

Just to clear things up a little for those of you not so tech friendly so you can understand, as for whats going on between Zeus and Blue, I'm not even going to try to argue with either.

For blue lights binary post, I think blue using 00001011 was a good example for explaining. Binary is read from right to left where the furthest right is 2^0 then which is special but we will hold off on that for a moment. Any 0 encountered is void and any 1 is true, so writing 00001011 is redundant for anything other than teaching, it is implied that it belongs to an octal system because there are 8 places but thats not important, to any other nerd the binary would be 1011. So as mentioned a little earlier the number furthest right is 2^0 and a 1 in it's place means its true, in binary this defaults to 1, as seen in that string the there is a 1 in the furthest right giving a value of one there, the next we would look at is the number to the left, and the number left of that the placement goes something like this.

... 2^3+ 2^2+ 2^1, + either 1 or 0

so 1011 would be

... 2^3+ void + 2^1 and +1 because the furthest right is true so it comes out to be 8+0+2+1 which is 11

The thing going on between BlueLight and Zeus has to do with the difference in measurement. A Kilobyte(kB) is exactly 1000 bytes, which follows the SI standard, using "kilobyte" usually implies a KiB or Kibibyte where the "bi" in it probably roots with the word "binary" so the "Kibi" prefix probably means "Binary Kilo"(Yay! reading books on linguistics became useful for the first time in my life!) which would make sense seeing as the binary is the language computers run on is the same as a base 2 number system (which is math stuff, I can explain if wanted), and this means a Kibibyte(KiB) is exactly 1024 bytes.

If I had to guess at whats happening, it's that there is some confusion in the difference between a byte and a bit, kilobyte and kilobit, Kibibyte and Kilobyte... etc.

[LoneWolf]

so 1011 would be

... 2^3+ void + 2^1 and +1 because the furthest right is true so it comes out to be 6+0+2+1 which is 9

2^3 = 8, not 6...

The thing going on between BlueLight and Zeus has to do with the difference in measurement. A Kilobyte(kB) is exactly 1000 bytes, which follows the SI standard, using "kilobyte" usually implies a KiB or Kibibyte where the "bi" in it probably roots with the word "binary" so the "Kibi" prefix probably means "Binary Kilo"(Yay! reading books on linguistics became useful for the first time in my life!) which would make sense seeing as the binary is the language computers run on is the same as a base 2 number system (which is math stuff, I can explain if wanted), and this means a Kibibyte(KiB) is exactly 1024 bytes.

If I had to guess at whats happening, it's that there is some confusion in the difference between a byte and a bit, kilobyte and kilobit, Kibibyte and Kilobyte... etc.

The reason there's confusion is because common usage is inconsistent. Hard-drive manufacturers use 1GB to mean 10^9 bytes (Zeus's system), but RAM manufacturers use it to mean 2^30 bytes (Blue's system). Windows uses KB/MB/GB to refer to powers of 1024 (Blue), but Mac uses it to refer to powers of 1000 (Zeus). Several common versions of Linux apparently use KiB/MiB/GiB to refer to powers of 1024 (the other half of Zeus's system).

The 'official' IEC standard defines kilo/mega/gigabyte as powers of 1000 and kibi/mebi/gibibyte as powers of 1024, but as usual trying to enforce a unified standard once people are already using a different system hasn't worked particularly well. (The standard is 15 years old now, but it's still not even close to universally accepted.)

[Jesus]

2^3 = 8, not 6...

Well I'm going to edit that post so it is fixed, go to a corner and kill myself, I had a great life everyone!

[Duplicity]

Ahh so much tech speak. I try to read it, but my eyes stop seeing!
My post was purely tongue in cheek, maybe I need a sarcasm/joking warning on my post.

[BlueLight]

Ahh so much tech speak. I try to read it, but my eyes stop seeing!
My post was purely tongue in cheek, maybe I need a sarcasm/joking warning on my post.

It didnt come through well.