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XKCD: Kilobyte

xkcd.com — *****

Bury

BlueRat 258 days ago, made popular 258 days ago

2054 diggs
digg it

164 Comments
Who Dugg It?

virtualball, on 03/10/2008, -7/+205Submitted at 12:02 AM?

Now, you're just banking on a front page, aren't you?
- BlueRat, on 03/10/2008, -8/+78Hey I was up *shrug*, If I didn't, someone else would have
  - mickael1, on 03/10/2008, -20/+5I don't want to be part of the dupe police, but you actually submitted the story after some other guy posted it, and went as far as to include a snide comment in his submission. Classy.
    - Archon810, on 03/10/2008, -1/+4you do know how to count right, mickael1? oh, wait, no you don't.
    - BlueRat, on 03/10/2008, -2/+3First, i submitted two minutes before him, and telling him he submitted the wrong link but digging him anyway is hardly sniping...
    - oxygen911, on 03/10/2008, -0/+11Guys!!! Can't you see that you're both in love with one another!??
- markwilcox, on 03/10/2008, -12/+5hi virtualball. let me tell you about time zones.
  - virtualball, on 03/10/2008, -1/+11Hi markwilcox, lemme tell you about how xkcd works. They post a new comic every MWF at exactly 12 AM EST.
    - redfox2600, on 03/10/2008, -5/+1What if you're in Japan and it's only 1pm.
    - vyralinfection, on 03/10/2008, -0/+10How does this apply to astronauts??
- antdude, on 03/10/2008, -4/+3I was going to submit it, but got distracted. ;)
- TnTBass, on 03/10/2008, -1/+16Oh man, I wish I had submitted it so I could be popular on teh internets!
HomestarsOnDigg, on 03/10/2008, -5/+74I think I'm more confused than I was before.
TheWindBlows, on 03/10/2008, -301/+17XKCD is...

.

.

.

.

WIN!!!
(i know im a bastard)
- theaceoffire, on 03/10/2008, -1/+53Good, than me burying you won't surprise you.
- wzrds3, on 03/10/2008, -1/+95I buried your comment just so I didn't have to scroll through it.
  - metateck, on 03/10/2008, -0/+8"...
    WIN!!!
    (i know im a bastard)"
    
    was the bottom.
- Lane, on 03/10/2008, -1/+29I don't know what it is but what ever is at the bottom of that comment isn't worth the effort.
- garfonzo, on 03/10/2008, -1/+37I'll save those who bury before scrolling....
  
  nothing worth scrolling for. Just bury.
  - Scynet, on 03/10/2008, -1/+3And report. AND block.
- JoshuaH, on 03/10/2008, -3/+22Why does Digg even allow people to make a comment that takes up that much space?
  - zbarnett, on 03/10/2008, -1/+3Because people need a little bit of freedom once in a while.
  - edwartica, on 03/10/2008, -1/+1Yeah, imagine if that's what they said about the declaration of Independence? We would all still be drinking tea with King George!
- Karmavs, on 03/10/2008, -0/+5LOSE!!!
  (I know you're a bastard too)
- bob12321, on 03/10/2008, -1/+6Buried, reported, and ***** blocked.
- LastDitchHero, on 03/10/2008, -3/+1TL:DL (too long didn't look)
- Zybergod, on 03/10/2008, -0/+3I have a 30" screen and that STILL pissed me off!
- Ub3rL33ch, on 03/10/2008, -22/+1
  
  *****
- trisweb, on 03/10/2008, -0/+1Dugg up, a drop in the bucket, but still. Anything that annoys people without a sense of humor is a good thing.
Jeffler, on 03/10/2008, -37/+2Stereotypical American's Kilobyte: How they fit that much into their mouth, I'll never know!
- DarkSamus, on 03/10/2008, -0/+4suck my exabyte
kewlito, on 03/10/2008, -31/+21Why do ALL xkcd's get to the frontpage? I mean, it's not news or something... Just suscribe to the RSS feed guys.
- PHiZ187, on 03/10/2008, -3/+19You're right that they're not news. However, it is nice to be able to comment/talk about them with the Digg community.
- danisth, on 03/10/2008, -14/+5why does someone have to make this comment EVERY time an XKCD gets submitted.
  - rpgmaker, on 03/10/2008, -0/+1Or every WINE update. I agree with them BTW.
- markwilcox, on 03/10/2008, -10/+2they don't actually. just ~66% of them.
  there's 3 a week so...
- vivalagoat, on 03/10/2008, -1/+4or i could just use the Digg RSS feed and only have to see the good ones?
- Audacitor, on 03/10/2008, -1/+7Digg IS my RSS feed.
rockon4life45, on 03/10/2008, -15/+3kilobytes rule!
PHiZ187, on 03/10/2008, -11/+78Anyone that doesn't get the Pentium FPU one is a web 2.0 newb-ass.
Hint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug (1994 bitches!)
- Flashman, on 03/10/2008, -0/+15The comic is accurate, too - the value is 0.99993898654 * 1024, the exact amount of error caused by the FDIV bug, give or take some rounding :)
- staticneuron, on 03/10/2008, -7/+1The comic got KiB wrong becaus KiB is just 1000bytes.
  - Karmavs, on 03/10/2008, -3/+2The comic never states the value of the KiB
    - InferiorWang, on 03/10/2008, -0/+6yeah it does. The comic calls it an imaginary kilobyte with a value 1024i or 1024*sqrt(-1).
      - Ataxia2008, on 03/10/2008, -4/+1Is that like 1080i?
  - Lewiji, on 03/10/2008, -0/+4Okay. Good. Now read the rest of the comic...
  - IllBeBack, on 03/10/2008, -0/+3Whoosh?
- ModernGeek, on 05/16/2008, -0/+1dugg for web 2.0 newb-ass.
ani625, on 03/10/2008, -5/+37This did NOT make it any clear. Damn.
*opens wikipedia*
- haidalangara, on 03/10/2008, -3/+4*clearER
- evanscott07, on 03/10/2008, -0/+4 "Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject. So you know you are getting the best possible information." -Michael Scott
markwilcox, on 03/10/2008, -6/+69xkcd should put ads on their site, or at least a donate button
- elmetald00d, on 03/10/2008, -7/+28we all use adblock, he'd generate no income.
  
  amirite amirite?
  - Shorties, on 03/10/2008, -1/+11Wait how does he generate income currently? Thats a lot of bandwidth he has to sustain. (I mean he is dugg multiple times a week).
    - cleverhandle, on 03/10/2008, -1/+26he actually has a lot of quality stuff in his store: shirts, stickers, posters, etc...
    - Akaji, on 03/10/2008, -0/+3His comics are some of the most sloganable (that should be a word) out there. Tons of people buy shirts, posters, etc.
- Kragit, on 03/10/2008, -0/+21You could always buy something from the store ;)
  - smrekar, on 03/10/2008, -0/+11Now that is stupid, why would i want to spend money when i can give it away?
pennyfan87, on 03/10/2008, -2/+59Screw the hard disk companies. At least RAM manufacturers haven't bit yet.
Could you imagine the confusion?
- tomee, on 03/10/2008, -16/+3Screw the 1024 standard. That was an optimization at a time when a division was a very time consuming operation that might even have to be programmed by hand. These days we really ought to adhere to the universal meaning of "kilo", which is 1000 and always has been.
  - SaxxonPike, on 03/10/2008, -1/+161024 is used because it is 2^10 (full use of 10 bits) and it's a whole lot easier for the machine to deal with. It's only called Kilo because it's *close* to 1000 and people (who actually know the metric system anyway) are generally familiar with the fact that mega is bigger than kilo and so on... counting using 1000 would result in wasted space.
    - chingy1788, on 03/10/2008, -0/+8that and memory can only be made/setup in powers of 2
    - Double0Doug, on 03/10/2008, -3/+7As a science guy who has become familiar with the metric system I’ve always wondered why a kilobyte was 1024 and not 1000 like everything metric. That is the best explanation I’ve heard yet.
    - Xanaver, on 03/11/2008, -0/+2And to expand on Saxxon's point. It is the way the numbers are handled through binary systems. It starts with 1 and double each increment. for example 9 would be written as 1001 in binary because the way it is set up. When you are doing a manual conversion of binary it is always written from right to left. A small table showing how to write 9 in binary:
      
      32 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
      0 0 1 0 0 1
      
      The computer adds the 8 and 1 together which gives you 9. The leading zeros are dropped. So if you wanted to deal with bigger numbers you would just double the most left hand result and put it on the very left. Do this enough times and you will reach 1024. That is why they use that instead of just the 1000 increment. And that is also why Ram is in the sizes it is. Ex: 256, 512, 1024(1GB) Hope that clears some things up. If you want more info check out http://www.kerryr.net/pioneers/binary.htm
      
      EDIT: Sorry the formatting doesnt work. So for an explanation of my number check out the website.
moneyswears, on 03/10/2008, -6/+160OMG AN XKCD COMIC!
- Pritchard, on 03/10/2008, -19/+1*OMG AN XKCD COMIC!!!!?????
- tas08, on 03/10/2008, -0/+1It was funny, I wish more of these things made it to the front page of Digg!
dotancohen, on 03/10/2008, -2/+25The KiB cracked me up.
JoeB4ever, on 03/10/2008, -5/+32they forgot KBe, Kilobite, where you get 1024 different types of rabies.
- MJDub, on 03/10/2008, -5/+1There's more than one type?
- justok, on 03/10/2008, -1/+38no one needs more than 640 types of rabies
  - surKaz, on 03/10/2008, -0/+5well, I believe no one needs more than 512 types of rabies... even though you may get 480 in reality,,, they still say 512... I think the remaining 32 are imaginary..
jamezracer, on 03/10/2008, -6/+6I wish I could come up with something funny, but once again mr munroe has created another brilliant comic
Archon810, on 03/10/2008, -3/+5The comparisons were actually quite funny. All of them, and the subject hit right on the dot.
Trav3133, on 03/10/2008, -24/+17This comic totally kilo-BITES!
- Ozymandias42, on 03/10/2008, -0/+6Ah, man, the chart didn't cover that case. I have no idea to exactly which degree you think it sucks!
appletalk, on 03/10/2008, -27/+25Not funny
- PolishLogic, on 03/10/2008, -5/+3Are they ever?
  - Akaji, on 03/10/2008, -3/+3Go back to Youtube, non-nerds.
    I miss the good ol' Digg days...
    - PolishLogic, on 03/10/2008, -1/+2Ugh, we get it, you're too cool for the room.
WeirdEdsel, on 03/10/2008, -27/+52I'm actually getting kind of tired seeing XKCD on digg.
- yohnstoppable, on 03/10/2008, -5/+17I don't mind seeing the good ones on digg. Unfortunately for this one...
  - benplaut, on 03/10/2008, -0/+8Almost every single one gets on digg...
    - ggoyal, on 03/10/2008, -0/+2Not almost - Every single one Definitely does.
      
      Its not difficult - set up an RSS feed for XKCD - you will see a new one whenever it appears. The only good thing of it being on digg would be to read peoples' comments.
    - Promantarius, on 03/10/2008, -2/+1If it wasn't XKCD it'd be something else that people moaned about being on the front page constantly. And if nothing was repeated on the front page with any sort of regularity people would complain about that too. Can't satisfy everybody; just ignore the articles you don't want to read. Hell you can filter them out with a half-decent RSS reader.
    - insllvn, on 03/10/2008, -2/+1Blah balh balh people may not have discovered XKCD blah blah no comment section on XKCD blah.
      
      Seriously if you don't like it just STFU, GTFO of the thread, and ignore them in the future.
garfonzo, on 03/10/2008, -16/+114195835.0/3145727.0 = 1.333 739 068 902 037 589
- phatvolvo, on 03/10/2008, -4/+1no! NO! STOP! digg him up.
- keyme, on 03/10/2008, -0/+5Inaccurate.
  - garfonzo, on 03/10/2008, -1/+1uh, exactly.
Jo9100, on 03/10/2008, -8/+3I'm surprised nobody quoted the alt title for today:
"I would take 'kibibyte' more seriously if it didn't sound so much like 'Kibbles N Bits'."
- HonestAbe, on 03/10/2008, -1/+1Yeah it's sure a lot sillier sounding than "killa' bite".
Sryden42, on 03/10/2008, -8/+1Well, if our silly math system wasn't based on how many fingers we had maybe base 8 would make sense.

Time for a revolution! Next: metric time!
- Hefelumpman, on 03/10/2008, -0/+4http://swatch.com/internettime/
  
  been done :P
- Karmavs, on 03/10/2008, -0/+4Any base would make sense (though having a base thats too low leads to extremely long numbers (1000000 = 11110100001001000000 in binary), while having one too high leads to having to remember a bunch more symbols. Base 60 would be awesome though—and the chinese don't seem bothered by having thousands of symbols to give meaning to
TheCheeks, on 03/10/2008, -13/+22Gee, XKCD posted a new comic? Would have never known... *rolls eys*
- spyd3rweb, on 03/10/2008, -2/+2Yes and they need to submit it to digg every single time.
  - elmetald00d, on 03/10/2008, -1/+1cant you just rss it?
Hefelumpman, on 03/10/2008, -10/+5I love xkcd, but this one was pretty weak.

Kibibytes ftw.
Elihj, on 03/10/2008, -16/+3this would be funnier if i knew what he was talking about

buried
- JoeB4ever, on 03/10/2008, -0/+12you comment just said "I am not a nerd"
  - Karmavs, on 03/10/2008, -0/+2…but yet, here you are, on digg.
- Matthew386x, on 03/10/2008, -0/+7n00B
gpace1216, on 03/10/2008, -14/+9was that supposed to be funny?
xieodeluxed, on 03/10/2008, -6/+1sooo what happened in 1979?
- poptoppyramid, on 03/10/2008, -0/+3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979
matador3, on 03/10/2008, -8/+3XKCD kilobytes my ass
veeshy, on 03/10/2008, -6/+1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilobyte
wikipedia even seems confused
KiB real btw (not quantum)
- chingy1788, on 03/10/2008, -0/+2i^2 = -1
  complex numbers =D
  - bob12321, on 03/10/2008, -2/+2i^2 = -1
    i^2 = +1
HonestAbe, on 03/10/2008, -0/+34"Apparently, Plaintiff believes that he could sue an egg company for fraud for labeling a carton of 12 eggs a “dozen,” because some bakers would view a “dozen” as including 13 items." - Western Digital after being sued for labeling 1,000,000,000 bytes as a gigabyte.
OrangeTide, on 03/10/2008, -2/+8not a particularly good XKCD.
Also does not have Kilobites or any reference to Trilobytes.
pearlygate, on 03/10/2008, -9/+3buried for another xkcd reference.
Ploosheeta, on 03/10/2008, -1/+27I'm too lazy to type in xkcd.com so I just wait for the new comics to be posted on Digg.
SaxxonPike, on 03/10/2008, -1/+4I feel sorry for those who are taking this chart seriously (and even more sorry for people who printed it out, not realizing... haha)
Especially got a kick out of the crack at the FDIV bug.
CrudeDarkness, on 03/10/2008, -14/+8xkcd is as stupid as always. And I will get buried for insulting its Holiness..
- TrevorBradley, on 03/10/2008, -0/+3Done, and done!
- bosssmiley, on 03/10/2008, -0/+2Let's see you do better then.
- Kragit, on 03/10/2008, -3/+610 - XKCD
  9
  8
  ...
  2
  1
  0 - CrudeDarkness
  
  10 being completely awesome. 0 being complete troll.
- ZeroSumDivide, on 03/10/2008, -0/+0Nah, I buried you more for pissing on the parade. Don't read/click it if you don't like it.
fleischkopf, on 03/10/2008, -2/+13to be fair, this particular xkcd installment looks like it actually took slightly more than 30 seconds to draw. look how straight those lines are.
orangeLemon, on 03/10/2008, -6/+4GAH! XKCD again. You know they do have a web page of their own don't you? You don't have to upload every single one to digg, especially the unfunny ones (like this one.)
TomK, on 03/10/2008, -8/+7x k c d f t w !
- Adamlite, on 03/10/2008, -1/+1o m g s t f u !
Zippo, on 03/10/2008, -3/+3Ugh, I wish manufacturers would market their drives in binary Gigabytes, just to alleviate some confusion... but, of course, then the drives would look like they were smaller... which is why they're marketed in metric: it makes them look bigger. ***** hell.

Same with produce in the grocery store I worked in. All the computers measured in kg, but all the price tags were in pounds (with kg in small type underneath) because 99¢/lb looks cheaper than $2.20/kg.
- HonestAbe, on 03/10/2008, -5/+1Ugh, I wish Windows would display file sizes in decimal megabytes, just because it makes a hell of a lot more sense than binary. Why does a user care that their file is divided up into binary sectors? File sizes are arbitrary, and should be measured in decimal like everything else.
  - explodingtree, on 03/10/2008, -1/+3I wish I could fly. :P
jasonlfunk, on 03/10/2008, -3/+9Don't get me wrong, I love Xkcd. But this was not digg worthy.
brian1027, on 03/10/2008, -5/+3I swear I've seen these xkcd comics all over the place- Digg, Redit, Fark. I swear I've never thought that a single one of them was funny or even clever, really just boring! Which makes me wonder who posts this stuff to all these sites? Could it be the authors?
- enum, on 03/10/2008, -0/+0Like most things of this nature, many are funny, some aren't. The fact that you think that *none* of them have been funny simply means a good number of them have been way over your head.
- insllvn, on 03/10/2008, -0/+2Warning: XKCD comics occasionally contain strong language (which may be unsuitable for children), unusual humor (which may be unsuitable for adults), and advanced mathematics (which may be unsuitable for liberal-arts majors).
  - darlingt, on 03/10/2008, -0/+3"What are you in college for?" "I'm a liberal arts major. Would you like fries with that?"
Jaspah, on 03/10/2008, -1/+1Dugg for drivemaker's kilobyte. :D
mizike, on 03/10/2008, -1/+2wow, what the ***** happened to XKCD??? I can see why half the thread is pissed off, it hasn't been funny in months yet we're subjected to it on the front page 3x a week....
ebbv, on 03/10/2008, -8/+3STOP ***** DIGGING UP EVERY ***** XKCD GOD DAMMIT YOU IDIOTS!
mkameli, on 03/10/2008, -2/+1Baker's kilobyte made me lol.
Brade, on 03/10/2008, -7/+3STOP PUTTING ALL THESE ON DIGG. this one isn't even that funny...
- davidkeithjones, on 03/10/2008, -0/+2Don't Digg it if you think that way, thats the whole point of Digg.
alanwarp, on 03/10/2008, -0/+4I thought
kb (kilobit) = 1024 bits
kB (kilobyte) = 1024 bytes
harddrive makers = greedy liars
- tybris, on 03/10/2008, -0/+3Nope, a 100Mbps ethernet is just 1000000bps. Except in leap years of course.
- Rojahon, on 03/10/2008, -0/+2I'm pretty sure it's like this:
  kb = 1000 bits
  kB = 1000 bytes
  kib = 1024 bits
  kiB = 1024 bytes
davidkeithjones, on 03/10/2008, -1/+2someone please explain quantum computing in a sentence, thanks.
- insllvn, on 03/10/2008, -0/+5The positive and negative charges, which represent 1's and 0's in traditional computing, are replaced by qubits, or quantum bits which are quantum particles that have 3 possible charges rather than 2, thus allowing for more efficient and smaller computer with a vastly different paradigm than modern binary computers.
- uhhNo, on 03/11/2008, -0/+0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing
Velvolver, on 03/10/2008, -2/+6HOLY CRAP, I thought these regularly didn't even break the "kinda funny" barrier.

But this one takes the ***** cake, unbelievably how unfunny this is. Fanboys of this stupid comic will bury me for this, but I'll never sink as low as this strip does.
YoWaldorf, on 03/10/2008, -3/+1i don't get this so i'm not a geek - yay!
smrekar, on 03/10/2008, -0/+9LkB = 4 8 15 16 23 42
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XKCD: Kilobyte

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