how long is a kilobyte?

[border-rider]

A related issue applies to mobile phone bases stations - the theoretical limit on cell size is about 37 km, because of the speed of light and the risk of the transmission frames slipping by a whole slot

[redshift]

gawds... computing definitions, propagation delay and comms issues.  I come on here during lunch to get away from this kind of stuff.  I don't know, the Lighting Director was asking about RS-232C the other day.  You lot'll be talking about camera colorimetry next...   

[Charlotte]

[Wombat]

More annoying are the people who should know the difference between 1kb and 1kB but don't.

but not as annoying as the hardware engineers I used to work with who use kb to represent kilobits.

Err, that's exactly what I was saying.

1kb is 1 kilobit.

1kB is 1 kilobyte.

The capitalisation is important. I agree that it often leads to confusion, but that's because ill-informed people use it wrongly.

That is I suspect, because many ill-informed people have never been informed at all, hence don't have an earthly chance of understanding the significance of the difference.  If you've never been told the truth, you have no reference point to judge if what is before you, is true or not.   A bit philosophical for me....

[tiermat]

XKCD FTW again....