69 replies to this topic

[Kirkburn]

roadwarrior, on 26 March 2010 - 18:59, said:

This, like many other issues, will never be resolved to the satisfaction of everyone. Those who oppose the use of "kilo", "mega", etc. to mean anything other than various multiples of 10 will always bitch about it. Those who have used computers for decades before this change will always bitch about it being changed. Kind of like how I personally think the French are annoying to the rest of the world by insisting on calling a byte an "octet", so they have their own abbreviations - Ko, Mo, Go, etc.

That can more reasonably be put down to translation differences - it's not changing the definition or anything. It's something used in English anyway: http://en.wikipedia....%28computing%29

Of course it can be resolved, it's just the computing guys will ultimately "lose".

[Syanide]

They've reverted the change as of today, because some apps still read it the old way, and it creates confusion. The change will land in 10.10. From omgubuntu.co.uk.

[roadwarrior]

Kirkburn, on 26 March 2010 - 19:51, said:

Of course it can be resolved, it's just the computing guys will ultimately "lose".

That's why I said it will never be resolved to the satisfaction of everyone. Sort of like the demotion of Pluto. There will always be those who continue to call it a planet because that is what they grew up calling it.

[ThePitt]

I remember a long time ago, when microsoft try to do this and the whole world was against them... And to be honest I dont know. Its like the imperial vs metrial problem/issue.

[kaffra]

Kreuger, on 26 March 2010 - 13:09, said:

Not something that will largely affect me. Frankly I dont care. With harddrives in the TB range and probably larger coming in the next few years, should we really complain over a few bytes (giga, kilo, mega, whatever)?

in a way yes, you wont see much space difference form your old 20GB drive, but in the 1TB drives you are 'losing' around 70GB. As bigger drives come to the market a lot of people are going to wonder what happened to their hundreds of gigs.

[McoreD]

The_Decryptor, on 25 March 2010 - 16:00, said:

Good to see them finally do this, the kernel and most userland tools have been using the proper suffixes for ages.

It also brings it in line with HD makers (who have always done it properly), and helps the end user (having conflicting numbers = bad)

Exactly. Let mega mean million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega-
Confirmed in 1960, it comes from the Greek μέγα.

If you want 1048576 then DON'T call it mega but call it something else = Mebi as IEC suggested.

End of confusion and discussion.

[The_Decryptor]

Seeing some of the comments on Slashdot reminded me, that not every computing related subject uses the whole "kilo = 1,024" idea.

Networking for example uses the standard meanings, 1KBps means 1,000 bytes per second, not 1,024 bytes per second.

Isn't that kinda strange, that a network running at 1GBps, can't download "1GB" of data in a second?

Edit: And yet another one I forgot, speed. A 2Ghz CPU doesn't run at 2,147,483,648 Hertz.

Edited by The_Decryptor, 28 March 2010 - 12:32.

[Growled]

The_Decryptor, on 28 March 2010 - 12:27, said:

Isn't that kinda strange, that a network running at 1GBps, can't download "1GB" of data in a second?

Yes, I've always found that odd. I guess now with 10.10 we can.

[libertas83]

The_Decryptor, on 28 March 2010 - 12:27, said:

Seeing some of the comments on Slashdot reminded me, that not every computing related subject uses the whole "kilo = 1,024" idea.

Networking for example uses the standard meanings, 1KBps means 1,000 bytes per second, not 1,024 bytes per second.

Isn't that kinda strange, that a network running at 1GBps, can't download "1GB" of data in a second?

Edit: And yet another one I forgot, speed. A 2Ghz CPU doesn't run at 2,147,483,648 Hertz.

Your capitalization changes the meaning. Network speeds use 1Gbps which means 1 Giga-bits per seconds. The bit is the lowest unit so 1,000 bits is 1,000 bits. A byte is 8 bits and from then is calculated in Base-2 math. So if you want to convert 1Gbps to 1GBps, you dvide it by 8.

I have never seen this as a major problem for average joes. They simply do not care most of the time.

[Kirkburn]

libertas83, on 28 March 2010 - 18:34, said:

Your capitalization changes the meaning. Network speeds use 1Gbps which means 1 Giga-bits per seconds. The bit is the lowest unit so 1,000 bits is 1,000 bits. A byte is 8 bits and from then is calculated in Base-2 math. So if you want to convert 1Gbps to 1GBps, you dvide it by 8.

I have never seen this as a major problem for average joes. They simply do not care most of the time.

Uh, that's got pretty much nothing to do with what he was saying