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In article <>, "Arkwright" <> wrote:
>The convention is that an uppercase letter is used if the unit is named
>after a person (eg K - Kelvin; W - Watt) otherwise it is lower case (eg b -
>bit: s - second, etc).
>
>The first letters are set by International conventions (eg m - milli, k
>kilo, M - mega, G - Giga, etc)

Indeed. A good basic site on SI units is ...
www.iupac.org/reports/1993/homann/base1.html and related links.

Bruce


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"Shane (aka froggy)" <> wrote in
news:

> On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 01:08:50 +0000, Bruce Sinclair wrote:
>> I would suggest that you use k rather than K. k means 1000 ... and I
>> have no idea what K means.
>>
> degrees Kelvin?
> or Potassium?

There is no such thing as degrees Kelvin!



--
Mark Heyes (New Zealand)
See my pics at www.gigatech.co.nz (last updated 20-Jan-05)
"There are 10 types of people, those that
understand binary and those that don't"

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 13:12:44 +1300, "Caught" <> wrote:

>
>"Allistar" <> wrote in message news:...
>> Cliff wrote:
>>
>>> Can someone please enlighten me as to current usage of KB and Kb
>>> I had always thought that Kb meant Kilobit and KB Kilobyte.
>>> Is this in fact right or have I been labouring under a misapprehension?
>>> I could never really see the need to measure things in Kilobits and lots
>>> of apps seem to use Kb to refer to Kilobytes.
>>> Is this now the accepted usage?
>>> I have no axe to grind either way. I would just like to know.
>>
>> And to start the trollfest:
>>
>> Kb (kilobit) is technically 1000 bits.
>> Kib (kibibit) is technically 1024 bits.
>>
>> When talking about computer storage most people use Kb when they mean Kib.
>> I
>> do as well, just what I'm used to I suppose.
>>
>> Companies use this difference (which is not insignificant) when selling
>> hard-drives to make the number appear larger. I.e. they say 80Gb when they
>> mean Gb, and most of us would assume they mean Gib.
>>
>> Allistar.
>
>Scientifically
>
>lower case k ==> is kilo, that is x 1000
>upper case K ==> Kelvin, which is a unit of temperature
>
>as for lower case b or upper case B ......... !!!!!!! ???????
>
>So I'm equally confused
>

To clarify:

b is a bit
B is a byte

k is kilo (one thousand)
Ki is kibi (one thousand binary)
M is mega (one million)
Mi is mibi (one million binary)
G is giga (one thousand million)
Gi is gibi (one thousand million binary)
etc...

Therefore:

1 kb is 1000 bits, a kilobit
1 kB is 1000 bytes, a kilobyte
1 Kib is 1024 bits, a kibibit OR kilo binary bit
1 KiB is 1024 bytes, a kibibyte OR kilo binary byte
etc...

Note: minuscule 'k' is the only exception (sort of) to the capital
rule (presumably because of the aforementioned reason). Also noted
previously, majuscule 'B' is in disputed use as it stands for the SI
measurement 'Bel' (see: decibel).

These measurements were created by the International Electrotechnical
Commission ( http://www.iec.ch/ ).

z (Bruce Sinclair) wrote in
news:motUd.5035$:

> In article <>, "Shane (aka
> froggy)" <> wrote:
>
>> degrees Kelvin?
>
> That would have a little degree sign by it
>

No degree sign, because there is no such thing as degrees Kelvin!

313 Kelvin is a temperature
20 degrees Celsius is a temperature


--
Mark Heyes (New Zealand)
See my pics at www.gigatech.co.nz (last updated 20-Jan-05)
"There are 10 types of people, those that
understand binary and those that don't"

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 12:47:13 +1300, thing <> wrote:

>Cliff wrote:
>> Can someone please enlighten me as to current usage of KB and Kb
>> I had always thought that Kb meant Kilobit and KB Kilobyte.
>> Is this in fact right or have I been labouring under a misapprehension?
>> I could never really see the need to measure things in Kilobits and lots of
>> apps seem to use Kb to refer to Kilobytes.
>> Is this now the accepted usage?
>> I have no axe to grind either way. I would just like to know.
>>
>>
>
>
>kb = kilobit, kB = kilobyte. Networks usually work in kb or Mb.
>
>eg 100Mbit/sec is typical LAN.
>
>regards
>
>Thing
I have to disagree with your lower case k. Any modifier about a unit
should be a capital and below a unit lower case. eg M=mega m=milli.

Bruce.

Cliff wrote:
> I had always thought that Kb meant Kilobit and KB Kilobyte.

Yup.

> lots of
> apps seem to use Kb to refer to Kilobytes.

I know.

> Is this now the accepted usage?

No, not really. The trick is to look to see if it's a per-second figure,
in which case it's almost always kilobits and the reverse generally applies.

You may now get started on the difference between a gigabyte and 1 with
nine zeroes

Dave

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 18:34:29 +1300, Bruce Knox wrote:

> I have to disagree with your lower case k. Any modifier about a unit
> should be a capital and below a unit lower case. eg M=mega m=milli.

Huh? kilo has always been lowercased.

km, kg etc

--
Cheers
Anton

In <dXsUd.5023$> Cliff wrote:
> Can someone please enlighten me as to current usage of KB and Kb
> I had always thought that Kb meant Kilobit and KB Kilobyte.
> Is this in fact right or have I been labouring under a misapprehension?
> I could never really see the need to measure things in Kilobits and
> lots of apps seem to use Kb to refer to Kilobytes. Is this now the
> accepted usage? I have no axe to grind either way. I would just like
> to know.

Plenty of replies already, but I'll add one more.

Traditionally b for bit and B for byte, but alas a lot of people are
ignorant of this tradition. And it is only tradition as these units and
abbreviations have never been officially adopted by any standards body
as far as know.

However [name of standards group that I can't remember] recommends using
'bit' as an abbreviation for bits to avoid just this problem. So 56
kilobits per second is 56kbit/s, and 33 megabytes per second is 33MB/s.
Note that it's 'bit' for bit or bits.

--
Roger Johnstone, Invercargill, New Zealand
http://vintageware.orcon.net.nz/
__________________________________________________ ______________________
No Silicon Heaven? Preposterous! Where would all the calculators go?

Kryten, from the Red Dwarf episode "The Last Day"

In article <dXsUd.5023$>, "Cliff" <> wrote:
>Can someone please enlighten me as to current usage of KB and Kb
>I had always thought that Kb meant Kilobit and KB Kilobyte.
>Is this in fact right or have I been labouring under a misapprehension?
>I could never really see the need to measure things in Kilobits and lots of
>apps seem to use Kb to refer to Kilobytes.
>Is this now the accepted usage?
>I have no axe to grind either way. I would just like to know.
>
B (uppercase) refers to bytes. b (lowercase) refers to bits.
Apparently it's acceptable to use Gb and Tb to refer to gigabytes and
terabytes, respectively, but as we now move to network speeds that are
measured in Gb/s it seems very stupid.
Certainly for capacity measurements of K and M, the upper- and
lowercase distinction matters.

--
Matthew Poole Auckland, New Zealand
"Veni, vidi, velcro...
I came, I saw, I stuck around"

My real e-mail is mattATp00leDOTnet

In article <>, Bruce Knox <> wrote:
>On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 12:47:13 +1300, thing <> wrote:
*SNIP*
>I have to disagree with your lower case k. Any modifier about a unit
>should be a capital and below a unit lower case. eg M=mega m=milli.
>
However, technically, K is Kelvin. Though suffixing it with a B or b
makes it fairly clear that one is not talking about absolute
temperatures.

--
Matthew Poole Auckland, New Zealand
"Veni, vidi, velcro...
I came, I saw, I stuck around"

My real e-mail is mattATp00leDOTnet