Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 12:00:34 +0100 (MET)
From: dwguest@win.tue.nl (Guest section DW)
See also http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/prefixes.html and
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html .
An interesting question to consider is whether we think it's a good idea
to start adopting the proposed IEEE notation for binary multiples, i.e
name Name Symbol
2**10 kibi Ki
2**20 mebi Mi
2**30 gibi Gi
2**40 tebi Ti
So 1024 bytes == 1 KiB, 1024*1024 bytes == 1 MiB, etc.... and 1 MB is
exactly 1,000,000 bytes, 1GB is exactly 1,000,000,000 bytes, and so on.
This has the advantage of being precise, and removing the ambiguity of
exactly what did people mean by "8.4GB"? The disadvantage is that it's
not clear to me how successful this new proposed nomenclature will work
out. The proponents mean well, and the scheme is logical and
well-thought out. On the other hand, ...
My point of view would be that the main goal of the proposal is to
offer an alternative. 1 GB = 10^9 B, but what if you really mean 2^30 B?
Now there is a notation for that, too: 1 GiB.
Maybe nobody expects these new symbols to be used a lot -
they just serve to keep the old symbols clean.
One potential solution would be print the message both ways. I.e.,
print out that the disk sizes both in "megabytes" and "mebibytes".
Yes. I dislike the names, but the symbols are good enough,
so in the new version of the Large Disk HOWTO one can read
"This allows access of up to 8.4 GB (7.8 GiB)."
So instead of saying just this:
hda: IBM-DTCA-24090, 3909MB w/468kB Cache, CHS=993/128/63
we'd print out something like this:
hda: IBM-DTCA-24090, 3909MB (3727 MiB) w/468KiB Cache, CHS=993/128/63
Yes. Probably
hda: IBM-DTCA-24090, 4100MB (3910 MiB) w/468KiB Cache, CHS=993/128/63
It's more verbose, true, but when you consider the millions and millions
of innocent electrons slaughtered every few months as this thread
repeatedly comes vampire-like back from the dead, it might just be worth
it. :-)
Exactly.
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