captain_caveman2k's Profile

Member since June 22, 2005

  • Name

    captain_caveman2k

  • Location:

    United Kingdom

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Recent Posts

  1. Review - AnyDVD HD

    6.1.2.2 Beta (Feb 17, 2007)

    6.1.2.3 has now been released - which means HD DVD support is now out of beta.

  2. Comment - Western Digital Settles Capacity Suit

    6.1.2.2 Beta (Jun 28, 2006 - 8:38 PM)

    The floppy drive industry was even more confusing than the hard drive instrusty:

    The original 160 KB, 320 KB and 360 KB 5.25" floppy disks used on PC's used KB to mean 1024 bytes.

    The double density 720 KB 3.5" floppy disk never really saw the light of day on the PC as they were quickly superseeded by the 1.44 MB disk, but were more popular on other platforms such as the Sinclair Spectrum (via a Disciple interface), Atari ST, Commodore Amiga (Although tighter formatting allowed a 880 KB capacity out of the same disk), etc... and used KB to mean 1024 bytes.

    The quad density 1.2 MB 5.25" disk, high density 1.44 MB 3.5" disk and extended density 2.88 MB 3.5" disk all used MB to mean 1000 KB and KB to mean 1024 bytes.

    It is even more confusing with other removable media technologies such as floppical, ZIP and CD.

    Floppicals had their sizes quoted as 120 MB and 240 MB where a MB meant 1024 KB which in turn meant 1024 bytes.

    ZIP on the other hand quoted the size of their disks to have 100 MB and 250 MB based around what hard drive manufacturers did.

    CDs are in general 650 MB (74 minute disks) and 700 MB (80 minute disks) where a MB is also quoted as being 1024 KB which again is 1024 bytes.

    It seems strange that the media industry can't make it's mind up whether to use 1000, 1024 or even a combination of 1000 and 1024 (as is the case with QD, HD and ED floppy disks) whilst the rest of the computing industry uses 1024.

    For example: Memory - You buy 1 GB of RAM and you get 1024 MB which in turn is 1024 KB which is 1024 bytes.

  3. Comment - BBC's Radio One Comes to Sirius

    6.1.2.2 Beta (Jun 22, 2005 - 1:16 PM)

    This article doesn't discuss the financial elements of the deal so I would like to know how this is being funded?

    Hopefully the BBC are being paid for the content by SIRIUS and it isn't coming out of the UK television licence fee which is how the BBC currently gets most of it's funding.