A Technical History of Apple's Operating Systems

[Fred Cisin]

On Thu, 27 Jul 2006, Dave Dunfield wrote:
> In a way it makes sense ... The general public understands "thousand"
> better than "k", so giving them the number of bytes in thousands will
> give them a better idea of the actual number than a true "k" value
> would - we computer geeks just think differently than everyone else
> I find myself counting non-computer related things in hex all the time
>  (If you are doing it out loud, people nearby look at you strangely
>   and move slightly further away)

and people get especially weirded out when you count on your fingers in
binary (up to 1023).  Just reaching the number 4 upsets them.