"K" is Kelvin (absolute temperature), "k" is kilo (1000).
Also, "b" is bit, "B" is byte (= 8b traditionally, but this is context-dependent as byte width can vary by platform). The binary prefixes are always uppercase followed by a lowercase 'i', e.g., "Ki" is kibi (1024).
So...what was the question?
You can divide meters into 8ths just as well as inches or attoparsecs. 1/8" = 125 mil. Is there something mysterious about that?
Inch measuring devices in the US (and I suppose in the few other places that still use them as customary units; Canada and possibly Britain come to mind) are traditionally divided in powers of 2 fractions. This makes geometry easy -- you can always calculate a fraction by halving the next higher one -- and any fraction can be approximated as a binary fraction, which should be oddly familiar to embedded programmers, but is still not terribly alien to common folk as well.
Correct me if I am wrong, but fractions are still taught in school in metric countries, no? So there's no loss of understanding there.
As for decimal inches, those have been in use for a very long time -- though adoption varies by trade. I want to say aerospace still uses them a disturbing amount; conversely, there isn't a machinist worth his salt that doesn't understand decimal inches (measured in "thous" rather than mils, but same thing).
I personally use customary fractional inches for most mechanical drawings (although I've been in the habit more often of expressing the rounded decimal equivalents), metric (MKS, with multipliers as needed) for technical calculations, and inches/mils for PCB layouts (though any CAD drawings and footprints involved remain in their primary units).
Anything else I punch into Google Calculator and let it handle the conversion.
Tim
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