Re: Configure.help editorial policy

Kai Henningsen
2001-12-27T14:21:15Z

reid.hekman@ndsu.nodak.edu (Reid Hekman) wrote on 20.12.01 in <1008883684.4704.0.camel@localhost.localdomain>:

> On Thu, 2001-12-20 at 15:07, Mark Hahn wrote:

> > > 1024 decimal kilobyte disk
> > > 8.4 decimal gigabyte disks

> > though as your example showed, there's very little, if any,
> > ambiguity: disk is always decimal, memory is always binary, etc.

Ah, but the problem with this is that it's *wrong*.

Disk is not always decimal. Nor is it always binary. Most disk sizes are
an unholy mixture of the two that deserves a stake through the heart,
where 1 GB = 1,024,000,000 bytes.

If even people here do not understand how this works, then can it possibly
be the right way of doing things?!

> More importantly, less educated users than yourself might not strike up
> the distinction between disk and memory units. The common example being,
> "why does my 9.1GB hard drive show up as 8.9GB?" Rather than explain

A current "9.1GB" hard disk would, if dc didn't lie to me, be either 9.3
GB (decimal) or 8.7 GiB (binary).

> For me, my reasons for full names are consistency and aesthetics --
> allowing us to sidestep the abortion that the IEC has created of SI
> units.

So you'll be saying "9.3 milliards of bytes" - or is it "billions" where
you live?

MfG Kai