No, 'Byte' exists outwith any system - its a unit of measurement. Mega
No, both are binary units. It does not exist without a
binary "thing" existing to have a "byte", it is in fact
binary only.
It doesn't matter how many 'states' something has, you can still count them
using any mathematical base. An example:
If I throw a coin in the air it will land on a head (0) or a tale (1) - a
binary choice, so lets call it a bit. There is nothing wrong with me
counting the quantity of these bits using any base I choose - binary,
decimal, octal, hexidecimal etc. The fact that a bit is a binary digit
doesn't matter, we are talking about how many of these throws (or bits)
there are. I might even choose to group my coin throws in clusters of 8 and
call these clusters of 8 throws a byte. I might then perform scientific
tests on probability and perform 1000 bytes, which I would refer to as a
kilobyte.
YES it can - Something can have any number of potential choices (2 or 50)
but it will only be in one of those choices or 'states' at any point in time
and we only need space to store one state for each element. For a bit we
need 2 possible states, but it doesn't matter how many states something has,
or what state each bit is in, its the number of elements that we are
counting. And we can count those elements using any base or any numbering
system we choose. If we choose to use a decimal (base 10) system, then we
can shorten the numbering using the standard mathematical mechanism of 1,000
chunks and refer to kilo, mega etc.
[snip]
You are ignoring that writing 1000 is not the same thing as
writing Kilobyte.
YES IT IS THE SAME - kilo means 1000. You said yourself that "Approximations
aren't sufficient", so kilo can't mean 1024 because that is a approximation
of the true definition of kilo - 1000.
Either number system can express that
quantity, but that is because the quantity is FIXED, it does
not vary based on which system is used. WIth the misuse of
Kilobyte as you did above
I didn't misuse kilobyte - kile means 1000 and byte is a unit to describe 8
bits.
, or Gigabyte as HDD manufacturers
do, the opposite is true and breaks a basic law- that no
matter what base is used, the actual quantity does not
change.
Precisly - the actual quantity does not change. kilo means 1000 so you can't
change it to mean 1024, mega means 1,000,000 and you can't change it to mean
1048,xxx.