Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Creative Sued for Base-10 Capacities On HDD MP3 Players

Posted by Soulskill on from the basic-math dept.

Dorkz brings news of a class-action settlement from Creative Labs over the capacity of their HDD MP3 players. Evidently they calculated drive capacity in base-10 (1,000,000,000 bytes per GB) instead of base-2 (1,073,741,824 bytes per GB). The representative plaintiff is entitled to $5,000, and everyone else who bought one of the HDD MP3 players in the past several years gets a 50% discount on a new 1GB player[PDF]. They can also opt for a 20% discount on anything ordered from Creative's online store. Creative has made available all of the necessary legal forms. Seagate lost a similar lawsuit late last year.

9 of 528 comments (clear)

  1. Innumeracy by Detritus · · Score: 2, Funny

    The court should have awarded each of the plaintiffs a calculator and a boot to the head.

    --
    Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
  2. Re:50%? by mrbluze · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...they misrepresented the capacity... I'm sure they thought they were just being creative.
    --
    Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
  3. I wonder if the rep. plaintiff will complain... by harmony7 · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... upon receiving his $5k, that he should have gotten $5,120 ?

  4. Breath of fresh air by LilGuy · · Score: 2, Funny

    One of the very few times a car analogy wasn't the first choice on slashdot.

    --

    You're nothing; like me.
  5. The OS _is_ wrong - Long live bits and base10! by PMBjornerud · · Score: 3, Funny

    Personally, I think the things like HDs, network gear, and such are correct. We need to use the metric prefixes for base 10 for base 10. If we want to talk base 2, use the base-2 prefixes. Burn these foul aberrations begotten by the kilobyte! This, my dear IT fellows, is the path of evil and only horrors lurk ahead.

    Computers function in the realm of magic. Behold! 500MB plus 500MB! The sum not a full, but strangely a 0.97 of a gigabyte. The remaining 3 percent gone, - a sacrifice to evil!

    Don't even get me started with base 2. The byte itself is not even a 1, but itself an 8. Thus, the kilobyte is really 2^13 bits, and a megabyte is 2^23. The whole system is ludicrous. This happened because a useful technical shortcut have been kept alive for too long, and made its way into the real of the end-user.

    Stop this madness and see the light of the network engineers. Behold! The wonder of the Mbps. 1Mbps is a wonderful, intuitive 1,000,000 full bits per second. This is stuff I can explain my mother - and she'll understand.
    --
    I lost my sig.
  6. Re:Read your references by binaryspiral · · Score: 2, Funny

    we should all follow Nintendo, and go with "blocks"

    If we're going to go down that road, why don't we measure disk space in tracks and cylinders, like the IBM mainframes I work on? :) Screw that... let's go with KLOCs and nibbles.

  7. Re:Read your references by Smidge204 · · Score: 2, Funny

    I thought the standard was "Libraries of Congress" for data measurement!

    =Smidge=

  8. Re:Well you can argue the OS is wrong by Xtravar · · Score: 2, Funny

    You aren't used to how things are done around here (the world), are you?

    If we say the Queen of England is Kylie Minogue, she better damn well be, because that's who we'll be signing treaties with.

    --
    Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
  9. Re:50%? by beckerist · · Score: 2, Funny

    or Gb instead of GB... x8!