RE: baud vs. baud rate

["Combs, Richard" <richard -dot- combs -at- Polycom -dot- com>]

Fred Ridder wrote: 
 
> One important nit to pick with Robert's answer:
> 
> When talking about a data transmission rate, the correct abbreviation
is
> kbps rather than kbit/sec. In the case of data transmission, the
"kilo"
> applies to the unit "bits per second" (or bps) rather than referring
to
> kilobits (a different unit) per second. The difference is that 1 kbps
is
> 1000 bits per second, while 1 kilobit per second would be 1024 (2^10)
bits.

I share the preference for kbps -- and it's much more widely used and
understood. But data transmission rates have always been specified using
decimal, not binary, multipliers -- so a kilobit per second is still
1000 bits per second. 

The problem of using the same prefixes for two different numbering
systems, decimal and binary, was supposedly solved when the IEC and
various other bodies adopted a new set of binary-specific prefixes:
kilobinary or kibi (Ki) for 1024, megabinary or mebi (Mi) for 1,048,576,
etc. But I believe there are fewer than 1 Ki people in the entire world
who consistently use them. :-)

Richard


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
------
rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
------





 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help  
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices.
http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/

Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40web.techwr-l.com


To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com

Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/ for more resources and info. 

Please move off-topic discussions to the Chat list, at:
http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l-chat