>
> Folks,
> I've had to deal with GB == power of 2 or 10 quite a bit in
> government contracts and with lmbench result reporting. There are a
> bunch of good arguments on both sides of the issue. I've come up with
> the following "standard" which I use in the new lmbench:
>
> mb = 2^20
> MB = 1,000,000
>
> and so on. It seems to cause the least pain. I can still say
>
> lmdd if=/dev/rsda0 bs=5k
>
> and get 5*1024, which is a 512 byte block aligned request, which is what
> a lot of unix systems want.
>
> MB and mb don't conflict with the commonly used Mb which typically means
> Mbits.
>
But according to "Reference Data for Engineers", Capital letters are to be
used only for proper names, i.e., us is microsconds, uS is microseimens.
There is a reference to "grandfarthered" usage such as mA is milliamperes
and MA is mega-amperes. This is because mega and milli start with "m", but
the allowance goes away with everything but "m". Note that mHz and MHz and
very different, i.e., MHz is megahertz (1000 cycles per second) and mHz is
millihertz (1/1000th of a cycle per second). Note that MB won't hack it
unless "B" stands for Mr. Bell, i.e., dB (decibels).
I am afraid that the Disc Drive vendors are just going to have to deal
with the truth. If brand 1.2gb is really 0.9gb they should be exposed.
Cheers,
Dick Johnson
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Richard B. Johnson
Project Engineer
Analogic Corporation
Voice : (508) 977-3000 ext. 3754
Fax : (508) 532-6097
Modem : (508) 977-6870
Ftp : ftp@boneserver.analogic.com
Email : rjohnson@analogic.com, johnson@analogic.com
Penguin : Linux version 2.1.15 on an i586 machine.
Warning : It's hard to remain at the trailing edge of technology.
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