b & B, k & K, m & M; was BSO on the radio - not for me anymore

[Dan.Strassberg]

The difference between MB and mb is not seven decimal orders of
magnitude but 10. M = Mega = 10^6; m = milli = 10^-3. 6-(-3) = 9. Nine
decimal orders of magnitude (that is, a factor of 1 billion) right
there. B/b = 10^1, so there's one more. 9+1 = 10. 10^10 = 10 billion.

If the numbers were prefixed with dollar signs, it would be time for
the famous quote from the late Sen. Everett M, Dirksen (Republican of
Illinois--I think): "A billion here, a billion there; pretty soon it
starts to add up to real money."

-----
Dan Strassberg (dan.strassberg@att.net)
eFax 1-707-215-6367

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob DeMattia" <bob.bosra@demattia.net>
To: "boston Radio Interest" <boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
Sent: Friday, October 15, 2010 8:42 PM
Subject: Re: b & B, k & K, m & M; was BSO on the radio - not for me
anymore


Well at least I got the 'k' right  :-).

-Bob


On Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 7:50 PM, Ric Werme <ewerme@comcast.net> wrote:

>
> Dan wrote:
>
> > All of your bit rates are expressed in kB/s (the B is
> > capitalized).
> > The capitalized B means the abbreviation stands for bytes/sec, not
> > bits/sec--a difference of approximately a decimal order of
> > magniture.
> > (When you include the overhead, 1 kB/s is very close to 10 kb/s.)
> > However, I believe that you mean bits/sec. If so, the b should be
> > lower case. Better yet, spell out bits and bytes in all
> > referencees to
> > data rates; the extra work is minimal and you eliminate the
> > confusion.
>
> I figured out he meant b from:
>
> > > Hybrid HD offers
> > > 100 - 150 kB/s which must be divided amongst the subchannels.
>
> Might as well keep going - oops, maybe not.  I was going to gripe
> that SI prefixes greater than unity (K, M, G) are capitalized, and
> those less than unity (m, µ, n) were not.  It appears that kilo is
> lowercase.  (As are hecta and deka.)
>
> I have a lot of trouble when people who should be writing MB write
> mb
> instead.  Only wrong by 7 decimal orders of magnitude....
>
> http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/prefixes.html
>