In High Regard

computer science,

Yesterday, I received the deeply sad message that Prof. Karen Spärck Jones died in the age of 71. During last year’s Microsoft Research Summer School she was one of the judges members evaluating the student’s posters – such as mine. The critics have been quite hard but very effective, clearly telling what was missing and what has to be improved. One of the few valuable reviews.

Some of her artwork can be seen in the public area at Microsoft Research in Cambridge in the Roger Needham Building. Whenever you attend a talk or lecture there, you should have a look…

International System of Units (SI)

computer science,

I found a quite useful overview of international system unit prefixes:

Factor Name Symbol Origin Derivation
2^10 kibi Ki kilobinary: (2^10)^1 kilo: (10^3)^1
2^20 mebi Mi megabinary: (2^10)^2 mega: (10^3)^2
2^30 gibi Gi gigabinary: (2^10)^3 giga: (10^3)^3
2^40 tebi Ti terabinary: (2^10)^4 tera: (10^3)^4
2^50 pebi Pi petabinary: (2^10)^5 peta: (10^3)^5
2^60 exbi Ei exabinary: (2^10)^6 exa: (10^3)^6

Examples and comparisons with system units prefixes

one kibibit 1 Kibit = 2^10 bit = 1024 bit
one kilobit 1 kbit = 10^3 bit = 1000 bit
one mebibyte 1 MiB = 2^20 B = 1 048 576 B
one megabyte 1 MB = 10^6 B = 1 000 000 B
one gibibyte 1 GiB = 2^30 B = 1 073 741 824 B
one gigabyte 1 GB = 10^9 B = 1 000 000 000 B