a bit is the state of one binary switch, the value is
either on or off or 1 or 0.
a bit by itself is not very useful, but,
an array of bits can form words or commands.
a nibble is 4 bits
a byte is 8 bits and is the basic word length.
Since we have only two states for a bit, 0 or 1 you can use
any scientific calculator (including the one in Windows XP
(open the calc.exe and select view) to calculate the powers
of 2^x
2^2=4
2^3=8
2^16=65,536
2^32=4,294,967,296
2^64=18,446,744,070,000,000,000 or 1.844674407x10^19
|
| > What in the world are you talking about with the
210bytes,
| > 220bytes, etc?
|
| I think he meant 2 to the power of 10 (1024 bytes/1 KB), 2
to the
| power of 20 (1048576 bytes/1 MB), and so on.
|
| Wendy: if you're at all curious,
|
http://atrevida.comprenica.com/atrtut01.html is a
step-by-step
| introduction to octal, binary and hexadecimal numbers. It
might help
| you understand why the "Kilos" are only approximately
thousands, the
| "Megas" only approximately millions, and so on. (They're
often
| spelled with capital letters -- "Kilobyte" vs.
"kilogram" -- to
| distinguish them from the proper "decimal system" kilos.)
|
| ~Ally
|
| --
| Never send a monster to do the work of an evil scientist.