pouët.net

Probably I'm asking a stupid question but I haven't found any specific information about...

What is the exact, official bytecount rule for scene prods?

For example 40k=
40*1024=40960b
or
40*1000=40000b
?

Of course first option should be the correct one but I wasn't able to find any confirmation.

Thanks :)

4096

Party rules usually explicitly state that 4k is 4096 and 64k is 65536. (These rules were invented before the whole kibi-misery.)

For extra impressive flex, make an entry that's 4096.5 bytes long and argue that IEEE round-to-nearest-even gives 4096.

Thanks, this explain why I wasn't totally sure!

But what is this "kibi-misery" thing?

I think gargaj is referring to the fact that e.g. a kilobyte used to be universally regarded as 1024 bytes until storage device manufacturers started to quibble about it and put misleading capacity numbers on their media (at least that's what sparked it from my pov), leading to 1 TB drives storing 909 GiB because literally nothing in low-level computing uses base 10. The misery being that the official definition to differentiate between them redefined the original terms(e.g. kilobyte) as the new "interpretation"(1kb = 1000 bytes) which while semantically / linguistically making sense, imho is the wrong way around.

Wasn't meaning to go that deep with implications, but that, pretty much.

No, it's not the wrong way around, it was the only sane solution. Only the computer people need to adapt their use of language a bit. They are the ones who understand why this was even a problem to begin with. They can continue to use "kilo" and "giga" with their former meaning in casual/sloppy language in their circles, and everybody is aware of the pitfall. Like we here understand 4k as 4096 bytes.

thanks!

bifat: You're right of course, it's better to have precise language. It just feels the "wrong way around" because among computer people (which are the only people you talk to about bytes anyways) it was always a common understanding, but the differentiation made it ambiguous.

For Amiga 40k intros, I think 40k meant whatever size Directory Opus showed as less than 40k.

For me 1KB == 1024 bytes, it's how i learned it even at shool in the 90th and as i know it from programming. Personally i absolutly dislike this 1K/1KB == 1000 bytes shit for dummys.

btw, found this on the web:
Files size units: "KiB" vs "KB" vs "kB"

remember that lowercase 'b' is bits, not bytes *ducks*

@LJ:
I can confirm with my own POV, that all of this dispute started with the HDD manufacturers' marketing. There might be some old c't or other magazine issues covering this topic.

@ferris:
Exactly. ;) We have a lot of 256b intros, which actually exceed the stated size by a factor of 8. :D

When I bought my first 80 MB hard drive (for A1200), it was de-facto sold as MB = 1024*1000, IIRC. I don't know exactly when it morphed into 1000*1000, but probably somewhere in the terabyte age.

I wonder if everyone every sued a hardware company for selling the less kibis than advertised and how that went.

everyone = anyone

I tebibyte is almost 10% above a terabyte. Storage vendors were just opportunistic, understandably so, and this brought about a correction. No need to mourn after this VERY unfortunate appropriation of the terms kilo, mega, etc. :-)

The term kilo for 1000 was around since the french revolution.
I would say it was initially not the best idea to just reuse it to mean 1024 instead because that is more useful in the computer context.

The HDD manufacturers of course made this fuckup complete…

Gigabyte age, definitely; I remember the first 8-10GB HDDs already having this shithousery.

"Kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, pebi and exbi are binary prefix multipliers that, in 1998, were approved as a standard by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)."

Sigh. I need an "I'm older than Kibibyte" T-Shirt, for organizing size limited compos, then just call it KB anyway. :P

Yeah, kB looks so ugly. The cool kids write it KB.

Kelvin Bytes?
Now thats some hot shit.

On the other hand kelvin-bytes would make every 256 byte prod zero-cool.