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

WTF is wrong with moderators

[Anonymous Coward]

Depends *which* NP-Complete problem gets solved by - on Thu December 13, 18:00 (#2702167)
The only thing that would suffer would be algorithms based on that class of problems. Unless someone found a way of solving the entire class of NP-Complete problems. By their nature, i seriously doubt if it is possible to solve beyond a single type of problem. It would require some sort of interrelationship between problem sets. If something on that magnitude were found, the benifits would greatly outweigh the drawbacks as we would have made a great leap forward in the understanding of mathematics.

Original Discussion: Consequences of a Solution to NP Complete Problems?
Rating: Troll.

Re: Sc0re: -1, Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but you're just a score:0 (Idiot) AC, so it doesn't matter much anyway, does it? ;-)

Re:Pointless, Revisionist, And Stupid.

[Bowie J. Poag]

Even at that, a megabyte is megabyte. If you girls cant stand the idea of something not being flush to your idea of a "round number", follow the standard. A ton, by definition is 2000 pounds. A "metric ton" is 2200 pounds.

So call it what its supposed to be called. A megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes. A "metric megabyte" by the same logic should be 1,000,000 bytes.