You would think that a dictionary would be a good place to find the correct word for what you would like to say - but dictionaries are merely records of popular usage - and can disagree considerably with the vocabulary used in different cultural and religious contexts.
Even different engineering sectors use the same word to mean different things. Human nature warps and bends the meaning of words. It does so with such force that it is often impossible to encourage any consistency.
Where did won't come from?
One would expect that the contraction of will not would be win't... Actually, will is the impostor! This anomaly came about because will was originally woll. So it is correct to shorten woll not to won't. This is a typical example of how English came to be such a minefield of exceptions - and such a great language for making shameless plays on words.
All nations are to blame for bending and buckling language conventions that have tried to reign. UK English speakers laugh at the American aluminum - where it is in fact the correct name for the metal - if the usual metal naming conventions are observed. The Wright brothers developed a thing that they correctly called an aeroplane - and the American public just decided to call it an airplane instead. So you get aluminium aeroplanes and aluminum airplanes, and the score is even.
Iron cars
Actually, saying that aeroplanes are made from aluminium is as silly as saying that cars are made from iron. We all know that cars are made from steel - an alloy of iron, manganese and some carbon. Aircraft (now there is a safe word) are actually made from Alclad - which is an aluminium/aluminium alloy (clad with pure aluminium) and is considerably more durable than plain aluminium. Is this a new thing? Hardly! Düralumin came into existence in 1906 and was already in widespread use as duralumin, or dural for short, during World War Two. The modern equivalent has strength that is comparable with structural steel, and it is mostly aluminium, with about 4% copper and smaller quantities of nickel and magnesium. The thin layer of pure aluminium on the surface is to inhibit corrosion, and the reason for the name Alclad.
The kilomegagiga konpheusion
Going back to words: We have these really useful prefixes that enable us to easily pronounce and express larger amounts of various quantities. They are very logical and widely understood and accepted. The prefixes that I am concentrating on in particular are kilo, mega and giga. Everybody knows that kilo means a thousand, mega means a million and giga means a thousand million (or an American billion). All was well and the sun shone brightly until the digital revolution suddenly swamped us with binary multiples that did not neatly divide into multiples of a thousand.
Since 210 (1024) was pretty close to 1000, they chose to use kilo to mean 1024. This was fine as long as they worked in their little world - they knew what they meant. But as with all engineering disciplines, in time different disciplines have to work together, and you end up with one word taking on different meanings. The digital revolution grew so fast that the number of folk happily abusing the decimal prefixes also grew rapidly. So now you have a great many people who are so accustomed to calling a 1024 bytes a kilobyte, that it is impossible to get them to accept a standard that makes sense.
The IEC's offering
In 1998 the International Electrotechnical Commission came up with a sensibly derived set of prefixes especially for binary multiples. They managed to make them easy to differentiate from the decimal versions, while keeping them familiar. (Not a bad effort if you ask me!) The prefixes that they came up with are as follows:
one kibibyte (kilo binary), 1 KiB = 210 bytes = 1024 bytes
one mebibyte (mega binary), 1 MiB = 220 bytes = 1 048 576 bytes
one gibibyte (giga binary), 1 GiB = 230 bytes = 1 073 741 824 bytes
The objections have been truly petty - the only real reason for the reluctance is the inertia of thousands of people who are not interested in breaking an ageing bad habit.
Bits and bytes
There is also a need for accepted abbreviations for bits and bytes. The ongoing confusion in this area has caused some to give up in disgust and always write (or print) the units out in full. Is it really not possible for those in authority to resolve that b is for bits and B is for bytes - and enforce it?
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