[krypt2nite]

I dont mind DB so much. What really pisses me off is MBs or Mbs or MBp/s or Mbps or the other million derivatives used... because dB or DB we all know they mean the same thing, but megabits and megabytes are different... and I'm never clear what they are talking about when they use some stupid tag like MegMbs, grrr.

Don't get me started on this. I used to do tier 2 tech support for a very well known communications company and that always irked me the wrong way. No matter how silly I think this thread is, I can't be a hypocrite because the MB, Mb thing bugs me everytime. Especially when people say your connection speed is 20 Megabytes a second....... give me a break.....

[hikaricore]

I bet it was verizon. >.>

[krypt2nite]

I bet it was verizon. >.>

Nope

[Lokheed]

Don't get me started on this. I used to do tier 2 tech support for a very well known communications company and that always irked me the wrong way. No matter how silly I think this thread is, I can't be a hypocrite because the MB, Mb thing bugs me everytime. Especially when people say your connection speed is 20 Megabytes a second....... give me a break.....

It just causes more confusion because nothing shows how many Megabits a second you're downloading... it's always MBs.

Stupid companies think that 50 Mbps sounds so much better than 6 MBs... I feel for you for dealing with all the people that wonder why they are only downloading 4 (MBs) but their ISPs told them they would be getting 40-45 (Mbps)... Ohh... so you divide by 8 and that's the speed you really get... corporate tools.

[althekiller]

Since this is already off topic...

How about MB versus MiB? Do we want powers of two or ten? :p

[krypt2nite]

It just causes more confusion because nothing shows how many Megabits a second you're downloading... it's always MBs.

Stupid companies think that 50 Mbps sounds so much better than 6 MBs... I feel for you for dealing with all the people that wonder why they are only downloading 4 (MBs) but their ISPs told them they would be getting 40-45 (Mbps)... Ohh... so you divide by 8 and that's the speed you really get... corporate tools.

Haha, yeah way off topic now, but yeah I even got geek satisfaction out of trying to explain to my co-workers how and why there are 8 bits in a byte and they need to stop saying BYTE. Anyways we are all really sad to care about this petty stuff anyways.

[hikaricore]

Haha, yeah way off topic now, but yeah I even got geek satisfaction out of trying to explain to my co-workers how and why there are 8 bits in a byte and they need to stop saying BYTE. Anyways we are all really sad to care about this petty stuff anyways.

byte me

[Lokheed]

Haha, yeah way off topic now, but yeah I even got geek satisfaction out of trying to explain to my co-workers how and why there are 8 bits in a byte and they need to stop saying BYTE. Anyways we are all really sad to care about this petty stuff anyways.

Yeah dude, but at least you knew... nothing worse than calling tech support and knowing that you know vast vast vast amounts more than them... I think only geeks should be hired to such jobs! And paid a hella lot more for dealing with Mom and Pop customer that can't figure out how to listen to music on google...

PS: Yeah, totally off topic, but it's more fun to talk about MB than dB

[frater]

It just causes more confusion because nothing shows how many Megabits a second you're downloading... it's always MBs.

Stupid companies think that 50 Mbps sounds so much better than 6 MBs... I feel for you for dealing with all the people that wonder why they are only downloading 4 (MBs) but their ISPs told them they would be getting 40-45 (Mbps)... Ohh... so you divide by 8 and that's the speed you really get... corporate tools.

Connection speeds have always been and should be in bits / seconds.
It has nothing to do with misleading customers.

On that layer those bytes of data are still part of a structure which doesn't only consist of bytes (or maybe not at all). Bits per seconds is therefore the only way to properly represent the connection speed (it's the smallest chunk).

You even proof why it's wrong by saying "divide it by 8 and you get bytes", because that's not always true.

On an ATM DSL-line the ATM-data (which is not in bytes) has to be converted to ethernet and this conversion takes a significant amount of your data (>13%) . A typical 1 Mbit/s DSL connection (based on ATM) will give you a throughput of 110 KB/s and not the 128 KB/s you would get from your calculation. It is still a 1024 Kbit/s connection.

[PiNCH]

While we're on the subject (and way off the original!), what is the difference between MB and MiB? Seems to be the same unit of measurement since no calculation is done when displaying one or the other! :p

[frater]

Althoug k (kilo) means 1000 and M (mega) means million...
We're getting 1024 because chip-memories increase in powers of 2.

So, kB became 1024 bytes and MB became 1024 kB.

Harddisk manufacturers have always used the normal convention of kilo = 1000 and have been criticized for not giving what they are advertizing... It's probably the harddisk industry that is telling us now that we should use MiB when we mean 1,048,576 and MB for 1,000,000 bytes.

"New standard"

1 kiB = 1024 bytes
1 MiB = 1,048,576 bytes

1 kB = 1,000 bytes
1 MB = 1,000,000 bytes

[pletopia]

for the love of god .. please close this pointless thread already

[Lokheed]

Okay, frater is officially a party pooper!

[Lokheed]

Connection speeds have always been and should be in bits / seconds.

I dunno man, I have yet to see anything represent data transfer in bits. Transmission, Safari, Mail.app, iTunes, Transmit, OS X Software Update, and the list goes on and on... I get 320 KB/s steady... no bits here dude... was the same with Windows and Linux... The only time I see bits is when ISPs advertise...