[tahoe-dev] Off-topic: bytes (was: Potential use for personal backup)

[Saint Germain]

On Wed, 23 May 2012 16:15:18 +0100, David-Sarah Hopwood
<david-sarah at jacaranda.org> wrote :

> On 22/05/12 17:54, Saint Germain wrote:
> > On 22 May 2012 18:30, Shawn Willden <shawn at willden.org> wrote:
> >>>> I don't understand what you mean by "1 Go".
> >>>
> >>> Giga-octets. Sorry 1 Gigabyte then.
> >>
> >> Interesting.  That's not an abbreviation I've seen.
> > 
> > It is often used in France but also sometimes to avoid ambiguous
> > units: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octet_%28computing%29
> 
> Note that the only significant computer system that has ever used the
> term "byte" in its official documentation with a definition other than
> an 8-bit unit, is the PDP-10. (The PDP-11 had a completely different
> instruction set and 8-bit bytes.) In that case it is used to mean a
> variable-length bit field, the length being determined dynamically by
> a field in the pointer used for addressing:
> http://pdp10.nocrew.org/docs/instruction-set/Byte.html
> 
> The PDP-10 used words to measure memory size, i.e. its definition
> of byte was not used as a unit.
> 
> Some systems define the size of a C 'char' to be greater than 8 bits,
> but those are not bytes.
> 

Interesting !
I would also add that I suspect that "octet" is mainly used in France
because "byte" and "bit" is pronounced the same and... it's a very
naughty word in franch slang ! ;o)