Re: Configure.help editorial policy

Kai Henningsen
2001-12-27T13:48:03Z

bcrl@redhat.com (Benjamin LaHaise) wrote on 21.12.01 in <20011221160333.K15926@redhat.com>:

> On Sat, Dec 22, 2001 at 09:57:11AM +1300, Chris Wedgwood wrote:
> > I don't want to get dragged into this silly debate; the point I was
> > making is that we already have considerable inconsistency and choosing
> > STANDARDS BASED tokens might not be a bad thing.
>
> They're defacto standards that have been in use for well over a decade.

And it's been wrong for all of that decade, because the rest of the world
- *all* of it - has been using a different version for quite a bit longer
than that.

> Hmmm, all of the advertising, computer media and electrical engineering
> related material I've read recently seems to be using GB. In fact, there
> was one very article about the whole issue that found the computer
> industry to be remarkably consistent in using terms like "10GB" with no
> space between the number and the measuring unit. Oh wait, sorry, that's
> not formally approved by any standards bodies.

Unfortunately, while the typesetting may be consistent, the *meaning*
isn't. You cannot swap out 10GB RAM to a 10GB hard disk, it will overflow.

> Many standards bodies are examples of confusopolies.

Well, this particular "de facto standard" certainly is a confusopoly.

MfG Kai