andre2
join:2005-08-24
Brookline, MA | reply to puddleglum
Re: Crack down said by puddleglum :
It will never happen since the advertising misleads you into thinking you get more than you actually do. Just look at how the marketing droids have gotten you to use kebi instead of kilo. Thats not right. Computers have always been based on powers of 2 (thus 1024 instead of 1000). Trying to make things decimal here only leads to deliberate obfuscation.
I think it's just that each sector of the industry has its own traditional measure, and can't change because it would confuse customers. CDs are sold using power-of-two units, but are incorrectly labeled with power-of-ten units, so a "700 MB" CD is actually 700 MiB which is larger. On the other hand, DVDs use power-of-ten units, so a 4.7 GB DVD is exactly that.
I think the solution is that whenever powers-of-two are meant, the extra "i" should be used in writing the size. If everyone did that, the ambiguity would be gone, since a size without the "i" would always mean power-of-ten. Computer people could pronounce the sizes in the old way if they want (for example pronounce MiB as "megabyte") as long as it's written correctly.
BTW not all computer hardware is based on powers-of-two, for example AFAIK there is no good reason to use powers of two for hard drive sizes, or networking speeds. |
