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

Pronounciation

[OblongPlatypus]

"Maybe Byte"?

Re:Pronounciation

[abe ferlman]

No, you're confusing it with "maybebyte", a standard used by hard drive manufacturers to represent "Megabyte" or "Mebibyte", whichever is less expensive to produce. Maybebyte is abbreviated MB. Anyone who complains that this ambiguity is misleading is an anti-business open-standards lunatic.

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.

Conflict

[OblongPlatypus]

We have a potential conflict here. Megabytes and gigabytes are often referred to as "megs" and "gigs", right? Problem is, gibs is taken.

Metric Revolution

[euroderf]

Kilobytes and Megabytes may have seemed like a decent measure back in the 70's, when it was important to quantize easily down to the byte level and all the users were computer scientists anyway, but these days it is rather archaic.

Most users don't know how many bytes are in a megabyte or a kilobyte, or think (naturally) 1000 rather than 1024.

However, hard drive manufacturers already use Megabyte to specifically mean 1,000,000 bytes, Before long computer OS's and RAM manufacturers will use the same definition.

Why come up with a new 'Mebibyte' system? What does 'kilo-' and 'mega-' actually mean? Answer: 1000 and 1,000,000, not the perversion of the computer scientists.

Now that computers are becoming more popular, the meaning of the terms megabyte and kilobyte are shifting back to compatibility with normal English usage.

There is no need for new terms at all, IMHO.

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.

And here's the mainstream news version...

[aiken_d]

Flash: a sudden rash of brutal murders by IT managers has shocked the country. Already strained relations between managers and tech workers exploded into violence in late December with news the "megabytes" are actually "mibibytes."

Joe, a slashdot reading techie, heads into the IT Manager's office after a staff meeting.

IT Manager: "Hey, Joe, accounting finally approved your requisition for another 512 megs for the development oracle box. Go ahead and order it."
Joe the Tech: "But boss, we need mibs, not megs. Those sun machines don't even support megs."
IT Manager: "What? What are mibs? Didn't we buy 256 megs for another sun box last week?"
Joe the Tech: "Yeah, but now megs are mibs. We need 2 to the power of x bytes, not 10 to the power of x. Megs used to be that, but now they're not."
IT Manager: (pulls .357 magnum from desk drawer) "Blam! Blam! Blam!"

Just a little holiday fantasy, folks. Intended to be fictional and humorous. Neither character in any way represents real people, living or dead, and I am not in high school, so I believe it is still legal for me to write violent fantasies.

Cheers
-b

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.

Better solution: switch to base-8 everywhere!

[coyote-san]

Instead of fixing the symptoms, we should address the underlying problem: our silly use of decimal numbers.

If we used base 8 like God intended (after all, He gave us 8 finger and 2 thumbs, not ten fingers!) this wouldn't be an issue.

As an extra benefit, the sudden conversion of account balances from decimal to octal numbers will be much need shot in the arm economically. Everyone will be richer! (or owe more money, but we can't all be winners unless we're competing in the Special Olympics.)

My Vote:

[mESSDan]

Is to coin a term based on the word 'bit':

1st: 'Bitches', this refers to 8 bits.

2nd: 'MegaBitches', Obviously, in oldschool terms this would be a Megabyte.

3rd: 'GigaBitches', following the entire byte-to-bitches theme, this would previously have been a Gigabyte.

Some suggested slang based on 'bits-n-bitches':

'Slap'N'ThemBitches', this is what you do when you add any amount of space (memory or harddrive) to your computer.

'StankBitches', bad RAM or a crappy harddrive.

'BadAssMofoBitches', this is any amount of space greater than what you have.

'UglyBitches', this is typically an embarrassingly small amount of space, so much so that you don't tell anyone that's how much you have.

Thanks to our so hip words, now your everyday average IT guy can have a conversation like this with his boss:

"Yo man, yesterday I found some UglyBitches over at the office, and yo, some of them were some StankBitches, yo! So I got rid of them StankBitches and got me some BadAssMofoBitches, and yo, I slap'n'themBitches early this morning. That shit was shweet!"