Megabytes (MB) or Mebibytes (MiB)?

An anonymous reader says: "KernelTrap has an interesting story about megabytes versus mebibytes. Though the article refers to Linux, the topic is applicable to all computers. Will there be a time when all computer users will talk about adding mibibytes of RAM, rather than a megabytes? From the article: '[the kernel patch] changes references from the familiar MB (megabyte) and GB (gigabyte) to the NIST standard MiB (mebibyte) and GiB (gibibyte). According to these standards, technically a megabyte (MB) is a power of ten, while a mebibyte (MiB) is a power of two, appropriate for binary machines. A megabyte is then 1,000,000 bytes. A mebibyte is the actual 1,048,576 bytes that most intend.'"

Comments

Its a lousy goddamn word

[ostiguy]

And that alone will hinder its acceptance.

And will hard drive manufacturors decide to stop lying about the size of their drives? Magic 8 ball says doubtful.

ostiguy

Re:Its a lousy goddamn word

[xigxag]

I agree. It seems to me it would be much more unambiguous to simply state "metric megabytes" for the power of ten, and "long megabytes" for the power of two. No new words to learn, and the definition is crystal clear -- if a HD manufacturer advertises "80 metric GB," you know exactly what you're getting.

In addition, since "80 long GB" sounds like you're getting more (and in fact, you ARE getting more) it might encourage HD makers to switch over to the same measure that RAM makers use, and thereby end all this confusion once and for all.

Re:Its a lousy goddamn word

[vrt3]

It was defined as power of two way back in the beginning. Quit whining.

When was it defined as a power of two? The meaning of mega, kilo, deca, hecto, pico, nano, femto etc. was defined as powers of two back in 1960, when the SI system of units was defined as a standard in the scientific world.

I think it's a kludge that kilo means 1024 in kilobyte, while it means 1000 in kilometer, kilogram, kilonewton, kilovolt etc. It's time we give it up, and accept correct terms. I agree kibi sounds ridiculous, but that's just a matter of habit. We'll get used to it.

Besides, not everywhere in CS kilo is 1024 and mega is 1024*1024: in datacommunications, the correct numbers are used. 10 mbit/s is 10000 bits per second.

Re:Its a lousy goddamn word

[tzanger]

I think it's a kludge that kilo means 1024 in kilobyte, while it means 1000 in kilometer, kilogram, kilonewton, kilovolt etc. It's time we give it up, and accept correct terms. I agree kibi sounds ridiculous, but that's just a matter of habit. We'll get used to it.

I think it's a kludge that hacker means criminal in the media, while it has very good connotations in our circles. It's time we give it up and accept correct terms. I agree cracker sounds ridiculous, but that's just a matter of habit. We'll get used to it.

Re:Its a lousy goddamn word

[Trepidity]

Uhh, the prefix "Mega" is a standard prefix for 1,000,000, and the prefix "kilo" is a standard prefix for "1,000." The use of these prefixes predates the invention of computers. After all, a kilometer is not 1024 meters, so a kilobyte should not be 1024 bytes.

I heard this years ago

[johnburton]

People have been trying to push this for years but there is no chance of it ever happening in my opinion for two reasons - Everyone is already used to the current names and we don't need new ones, and secondly the proposed names sound really stupid.

Good Lord

[kitts]

I have a theory. People who actually get any productive work done couldn't care less about Megabyte vs. Mebibyte. Ditto "hacker" vs "cracker".

Hm... on second thought, maybe not. I'm not getting much productive work done lately and I still don't care about either of the above...

ugly

[suffering.bot]

Alan Cox offers support to this change, "Eric using MiB seems the right thing. Its an ugly but appropriate unit, its at least recommended as a solution by a standards body. We can either redefine SI units ("You cannot change the laws of physics") or find a better label. What better than a recommended one others use.".

That's right: ugly it just doesn't sound right, but it is a more accurate description. I don't see the computer world moving away from MB and GB anytime soon though.

Why not use the real numbers?

[LinuxMacWin]

How come we don't use numbers like

10E9
10E12

and

2E15
2E20

and so on.... No confusion

After all our car tires can work with sizes like 175-70 R13 and son on and we do not mess them up.

something of a linguistic perspective..

[contre]

The thing is, people have adopted the terms megabyte and gigabyte to mean what they do now, the power of two unit insted of the proper power of ten. This is how language evolves - the improper becomes accepted.

The same thing happened with the word Judaism. It's supposed to be pronounced jew-DUH-ism, but in America we call it jew-DEE-ism. While it's not technically correct, everyone knows what you're talking about, and it's the standard, accepted way to talk about the Jewish faith.

Basically this is an effort to reverse linguistic evolution. The current terminology isn't broken for the public which understands gigabyte and megabyte, so don't fix it.

May seem silly now, but...

[mbrubeck]

The different between a gigabyte and a gibibyte is pretty small (7%), but once terabyte and larger arrays become more common, the distinction becomes more and more important. The different between a petabyte and a pebibyte is 13%. An exbibyte is more than 15% larger than an exabyte, which will surely lead to worse confusion than today's "80GB" hard drive specificiations...

Use Attacker

[Effugas]

You need to a soldier to really fight soldiers. You need to be a hacker to really fight hackers.

In the world of hackers, there are attackers, and there are defenders. It's easy to attack. It's much more interesting and important to defend.

--Dan