why do computer scientists say 1KB=1024 bytes?!!

[Rich Grise]

In sci.physics, Rich Grise
<[email protected]>
wrote

I was astonished the other day, having been following this thread, I
checked to see what processor my $300.00 e-bay computer has; it seems
slow, and I thought I'd blame Intel, but imagine my surprise:

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 6
model : 4
model name : AMD Athlon(tm) Processor
stepping : 4
cpu MHz : 996.487
cache size : 256 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips : 1985.74

Maybe a fxxxing gigaherts isn't fast enough for today's bloatware? I
remember installing Slackware 3, back in the late 1990's, including X,
and it was just really lean and clean and quick - really snappy response.

On a Cyrix 6X86-P150.

What happened? Howcome everything is so blasted slow that you need a
processor ten to a hundred times faster than we used to have, just to
type a message to a newsgroup?

(in case you're wondering, a "bogomip" is a "bogus MIPS" - it's just an
ordinary timing loop that doesn't account for caching or arithmetic or
anything.)

OK, standard dumb questions time.

[1] How much RAM?

$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 312860 303920 8940 0 24732 51760
-/+ buffers/cache: 227428 85432
Swap: 1493960 0 1493960

[2] Is your system swapping like crazy?

I don't know how to determine that. )-; Kinda looks like "not at the
moment", however.

And I've snipped the other stuff that I also don't have answers for. Sorry.

Now you've got me curious - I can exit KDE and start fluxbox, (or maybe
even FVWM) and ask "free" again...

"ps ax" is usually kind of instructive as well.

Thanks!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise]

In sci.physics, Rich Grise ....

(in case you're wondering, a "bogomip" is a "bogus MIPS" - it's just
an ordinary timing loop that doesn't account for caching or arithmetic
or anything.)

OK, standard dumb questions time.

[1] How much RAM?

$ free
total used free shared buffers
cached
Mem: 312860 303920 8940 0 24732
51760 -/+ buffers/cache: 227428 85432 Swap: 1493960
0 1493960

That's with KDE running. I've stopped it, and started Fluxbox, and
now I get:

$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 312860 151652 161208 0 30844 66484
-/+ buffers/cache: 54324 258536
Swap: 1493960 0 1493960
richgrise@thunderbird:~

Before I started "Pan", and

$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 312860 306412 6448 0 10284 123536
-/+ buffers/cache: 172592 140268
Swap: 1493960 12 1493948
richgrise@thunderbird:~
$


now.


Not that it makes any difference to anybody.

Just for the sake of insufferable pedantry:

$ ps ax
PID TTY STAT TIME COMMAND
1 ? S 0:03 init [3]
2 ? S 0:00 [keventd]
3 ? SN 0:00 [ksoftirqd_CPU0]
4 ? S 0:00 [kswapd]
5 ? S 0:00 [bdflush]
6 ? S 0:00 [kupdated]
10 ? S< 0:00 [mdrecoveryd]
11 ? S 0:00 [kreiserfsd]
41 ? S<s 0:00 udevd
80 ? Ss 0:00 /sbin/dhcpcd -d -t 60 -h thunderbird eth0
110 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/syslogd
113 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/klogd -c 3 -x
334 ? S 0:00 [khubd]
1497 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/inetd
1501 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
1509 ? S 0:00 /usr/sbin/crond -l10
1519 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/smbd -D
1521 ? S 0:00 /usr/sbin/smbd -D
1522 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/nmbd -D
1524 ? Ss 0:00 /usr/sbin/gpm -m /dev/mouse -t imps2
1526 tty1 Ss 0:00 -bash
1528 tty3 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/agetty 38400 tty3 linux
1529 tty4 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/agetty 38400 tty4 linux
1530 tty5 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/agetty 38400 tty5 linux
1531 tty6 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/agetty 38400 tty6 linux
1559 tty2 Ss+ 0:00 /sbin/agetty 38400 tty2 linux
1941 tty1 S+ 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/X11R6/bin/startx
1953 tty1 S+ 0:00 xinit /home/richgrise/.xinitrc --
1954 ? S 0:26 X :0
1966 tty1 S 0:00 /usr/X11R6/bin/fluxbox
1970 ? Ss 0:00 konsole
1972 ? Ss 0:00 kdeinit Running...
1975 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: dcopserver --nosid --suicide
1977 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: klauncher
1979 ? S 0:00 kdeinit: kded
1982 pts/0 Ss 0:00 /bin/bash
1985 ? Ss 0:21 pan
1986 ? S 0:00 pan
1987 ? S 0:05 pan
1988 ? S 0:09 pan
1989 ? S 0:02 pan
1990 ? S 0:03 pan
1991 ? S 0:02 pan
1992 ? S 0:00 pan
2023 pts/0 R+ 0:00 ps ax
richgrise@thunderbird:~


Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise, but drunk]

300 'GB' * 10^9 bytes/'GB' * 2^-30 GB/byte = 279.4 GB

It may seem trivial to you, but I view it as a redefinition of
convention which pays NO heed to the reason why the convention existed
in the first place. Imagine if overnight, natural log was redefined to
be base 4. Or if mpg was redefined to be meters per gallon. Wouldn't
that bother you just a little?

Yes, it bothers me exactly 20.6/300.

Or so.

;-P

Thanks!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise, but drunk]

[email protected] says... ....

What _are_ you rambling on about?

Yeah, I didn't even know VAXes fucked!

;-P
Rich

 

[John Fields]

Some irrelevant crap.

The reason why computer scientists say 1KB instead of 1024 bytes is
because we all know we're speaking base 2 and we're not stupid.

 

[Rich Grise, but drunk]

Ah, the difference between men and women.

Thank the Universe for them!!!!

Do you think the development of GUI was driven by men's
never ending desire to get better pinups? If women were
in charge, would we still be using TTY interfaces?

If women were in charge, wars would happen only once a month,
and then only last for a week.


Maybe we should elect somebody like Sally Jesse Rafael for
president. ;-P

Cheeers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise, but drunk]

Good grief, absolutely not. Video terminals increased
production by reducing the time waiting for the mechanical
TTY innards to adjust themselves.

I actually meant text displays versus graphic, not mechanical
versus electronic.

Not that
there's anything wrong with that, I am currently working on
making yet another port (3rd or 4th) of the 25 year old
Apple ][ text adventure game THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF EAMON
to Python so I can still play it without mucking about with
an emulator.

Why did you choose Python?

Mainly because I needed unlimited precision integers.
I have legitimate problems where the operands can
exceed 50,000 decimal digits.

Luckily for me, of the many languages where you can
get such math, Python was the first I tried. It fit very
well with my programming needs so I use it for just
about everything even when there's no danger that
Conan's coin purse will ever collect more than
2 billion gold pieces.

Or is it what you have on-line right now?


I was banned from using ASR33s because I broke them from typing
too fast.

The company I worked for wanted to hang a CRT onto one of
the machines but, for hardware compatability, it had to still have
a 20ma current loop. They called it a Glass Teletype, which I
always got a kick out of.

But I guess Iron Teletypes weren't as rugged as I thought.

I got a 60 mA iron teletype once that some guy would otherwise have
tossed. I actually built a 60 mA loop, and ran it off my 8008. (It was
kind of a PITA, because I hadn't written the monitor where I could use
the keyboard, so I had to enter _everything_ by way of the three
pushbuttons (not debounced) and eight toggle switches on the front
panel.)

But I learned, in spades: Do NOT use WD-40 on a teletype! It turns
to goo when the solvent evaporates. WD-40 is for door hinges and squeaky
ball joints and tie rod ends. I spent the next two weeks with a typewriter
brush and can of MEK or xylene or trichlorethylene or something cleaning
the goo off the precision parts.

And then, it was just fascinating to watch it mechanically deserialize
the 300 Baud (or whatever it was - maybe 110) data.

I also made that 8008 play the melody of "Daisy, Daisy." ;-P

Thanks!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise, but drunk]

I actually meant text displays versus graphic, not mechanical
versus electronic.

Ah, in my work, graphic just wasn't what we prep'ed.
Most work input is text-based. The guys used those
pinups to rest their eyes.

Not that
there's anything wrong with that, I am currently working on
making yet another port (3rd or 4th) of the 25 year old
Apple ][ text adventure game THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF EAMON
to Python so I can still play it without mucking about with
an emulator.

Why did you choose Python?

Mainly because I needed unlimited precision integers.
I have legitimate problems where the operands can
exceed 50,000 decimal digits.

Good grief. Ain't modern tech wonderful?

Luckily for me, of the many languages where you can
get such math, Python was the first I tried. It fit very
well with my programming needs so I use it for just
about everything even when there's no danger that
Conan's coin purse will ever collect more than
2 billion gold pieces.

The economy in your games will be very limited. ;-)

The company I worked for wanted to hang a CRT onto one of
the machines but, for hardware compatability, it had to still have
a 20ma current loop.

That was so a person could kick the machine if all the other
comm didn't come up. JMF and TW used a VT06 (I can never recall
what the real name was) to do their stand-alone debugging.
I don't remember what kind of hardware tweaking had to be done
for that.

They called it a Glass Teletype, which I
always got a kick out of.

That's not a 33. Those glass teletypes were very robust
but very expensive. Ours never had glass in them. We had
a monitor developer who kept smashing them whenever he
lost a wrestling match with the computer. Field Service
finally refused to replace new glass. We could always tell
where this guy had been working. The glass also had the
feature that I could lay my hands on the glass to warm them
up.

But I guess Iron Teletypes weren't as rugged as I thought.

The iron TTYs were rugged. It's the plastic ones (33) that had
a limited mechanical usage. Whenever I had to use one, I slowed
my typing speed to about 30 WPM with a 3-4 characters' worth of
waiting whenever I hit <CR>. I always screw this one up but I
think the iron ones with glass were called ASR35s. Or the
number was 36; for some strange reason the wrong number keeps
popping out of my fingers.

What? No Friden Flexowriter? ;-D ;-D ;-D

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise, but drunk]

This is a flip answer. Lawyers use spellcheckers. What's
worse is they probably use Micshit's spellcheckers. When
I was executrix, the lawyer said that Micshit often changed
the sense of a sentence by erasing or inserting a "not".
I told him about file comparing. The procedures they used
when working on contracts were horrifying.

"Exeutrix?" BAH, are you a girl? <leer, snort> (I was an executor
a couple of times, and I'm a boy, or at least I have all boy
parts.)

But, back to the point, I agree with Mr. Shakespeare: "First,
we kill all of the lawyers"...

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise, but drunk]

I thought a large part of your economic improvment plans
was to start doing a lot of business with European Union
countries? To export anything to them, stuff has to
be within specs. They've spec'ed the size of cucumbers
for goodness' sake! ISTR the specs for bananas are
controversial.

You can have my banana when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

;-P
Cheers!
Rich

 

[Rich Grise, but drunk]

The CPU you're working on now probably has, because one of the data
formats used by the 8087 floating-point coprocessor was "packed
decimal": 18 decimal digits, packed two per byte, plus a sign.

And let us not forget the ever-popular "half-carry" flag, and the
"adjust decimal" (or whatever the fxx it was) instruction. ;-)

Cheers!
Rich

 

[Tom Hardy]

tadchem wrote:

{...}

If you have 10 phalanges (fingers + thumbs) on your hands and you know
how to count in binary, then you can count to 1023 without taking your
shoes off....

Have you worked out your technique? I just tried raising and lowering
fingers, and the carpal tunnel is still complaining.

 

[[email protected]]

But, back to the point, I agree with Mr. Shakespeare: "First,
we kill all of the lawyers"...

Nope. I'd still be trying to close probate if I hadn't had
the lawyer. He earned his money.

/BAH

 

[[email protected]]

No, it's not bullshit. You had to look at both architectures to
find out what they defined a "byte" to be and then do the
translation.

NO! This is impossible since not even bit gods can predict the
past nor the future. One of the reasons there are network
protocols is so this information did not have to be hard-coded.
It's a law of OS computing that, as soon as you assume a field
size, it will change.

Now, granted there is^Wwas the problem of very little memory
and storage available so some tradeoffs had to be done. One
of the bad things that TOPS-10 had was field definitions that
could not be expanded. When you're dealing with unknown
nodes out in the networks, you cannot assume byte sizes nor
much of anything else. You have to be able to build into
the code extensibility that was done by code you don't control,
you don't know exists, and may never be able to test.

There is no universal definition of "byte".

Exactly. That's why you cannot make the constraint that both
archiectures have to be known.

What _are_ you rambling on about?

Sigh! I'm trying to prevent a mess. You have detected that
these kids thing there are 8, and only 8, bits in a byte?
What are they going to do when it goes to 24? I'll tell
you, they'll barf their bits all over the disk.

Please note that the OP assumes that, if a Greek character
is being used (or, rather, its associated noun), he is assuming
SI!!!!

/BAH

/BAH

 

[Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz]

In <[email protected]>, on
12/12/2005
at 09:00 AM, [email protected] said:

I thought a 'byte' is an 'unsigned char'.

Don't confuse what a byte is with the syntax or semantics of a
programming language.

Is this definition flawed?

Yes. A byte is a consecutive string of bits. It could be either
narrower than or wider than a character.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to [email protected]

 

[Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz]

Yes. A byte is a sequence of 8 bits.

It's also a sequence of 2 bits, 4 bits, 7 bits or whatever size you
would like it to be. For an example of correct usage see the
instruction set of the DEC PDP-6 or the IBM 7030.

--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz, SysProg and JOAT <http://patriot.net/~shmuel>

Unsolicited bulk E-mail subject to legal action. I reserve the
right to publicly post or ridicule any abusive E-mail. Reply to
domain Patriot dot net user shmuel+news to contact me. Do not
reply to [email protected]

 

[Keith Williams]

Nope. I'd still be trying to close probate if I hadn't had
the lawyer. He earned his money.

Correction: He earned all JMF's money.

My wife was very fortunate with her mother's estate. She didn't
even have to go to court. IIRC she hired a lawyer to (officially)
tell her she didn't need one. ;-)

 

[John Larkin]

"Exeutrix?" BAH, are you a girl? <leer, snort> (I was an executor
a couple of times, and I'm a boy, or at least I have all boy
parts.)

My wife is an executrix.

John

 

[[email protected]]

tadchem wrote:

{...}


Have you worked out your technique? I just tried raising and lowering
fingers, and the carpal tunnel is still complaining.

That is why man invented peripheral devices.

/BAH

 

[[email protected]]

Correction: He earned all JMF's money.

You don't understand the probate system.

My wife was very fortunate with her mother's estate. She didn't
even have to go to court. IIRC she hired a lawyer to (officially)
tell her she didn't need one. ;-)

Then there was no property to distribute. The lawyer had to have
generated a report that the estate had an evaluation below
the magic number for both state and federal (I don't know about
cities--I'm sure certain ones feed off the dead. Note that this
was the tax situation 10 years ago. Congress is trying to
bring it back. You need a signoff
from probate courts to transfer titles. If there isn't any
estate taxes to be paid, the transfer involves a judge to sign
a piece of paper. If there are estate taxes to be paid, no
transfers are allowed until both the state and federal accountants
sign off. My state ensures this happens by attaching a lien to
all property which prevents all property transfers. If it weren't
for the lawyer, JMF's testosterone producing vehicle would have
become a very expensive boat anchor in my garage.

And then there was the little Democrat technique of squeezing the
last drop of blood from the dead by insisting that all property
be reevaluated four years after the death date which would have
increased the property valuations by 50% because the real estate
prices had almost doubled. If this had been allowed, the probate
period would have taken another 4 years and the estate taxes would
have acquired most of the assets. The lawyer definitely earned
his money.

/BAH