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Ubuntu Will Switch To Base-10 File Size Units In Future Release
CyberDragon777 writes "Ubuntu's future 10.10 operating system is going to make a small, but contentious change to how file sizes are represented. Like most other operating systems using binary prefixes, Ubuntu currently represents 1 kB (kilobyte) as 1024 bytes (base-2). But starting with 10.10, a switch to SI prefixes (base-10) will denote 1 kB as 1000 bytes, 1 MB as 1000 kB, 1 GB as 1000 MB, and so on."
First, screwing with GUI buttons, now this? Mark Shuttleworth, I'm calling you out on your BS
;)
moox. for a new generation.
Anyone who's too stupid to understand the difference, isn't going to care. Someone, somewhere, has too much time on their hands...
Apple did this with Snow Leopard, which makes me a cranky geek.
Why can't the OS manufacturers pressure the hard drive companies to market their sizes correctly? =(
I find it interesting that operating systems are headed in this direction, while SSDs are becoming more and more popular, and which (for the most part) use base 2 measurements.
It looks like both Apple and Ubuntu are trying to get consumers to think that they use less disk space.
Why?
To excuse hard drive makers for using this stupid format to grown their number artificially?
Hopefully this doesn't affect the command line... only gnome, right?
Human language is context based; meaning the exact meaning of words depends on in which context they are used. Why should it be different for prefixes? Just so a few morons won't be confused? Pah... morons being morons will just find something else to be confused about.
I thought the reputable mfgs had already jumped on the bandwagon where they use kibi-/mebi-/etc prefixes to denotes powers of 2? See IEEE 1541. Following this standard, the change makes sense. Either that or they should have switched to the binary prefixes.
So what's the rational for changing from a system that nearly every operating system, program, and computer on the planet uses to represent file size?
The applications themselves can display the file size however they please. So in all likelyhood individual applications are still going to use the base-2 system. Isn't that more than a little stupid to have two different units that most people don't even know there ARE two units to represent file size?
This will only lead to confusion, and has essentially no upside.
AccountKiller
"I upgraded/switched to Ubuntu and it made my hard drive bigger!" *facepalm* Great.
I work mostly on OS X and this so-called feature annoys me to no end. I do not know the size of my files anymore, I have to go to the terminal just to know the size of a file (bash hasn't been polluted by this feature).
I've been using computers for 20+ years and I do _not_ want to change how I think file sizes, especially since I feel that base 10 is the wrong way to count. What's next? Imperial units for us Europeans?
The most annoying? That nobody has hacked Snow Leopard to restore real units.
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
As long as they use the correct prefix, I don't really mind whether they use base 2 or 10 to display the numbers.
RAM sizes are naturally powers of 2 due to how the individual memory cells are addressed, so it makes sense for RAM capacity to always be listed in GiB.
Hard drives, on the other hand, have nothing that is fundamentally based on a power of 2. They arbitrarily use a sector size of 512 (or 4096) bytes, but everything else (number of heads, number of tracks, average number of sectors per track) has no power-of-2 connection. Therefore there's nothing wrong with reporting their size in SI notation.
The original shorthand of calling 1024 bytes a "K" was not too bad because it's only a 2.4% error. However the error gets worse as you go up each level, and by the time you're talking about a TB/TiB it's something that people actually care about.
Stop screwing around with information processing standards.
But more importantly, stop introducing capricious differences from other systems that just end up making the
whole computing ecosystem more complex.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Oh this makes me sooooo grumpy. FFS, who does the International System of Units think they are. 1024 does equal 1 kilobyte ... always has been. That's what I was taught in school. If I had answered 1000 bytes = 1 kilobyte, it would of been zero marks.
.... 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes. Finished.
According to the Oxford Dictionary: noun Computing a unit of memory or data equal to 1,024 bytes.
According to Websters Dictionary: A unit of information equal to 1024 bytes.
According to Cambridge Dictionary: a unit of measurement of computer memory consisting of 1024 bytes
According to http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/kilobyte:
–noun Computers.
1.1024 (2^10) bytes.
2.(loosely) 1000 bytes. Symbol: K, KB
So until the guardians of the English language change
Disks are big enough nowadays that if your files are in the megabytes or mebibytes, you don't need to count sectors. Counting sectors is more useful for folders full of files smaller than 5 sectors, like source code or thumbnail images or HTML files, in which case you're wasting over 10 percent on internal fragmentation if you're not using one of the few file systems with tail packing. But don't worry; the article stated that file managers MAY (and probably SHOULD) include an option to show file sizes in KiB, MiB, and GiB.
There was a recent ruling against a company in Australia for false advertising, for misrepresenting the storage space of their product when they advertised as x number of kB but counted a kB as 1000 bytes.
Conservation of angular momentum makes the world go round.
Things which are measured should use base 10 units. (Bandwidth, Hz, mass, etc.)
Things which are addressed in binary should use base 2 units. (Memory, cache, disk, etc.)
Ubuntu should not follow Apple's bad example here. Maybe things were different 30 years ago, but more recently, every platform had settled on base 2 units for storage, save the dishonest drive manufacturers, and now Apple.
Perpetuating this stupidity makes the display of file sizes across platforms inconsistent, which is a lot worse than the "problem" it is attempting to solve.
I'd much rather just be able to say that a gigabyte is 1000 megabytes is a thousand kilobytes, than have to explain to granny who wants to burn a CD with her grandson's birthday photos on it what a "kibibyte" is. We live in a base 10 society. I don't see why we need to encourage usage of the new base-2 terms outside the world of computer science.
...as base storage units are base-2, or some factor thereof.
I'd prefer to leave my storage units base-2, but I guess it's like windows 32b showing 4GB installed then listing how much is actually useable, well if you look in the right spot.
These marketroids need to get a clue that listing things in base-10 is NOT a free capacity "upgrade".
Not only is it scientifically/mathematically incorrect !!
Canonical is now trying to revamp a standard widely accepted for their own benefit of looking easy to understand.
In fact they are pushing usability at the expense of working on functionality so that more user can use something that does less, much like windows. And then Mark Shuttleworth goes on to tell the developers working on functionality that they need a big cup of STFU.
I urge you ppl to switch to another distro, im on Debian right now an everything is fine.
Finally Linux will have one user friendly feature that people making the switch will understand.
Correct basis
Use base-10 for:
Use base-2 for:
For file sizes there are two possibilities:
Exception
The application can keep their previous behavior for backwards compatibility if the following points apply. The application may add an option to display the sizes in base-10, too.
Some applications which fall under this rule are:
This basically means that they won't actually be changing anything important (like the semantics of the stat() system call). This only means that lots of graphical applications will eventually display data sizes correctly, as defined by the displayed SI prefix. Though it may be confusing to users of multiple operating systems at first, Ubuntu is doing the right thing. It'll stop being confusing when other distros follow their lead.
If you know what the difference between the KB and KiB prefixes, then it doesn't matter. If you don't know, it doesn't matter either. Right?
79,919,312,896 Bytes (74.4GB).
Wrong, it has 74.4 G i B (Giga binary bytes), and 79.9 GB. And another perfect reason to switch. With bigger harddrives the discrepancy between base-10 and base-2 only becomes bigger, so the sooner we leave these digital imperial units, the better!
Also, isn't 10.10 the perfect version number to do the switch?
They say they're doing this to reduce confusion. But unless they can get everyone else to change too (very unlikely), this will only add to the confusion. At least "everything is base 2 unless it is a drive capacity number from a hard drive vendor spec sheet" is a consistent and reasonably easy to understand rule, once you know it. Now the rule is going to be "everything is in base 2 unless it is a hard drive capacity number from a hard drive vendor spec sheet, or you're running Ubuntu, and using one of the applications (link to list of Ubuntu-ized apps here) that Ubuntu has patched to use base-10".
How does this help anyone?
And no, justifying it by saying "Apple does it" doesn't count. Apple and their fans represent a parallel reality that I don't particularly care to inhabit.
I've been considering switching from Ubuntu to Debian, or even -- God forbid, I despise RPM/yum -- back to Redhat/Fedora. This just one more push (albeit a fairly small one) in that direction.
This does not make sense: if you switch from base-2 to base-10, the number will actually get larger. So 1 kB will then read 1.024 kB and so on. This is why HD manufacturers are using this trick (make it look larger). So this "trick" would make your OS look like it's using more space. Thus it can't be the reason for the switch. Conspiracy, conspiracy! (Or maybe it's just because they finally want to get it right?)
Who want's to only speak French when there is are a myriad of ways to better describe the universe, which French falls far short.
The world changes, the way we view the world changes, and necessarily so does the way we describe it.
While I know that traditionally 1KB is 1024 byte, I've always thought of it as 1000 bytes unless I need to perform some computation which I then use 1024. I've been doing this for 30 years.
I don't see an issue here.
As stated previously, consumers pay more attention to available disk space than used disk space.
From the point of view of the computer (which is after all the one working in a base-2 environment), it doesn't matter. Computers don't require "shortened" versions of an exact large number to easily understand it. My computer is quite comfortable with the fact that it has 39,192,862,720 bytes free on my hard drive. The days when bit-shifting was significantly faster than division for once-off calculations like this are long gone, and at least now I'll be sure I have 39Gb available (give-or-take 0.192,862,720Gb). I won't have to reach for a calculator to decide that I only have 36.5Gib left.
Quick, how many bytes in one TiB? No calculators, now...
I like Ubuntu but if they are going to screw around like that, I will be thinking around for a different distro.
The only people who lie about this have been the HDD manufacturers. Wasn't there a class action about that some time back? I expect the court didn't understand the problem of my 120GB drive actually being under 112!
GiB KiB and all that other rubbish has no meaning. A Kilobyte is 2^10 bytes. A Gigabyte is 2^10 of those and so on. Trying to sell me something that claims to be 1TB but only holds 1,000,000,000,000 bytes is only 0.91TB. That sounds like fraud to me and if the OS is covering that up, it is less trustworthy than it used to be.
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
I've used Ubuntu exclusively on my desktops for several years now. It's nice to know that I can always switch to another distro when they do something BAT SHIT INSANE like this: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnitsPolicy
Change the GUI window buttons from right to left? Meh. Change the way file sizes are read so that User X and User Y see different file sizes using the same filesystem, even potentially the same remotely mounted disk?
Now I have to draft a letter to our research department telling them to stay the hell away from Ubuntu because their data will potentially be wrong (unless they take pains to remember the kilo=/=kibi switch).
Wait until we get desktop Quantum computers and how the units will get even more confusing....
I'm surprised by the majority here that is against this. What kind of nerds exactly are you?
SI prefixes are defined as base-10, period. Every other use is simply wrong.
Being consistently wrong for a very long time doesn't make it better, it is just proof of
an unwillingness to admit to a stupid initial mistake you didn't even make yourself.
As nerds, you're supposed to be better than that.
How can you be all for standards-compliance with browsers and rile against a much
stronger, decades-old ISO standard (which is based on a centuries old definition from the
beginning of the metric system - "kilo" has been 1000 for over 200 years)?
On the other hand, you are the same crowd regularly writing about "mbit/s" while meaning "Mbit/s",
thereby being off by just a tiny, unimportant, paltry factor of a billion.
Seriously, what's wrong with you?
-- an annoyed scientist
1kb was 1024 byte. it was misdefined like that.
FTFY.
Or do you also think that the prefix milli- should mean 1/1024 instead of 1/1000? [/sarcasm]
The k prefix, as an abbreviation for kilo-, was defined as meaning 1000 long before it was improperly hijacked into the recent computerese misdefinition. That's why kN means 1000 newtons, kPa means 1000 pascals, kg means 1000 grams, and so forth. The definitions for mega- and giga- were also standardized as powers of 1000 long before computers existed. The IEC prefixes kibi-, mebi, gibi-, and their respective abbreviations Ki, Mi, Gi have been defined to cater to the powers of 1024. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix Ubuntu is merely making itself consistent with international standards; it's long overdue for computerese in general, too.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Well, I, for one, find it ironic that the maker of the iPhone, the iPad, and the iPod is abandoning the iByte....
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
And even in the metrically challenged USA, SI happens to be the law. Imperial units are only allowed in addition, but prefixes must be SI. If you don;t believe me, look up your own laws before shooting off your mouths.
The rule actually is that anything measured must use SI prefixes and units (in the US and some other backward countries some historic units may be allowable besides SI units, but prefixes are the law even there) when sold, i.e. the HDD manufacturers are prohibited by local and international law from using base 2 units as the only or main size statement. If they do, that would be fraudulent. The only thing that would save them is that it is permissible to give the customer more than stated.
So how do RAM sizes come into this? Simple: A RAM size is not a measurement. It is membership in a size class. While a HDD can have an arbitrary size (well, modulo 512, but that is a detail with todays sizes), RAM cannot have other sizes than powers of 2 and hence a statement like 1MB for RAM is a statement of membership in a specific size class and not a measurement. (Incidentially, 1mb is 1 mili-bit, i.e. 1/1000 of a bit. Get this right or be regarded as a moron!)
I do not understand why so many people cling to a mistake. Grow up!
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
... let's make Pi equal to 3.
This sig left unintentionally blank.
I now officially define the "Work Week" as 4 days. From here on in, the work week will be written as "1 work-week == 4 days". See, that was easy. For my next trick, I shall implement the 17 hour clock!
"Remember when I said I would never lie? Well, that was the first time."
Some unknown Slashdotter said it best... when this issue comes up, it always gets resolved in the way that makes the numbers come out bigger.
How about a mixed unit then, such as the kilobyte/second?
As a user, I'd much prefer things to be:
a) consistent. People know kilo=1000 from kilogram, kilometre etc.
b) easy to do mental arithmetic with. Base 2 units may be easier for the computer to work with but I really don't care about that. I'm sure the CPU can handle the conversion when displaying something to the user.
An int is 4 bytes.
This is true of Java. It is also true of C on modern PCs, which preserve many common vaxocentrisms. It's less true of microcontrollers, where int might be 2 bytes for either of two reasons: 16-bit bytes and 32-bit ints (common on DSPs), or 8-bit bytes and 16-bit ints (common on 8- and 16-bit MCUs).
It would be so much better for everyone if we switched our human number system to octal. Eight a power of two, which is a MAJOR plus when dealing with computers, a very important issue in any technologically advanced civilization. This property makes it locally convertible to any other power of two base. Eight is a natural cube, making even volumes easier for manufacturers. Eight occurs in many natural relationships and physical laws, making it a much better choice for doing science. Eight has a smaller addition and multiplication tables, which will make our children better at math. And, in octal, you can count to thirty without removing your shoes; how's that for an advantage?
Base 10, on the other hand, has no advantages whatsoever.
For version 10.10 everything should be in base 10. I expect they'll switch to base 11 for Ubuntu 11.11.
I would be much more interested in having people stop using bits for measuring connection speed. How long will it take you to download a 15MB file over a megabit connection? Do you have the answer yet, punk? Huh? Huh? Do you feel lucky?
I have three SSDs, although two are from the same company. None uses binary GB. The Intel ones don't either, which means all the Intel rebrands (Kingston, etc.) don't either.
So that leaves maybe OCZ doing it, and honestly I'd be surprised if they did either. Both bad blocks and the spare blocks used for read-modify-write accesses have to come from somewhere and instead of adding more chips, every SSD I've used just uses extra 7% of blocks that NAND chips provide since they are sized in GiB to provide those blocks. Basically, they take the NAND size in GiB and advertise that as their size in GB, and use the difference between the two for housekeeping.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Computer people can use
KB = 2^10 Bytes (1 Byte = 2^3 bits)
Kb = 2^10 bits
MB = 2^20 Bytes
Mb = 2^20 bits
GB = 2^30 Bytes
Gb = 2^30 bits
Never call them Giga, Mega etc. if that will p.o. the Si people
We like abbreviations anyway.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
of computing continues...
Not to mention the blatant copying of CrapOSX...
Many computer nerds like to tout themselves as geniuses who have flexible minds. But the truth is that we're all afraid of change. And this switch from KiB to KB is change. It's not what you're used to, so it's going to confuse you.
But as a geek myself with an obsession for clear and precise terminology, I welcome the change. No longer will I wonder if someone's talking about KB vs. KiB, because it'll be consistent and explicit, at least on the computer systems developed by flexible-enough-minded people who are both willing to change and willing to correct a long-confusing problem.
It's true that the HD makers have taken advantage of this confusion. Back in the day when people almost always said KB when they meant KiB, HD makers used KB. But the fact is, once we adapt our terminology to be less ambiguous, we really can't be mislead by them anymore, and their deceptive marketing practices will be moot (at least when it comes to bytes of storage).
So, to summarize, stop being a stick in the mud and learn to adapt to change. Computers are and always have been an aspect of change in our society. Get over it and get with the program.
To excuse hard drive makers for using this stupid format to grown their number artificially?
Oh please. At the size of most HD today, the difference is inconsequential from a marketing standpoint. And from a practical standpoint. Inconsequential.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Holy shit, I slept for five days!
Right? Guys? My calendar seems stuck at March 27 too...
Sizes were consistent, and this actually makes it more difficult, by applying base 10 units to quantities which are fundamentally base 2. Now you have to undo that conversion to compare sizes with those on standard systems. (i.e. with Windows and all other Unix/Linux/BSD systems.)
I'm not saying that the correct SI units shouldn't be applied; by all means, use KiB/KB as appropriate, but base 2 units should be used for fundamentally base 2 quantities.
As for rates, they are almost always a measured quantity, or defined in terms of a specified frequency, so base 10 units are appropriate in most cases. It really isn't critical either way though, as long as the appropriate units are used.
I thought the IT industry was one of the industries that wanted to use established standards the most for interoperability.
The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
-- Andrew S. Tanenbaum
...You realize that mostly means a patch for Nautilus and 2/3 more Gnome apps, right?
Seeing the comments on this makes it seem like an OS-wide change.
If you went to the terminal and saw this file
file.big 17,179,869,184
I suspect that you would naturally say that that file is about 17 gigs. Actually, it is 16 GiB exactly.
However, just looking at the file, no one would ever instinctively say that file.big is 16 GiB. The reality is that base-10 is what people naturally use and so it makes sense for the user interface to reflect that.
The
Among the classes I teach in a junior college is something called "Intro to personal computing". A question that comes up all the time goes something like, "I bought a new hard drive and the PC says it is smaller than the what the box says". Do to the crappy job our modern US educational system does most of these students have never *heard* of the concept of a number base and have no concept of how positional numbers actually work. So, to answer the question I first have to explain how numbers work, and then explain that computer people have used a coincidence the happens to make 2^10 be close enough to 10^3 as an excuse to misuse the standard prefixes and given them a new definition. The usually response is that nerds are stupid...
In the US at least our schools have decided not to teach the basic mathematical concepts that are needed to understand the difference between a "mebi" and a "mega". We might as well just stop using binary based units everywhere.
I'm not sure when the schools in the US stopped teaching arithmetic. When I was teaching in the 1970s I used to assign students to write a program that would read a number base and a number in that base. The program should then read another number base and print the number in that base. (for simplicity I restricted the possible bases to the range 1 to 36 so you could use the digits and the English letters as digits.) This is a trivial assignment that I usually used to introduce recursion and the simplest level of IO. When I gave the same assignment in the early 2000s I got room full of blank looks. One brave student asked what class they were supposed to have taken to learn what a number base was. I learned all this in 4th grade. After asking the class I realized that not one person in the room, including several college graduates, have ever encountered the terms.
Ok, I'll stop ranting now.
Stonewolf
As a software engineer, I strongly oppose this move, and I oppose the advent the silly standard of prefixes "gibi" "mebi" etc. There is no alignment between the digital world and the physical world. It is not hard to clarify to people that when dealing in binary, a kilo is 1024. Non-computer scientists need to shut their mouths regarding this issue because they will never make any kind of mathematical connection between kilograms and kilobytes. They have absolutely no relationship unless performing some bizarre calculation on the weight of hard drives. The choice to make a kilobyte 1024 bytes had nothing to do with making us unique, attacking SI, or confusing people. It is just a fact: 1000 has no real meaning in the world of binary. 1000 is an incredibly arbitrary and useless measurement. However, shift to 1024, and now we're in business! We can make effective calculations regarding blocks of memory because they line up ever so nicely. Again, it is a very clean/distinguishable line: 1000 in the physical world, 1024 in the digital world. Frankly, I will never use the new prefixes. No one recognizes them, and the other prefixes make perfect sense. Basically, either people will get it or they won't. If they get it, then they know WHY it is 1024 and not 1000. If they don't get it, it is irrelevant to them, and they just want the device to work.
I know a lot of people hate the binary prefixes kibi-, mibi-, etc., but really, do you ever need to SAY them or write them out? When I tell someone verbally that a file I'm sending them is 4 megabytes, they probably don't care whether I mean 4 x 10e6 or 2e12. If they do, I can tell them the exact number of bytes. When it's written down it often needs to be more precise, but it's always abbreviated, and KiB isn't any harder to read or write than KB.
So just use the SI standard names when it doesn't matter, and use the SI standard abbreviations when you need to be precise. Of course, people who conveniently use KB to mean 1,000 bytes in order to make something appear larger need have some not-too-fine print clarifying the meaning they're using.
The current system is not perfect, but it works and everybody uses it! In fact, that's what I learned in school and I wouldn't want anybody telling me that I'm wrong because I feel that using arbitrarily the term "kilo" for something else than 10^3 is great! It's like those units: miles, gallons and inches! Everybody uses that ! Converting to the so-called "Metric System" would be such a waste, 'cause that's not what we learned in school... No country would be as dumb as to take such a decision... Oh wait, they all did except for Burma, Liberia, and the United States... damn French people...
May I humbly suggest that for locale C, we retain the base-2 prefixes. Then for POINTLESS_PEDANT locale, use SI prefixes. To specify base-2 prefixes without maintaining the rest of the C locales semantics, I recommend GET_OFF_MY_LAWN. Or maybe just an environment variable to indicate DISK_MANUFACTURERS_ARE_GREEDY_BASTARDS with 0, empty or non-existence assuming you have traveled back in time or are living in denial.
And we have the FUCKTARDs at drive companies to thank for this; retards in the marketing department came up with the brilliant idea that by going decimal, their drives "looked" bigger than their competitors (until all other FUCKTARDs at other drive companies followed suit.)
The number 10 is different depending upon which base you use.
There are 10 types of people, those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Doesn't some European country measure data in octets? I know I've seen "1TO" drives for sale at sam's club. Why don't we measure data like that?
All this trouble just because the hard drive companies wanted to rip-off the public on the size of their drives. 80?B used to mean 80?B when base 2 was used but now 80?B is about 74?B with base 10. It's always been marketing BS that has a financial benefit for the drive makers nevermind stomping over industry standards. Shuttleworth/ubuntu you should know better and should be ashamed if you don't. 1k base 2 is 1024, 1k base 10 is 1000, and modern computers do everything as base 2, get over it. Just write the damn thing as 1k subscript 2 and 1k subscript 10 just like the rest of the math world and be done. Maybe even increase the intelligence of the public, who'd of thought. Damn marketing pussies. /rant
Ditto for Steve Jobs and I know he knows better than this.
According to the Ubuntu units policy, network speed is measured in 1000s bits per second, while the file size in 1024s bytes. Calculate quickly now how long does it take to download a 300MiB file over 6Mbit/s connection?
This is preposterous.
It's quite simple. A kilobyte is 2 to the power of 10 bytes, i.e. 1024 bytes.
A megabyte is 2 to the power of 20 bytes.
A gigabyte is 2 to the power of 30 bytes.
It's very easy to understand and to remember. The "nice round 10s" are in the indices.
Whatever next? Ten bits in a byte? Or 8-bit bytes only allowed to hold 100? Mind you, with a 10-bit byte they could enforce a range of 0-999 or -500 to +499. *sigh*
Stick Men
I always presumed that hard drive manufacturers used base-10 because it gives an extra 7% to report when you are doing drives in the giga byte range. A little annoying but not surprising.
What is confusing is the wild randomness in kb, kB, Kb, and KB even in a good fraction of the posts above. For this reason alone it makes sense to state what you mean, and if you are going to make that move the only sane choice is to leave k=1000 and find something else for 1024...
Flexibility isn't the issue. It's stupidity. Geeks are generally a bit more intelligent than the average Joe (I'll keep out of deeper discussion of deeper meanings of intelligence and how it can be quantified in multiple ways) as such, geeks don't like to do unnecessary stuff.
Powers of two make many issues closer to the hardware (memory management, you name it) so much easier than 10base. Using 10base for these makes absolutely no sense and just introduces a step that could be avoided easily (just use powers of two).
Hardware makers should be put out to dry over this, not the rest of the world.
Also kilobytes were defined before the SI units.
This is like changing the US to use the a third, new thermal system that defines 0 as the core temperature of the sun.
If you aren't now saying how it's a nice -40000000 Suntz outside, you aren't flexible.
But as a geek myself with an obsession for clear and precise terminology, I welcome the change. No longer will I wonder if someone's talking about KB vs. KiB, because it'll be consistent and explicit, at least on the computer systems developed by flexible-enough-minded people who are both willing to change and willing to correct a long-confusing problem.
Except it's not clear and precise. Instead of replacing the ambiguous unit names (KB, MB), you're keeping them and adding some new terms (KB + KiB, MB + MiB). Reusing the old names (KB, MB) in the new naming system means that you still can't immediately tell which OSes, programs, specifications, or written examples have been adjusted or not.
If the terminology were clear and precise, you could unambiguously know how many bytes are in a "1 MB" file.
Since the old and new naming systems share unit names, you cannot.
It also doesn't help that the new unit names sound ridiculous. Ignoring that is like saying looks don't matter.
LOL. I see that either the Apple fan boys or the I_dislike_irony_as_humor guys have mod points today.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Here is my point:
...YOU.....CANNOT......BE....A..........NERD
.. your kind doesnt perform unit conversions on these values.
This is SLASHDOT, NEWS FOR NERDS.
If you insist that KB = 1000 bytes, then get off our lawn. REALLY. You cannot be a nerd. Let me repeat that...
You might be in the tech industry.. but you arent a fucking nerd if you think KB should equal 1000 bytes. Nerds know why its not just stupid, but also completely unacceptable. You obviously dont know why its completely unacceptable, making you by definition, NOT A NERD. That makes you a GEEK.
Now I shall raise the fucking stakes: You dont need to know the exact size of anything unless you are a nerd. Thats right.. THIS DOESNT EVEN MATTER TO NON-NERDS. You dont care if it says KB or KiB, and in fact if KB meant 31414 bytes it would not matter to you, because your kind only works in like quantities
There. I've said my piece. All you geeks can go fuck yourselves. NERDS4EVER!!!!!
"His name was James Damore."
In computers, there are critically important reasons why base2 is used (transistors act as electronic switches which have two states: on and off). Wiring buses in computers (address lines, data lines) are base2, with the electricity being on or off. When data is read and written on the hard disk, its done in a binary format. When searching for data on a disk, its either a binary search, or the equivalent of a binary search (divide and conquer) algorithm used to find data, with O(log n) search time. Please don't dumb it down. We don't need to dumb it down. Its not that the computer is to compl-cated, its that the user is too dumb. Users have been suing drive manufacturers who have been lying to people like this. I expect data to be stored this way. Two wrongs don't make a right (it takes three lefts for that), but I digress, don't change it. DON'T!
I'm starting to understand why it's so hard to introduce the metric system in countries using the imperial system. I've always thought it as rather silly, the metric system is a international standard and generally superior in our base 10 world, so why should it be so hard to switch over? Now I think I see why.
Emotionally I'm against the idea of starting to use kB, MB, GB, etc, in their SI meaning for computers. We have always used the base 2 definition for computers, why would we need to change, base 2 is native to computers so it makes sense, I know that a kB is 1024 bytes, I know why my 1 TB drive "lose" 61 GB. A small and elitist part of me even likes the fact that most don't know this, so I can "educate" them.
Thinking logically I can see why it is a good idea to switch over to SI even for computers, as others have already pointed out it is already used for a lot of things in computers, frequency, transfer rates, etc. Having different systems are just confusing and, as HD manufacturers have shown us, there's no need to in modern computers. Oh sure, a few percentage of us needs to know about the base 2:ness of computers, so that we can ensure that things line up correctly, but the wast majority never needs to know and is only confused when we insist that kilo is 1024, or perhaps even worse that 1024 is kibi (they'd just laugh at that).
In the end 1 TB and 931 GiB is the same number of bytes (well, close enough), just two different ways of writing the same thing, one that makes much more sense to the waste majority of people.
So logically I can see why this would be a good idea, emotionally, I don't think so. So yea, I understand now why introducing the metric system is such a hard thing to do.
Switching terminology is painful, more than most people realize. Switching for common users makes little difference, switching for IT is a pain but not too bad, switching for Engineering is really bad.
I have never seen an engineering error due to confusing base 2 and base 10. It is strange and inconsistent but it is part of engineering terminology -- you don't change that easily. In engineering, I always know exactly what 1K means, even though it is dependent on context. This is normal; common language is even more inconsistent but works out due to using context. A single word often has different meanings. People handle this just fine.
Clearly the current system could be better. We still need base 2 units but they shouldn't be named the same as base 10. However there is are many things in engineering that are confusing due to historical accident. As long as they aren't too problematic, we don't change it because the change would be worse. This is really common in engineering -- we still use x86 instructions!
In engineering you have to make trade-offs; nothing will ever be perfect. The bad system is acceptably bad. Changing the terminology because it confuses a few people where it doesn't really matter is poor engineering.
Why can't we just move to kibibytes for everything, it's just a slight change in how you say it and everything is as it was before. I'm sure you'll be able to change the way Ubuntu reports sizes from kibi to kilo if you want to, but kilo = 1000 and even though IT has been an exception for many years doesn't mean it should stay that way.
at least on the computer systems developed by flexible-enough-minded people who are both willing to change and willing to correct a long-confusing problem.
And that consists of one potential release of Ubuntu, and one 6 month old release of OSX?
Do you really believe that an extremely minor share of operating systems changing to a new set of units will make which unit people are referring to MORE clear? How?
Computers are and always have been an aspect of change in our society. Get over it and get with the program.
Being opposed to change because it's change is foolish. Being in favor of change because it's somehow "inevitable" is at least as equally foolish. Do you just roll over whenever anything comes along anywhere?
AccountKiller
Reading slashdot should show any kid that they're not any better off than anyone else when it comes to being left behind the times due to age. The extent of "aging geek syndrome" here is probably worse than almost anywhere on the web proper.
Everything will be taken away from you.
To all the people moaning at this change, then I say, rather than change the long-standing SI prefixes to match what you want, instead change the number system itself to match your preferences. Yes, campaign for base 16 (or even base 12, I like both in different ways). It'll take society a long time, but at least you're attacking the root of the problem.
And anyway, I think it would be a nice idea to represent storage in exponential growth form. Either 2^1, 2^2,... 2^20 etc. or powers of 10 instead.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Sounds like Canonical is trying to peeve off Ubuntu users so then they can drop customer base and focus their full attention on developing Pyro Linux... er, Chrome OS for GOvernment OGLE.
... that it was not done by means of a purely computer science based terminology and nomenclature basis. Instead, it was done by government bureaucrats who were afraid of things being done different than they had envisioned, and didn't understand why. I do agree that some kind of distinction is needed between a prefix system that means powers of 1000 and a prefix system that means powers of 1024. But what we got from IEC was not done properly or fairly. First of all, the prefix designations for each should be of equal size. That any inserted letters in one should mean an inserted letter in another. Secondly, there should be some consistency, such as using the same letter case between them. The letter "i" really make no sense, either. What the hell does "i" mean? Internal?
The IEC is about the bureaucrats of trade industrials. They have their own motivations that might work for them. But this isn't computer science. Maybe if this had been done through a process like the IETF does RFCs for the internet, we might have a better result. I suggest we scrap the mess and start over, this time doing it right with all the proper constraints and requirements. And make it an open process (IEC and ISO are most certainly not open processes).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
1kB was never defined as 1024 bytes. People just started calling 1024 bytes as 1kB because it was close enough, and on one cared about being 2.4% off. Unfortunately as everytime we leap another 10^3 we're off by another 2.4%, and by the time we get to 10^12 we're off by 10%.
Many computer nerds like to tout themselves as geniuses who have flexible minds. But the truth is that we're all afraid of change.
It's times like these that I like to remember Walter Sobchak: "Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a shit about the rules?"
In all honesty, I think a change is driving so many of us batshit crazy because (as other posters have noted) we've been taught (and marketed to) that 1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte. We fuckin' laugh at people who actually say "kibibyte" out loud. Nobody actually talks about / uses the (ki|me|gi)bibyte words, honestly. When HDD manufacturers would fudge with their numbers when reporting capacity (back when this was a much bigger deal) by stating that 1 megabyte was 1000 kilobytes, we got pretty pissed off, didn't we? Additionally, consider the threads that get started whenever someone complains about the changing of the English language, how it is used in common speech vs the proper/original meaning (see "begs the question" or "decimate" discussion threads).
See, we're the same people who are irritated when we find out that Puff Daddy has decided he's now Puffy. No, wait. Make that P. Diddy. Naw, just Diddy. (seriously, wtf?) We've been talking about the same fucking thing for so long and using a name which so few people had problems with, and now you wanna change it? *sigh*
I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.
Finally they've seen sense and will switch to the metric ten-bit byte.
I'm fed up of this short-changing every time I use a byte! I'm sure the memory companies will harp on about how it will increase costs by 25% but they've had an easy life for years.
If God had meant us to program with 8 bits per byte, he'd have given us 8 fingers.
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And the industries involved mostly have not even adopted or used the new notation at all. When are we going to see hard drives with their "Gi" and "Ti" units? Until they do, what's the point of all this?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Please mod this up. It is the central point of why kilobyte = 1024 bytes, why it was used ubiquitously up until OSX, and why changing makes absolutely no sense.
The people who are the most likely to actually be confused by base 10 vs base 2 probably aren't using Linux, even Ubuntu, in the first place. If this change started with a more popular OS, like, say, future versions of Windows, it might make some sense.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I’s not about being flexible. It’s about not being retarded.
We are the experts on the subject. We know better. Period.
So for someone to tell us how our computer should work, it must be someone who is even more of an expert.
A standards committee is not someone like that.
The simple fact is, that all computers nowadays are base 2. So for the numbers to be useful, they must also be base two. Half your ram, hard disk, cache, display resolution, data rate, etc, will always be a nice round number in base 2, 8 or 16, and a very hard to remember number in base 10.
I think anyone who uses a computer (as in, uses it for what it is there: to automate things), will continue to use base-2-based number systems. And base 10 will be for the appliance fiddlers who only play with colorful clickables, and should in fact not called users at all.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I really don't understand what all the debate is about. Ubuntu is still a form of linux. The point of open source and more specifically linux is the ability to change whatever you wish about it. I personally don't like that OSX and ubuntu are moving towards a different standard but I don't have to put up with it. I'll treat it like any other bug fix.
I like being a stick in the mud - I love PAL 8!
You'd be doing the internal calculations in exact numbers anyway. It's only when you get to the point of presenting output to the user that you'd need to approximate and use the correct units.
Shell scripters might have some extra work, but we're used to dealing with that sort of problem anyway.
In general, shifting to accepted standards is a good thing.
...and 1 byte as 10 bits
How will this affect the average teen who uses Ubuntu?
Please don't use anonymity as an excuse for being a butt head >:(
The 1024 thing is perhaps unfortunate, but it exists.
Trying to change it is the domain of people who want to get rid of the pound weight in Holland (500 grams), the sea mile, the horse power, AM/PM. There are valid reasons to get rid of all of them, and it hasn't worked has it? Anyone remember swatch time? Supposed to get around the problems on the internet with timezones? No? Well that is my point.
What about Esperanto? Yeah, the language for everyone. Anyone here speak it? Didn't think so.
It would be very hard to argue with the usefulness of everyone speaking the same language, and yet, it has not happened. We can't even get the English speaking nations to use the same spelling.
But ultimately, the problem the people behind this are trying to solve, just doesn't exist. People are not horribly confused by modern cars having their power measured in the unit of an animal they never used. They don't need to know the exact power because it is never needed. Really, when has anyone who is not an engineer ever REALLY needed to know the power of a car? Yeah, you need to know to make up for your small penis, but really, you don't need to know for traveling along smooth highways.
And the same with sea-miles. So it is different. And? Do I really care if I get the speed of a ship wrong because I have no idea what knots are? If it matters, someone will have done the conversion and most times all I need to know is that 10 knots is faster then 9, so I can be really impressed if you do 11.
And there has never been a problem with kb. Only when HD makers realized they could fake the size of their product by switching to a different measurement did ONE segment of the industry change the naming. Nobody else did. MS, the largest maker of OS for dummies, has seen no need to change its display. So why does Ubuntu? So it can be extra confusing for people switching between OS'es? Between versions of Ubuntu? And will Ubuntu adapt every program in its entire packaging system to reflect this?
I am afraid this excersise is that of someone fighting windmills. No doubt in their mind it is a essential quest, in the eyes of the world you are just a loonie.
In the real world, you just got to accept that somethings are the way they are and that is it. It is the realm of politicians who no longer talk to voters to start changing things that don't need changing. Lawyers, art majors and other wastes of society deciding that technical education isn't producing suitably rounded children, then wondering why no one can fix the plumbing anymore and drop out rates are skyrocketing.
If you make a change, you should always justify it. And the justification for this change seems to be "because scamming HD companies and grammar nazi's want it" and that ain't good enough.
One quick test you can do yourself: Would HD makers have changed to the "correct" measurements if it had made their HD's appear smaller?
Gosh, I don't think so. Do you? Then everyone who tries to claim that HD makers did it for the love of science should shut the fuck up. HD makers are scamming their buyers. And you know, most of the normalization attempts are fueled by the idea to STOP scams. Not enable them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
This is good. It means RAM and flash drives will be measured, EXPLICITLY, in binary units like GiB, and software will be able to use units for math because they will have been clearly and universally defined.
The article is wrong in many cases
1] Ubuntu is not a name of OS. It is the Linux (the kernel = Linux = monolithic OS)
2] Canonical is not changing how the OS works (Linux). But GNOME is changing how the UI shows the data. Canonical is not doing anything here.
3] We still have 1's and 0's in computer and we can not expect it to be changed. unless someone gets idea how to actually turn the whole computer science around. Canonical is not doing it, it is just doing it on marketing (for its own purposes to sell OWN producs, not open source or even LINUX).
Obligatory XKCD
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I am soooooo happy that I upgraded my computer to 4.29GB of RAM. I got 2 banks empty and maybe I put in two of my old 537MB modules to get a sane number of 5.37GB of RAM.
Why can't they let us change what units we want to see file sizes in?
Maybe I want all my file sizes in multiples of linear block size for the device in question (I only ever use desktop PCs where the devices have blocks of either 512 or 2048 bytes), or define custom units of the number of 128bit double quadwords in base 6.
Why not let the user decide? A program that opens a file is still going to get the number of bytes anyway (it can query the operating system to convert between the custom units).
Will this in any way affect how many kilograms my laptop will weight when its hard disk is full versus when it is empty?
i've been thinking in 1024-byte kilobytes since i first cut my teeth on the sinclair-1000, so i have a fondness for that measure as well, but it's clearly bad practice to mis-use SI units. sure it'll mean a decade or a half of confusion, but i think we should all welcome a switch here, and use other names for 2^10, 2^20, etc.
"kilo" is not a binary prefix. And while it is possible to "represent" 1 kB (1000 bytes) as 1024 bytes, that representation would require 24 redundant bytes. That's not what Ubuntu was doing previously. They were using the units wrong. Now they've switched not from, but to binary prefixes: kibi-, mebi- etc. -- apps have the choice to use these or use the decimal prefixes as they have always been defined: to denote decimal factors. Everything as should be. I just wonder what took them so long to acknowledge the standard, and why Slashdot editors are so dense.
The reality is that base-10 is what people naturally use...
<p>Not that it really affects your point, but base-10 is what people are <em>conditioned</em> to use from childhood when we are taught to count only in base-10. Personally, I think a base-6 system would make a lot more sense, both for the same divisibility reasons many people advocate base-12 (6 is evenly divisible into both halves and thirds), but because you can count up to thirty-five (or "55" base-6) on your fingers if you use each hand for one digit.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
If your going to make a Megabyte 1000 Kilobytes then lets make a Byte 10 bits. Stop screwing with sizes that makes sense.
The problem is that the context in which you mean 10 GB or 10 GiB is exactly the same. Hence the need for standards. You may live in the US, but anyone who was in high school everywhere else on Earth understands the prefixes k, M, and G as powers of 10.
Those "few morons" to be confused are the consumers whose money is likely paying your salary. kB, MB and GB are not the names of registries in assembly language, they are units to be displayed prominently on consumer products. I can imagine a similar reaction when metrication was introduced in Germany in the 19th century, where every city had its definition of "pound".
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In the old days when there was not much computational power available and the storage sizes where small, clever geeks decided that using base-2 to define kilo, mega etc. is good enough for the user. However, that deviated from the correct definition on base-10. The first to switch this where the HDD manufacturers, because it made their drives look bigger. But honestly it was still the right move. The advantage of using the correct SI definition is, that it is metric. And the metric system is definitely easier than something on base-2. Especially for normal humans.
i is the square root of -1 (imaginary). So people are just imagining that it's 1000. It must be a happy world.
Well, when I was in university, studying computer science (who'd've guessed that a /. contributor studied comp sci?), KB was defined as 2^10 bytes, MB was 2^20, and GB was a pipe dream (hey, I graduated from uni in 1986). So, for us, kB WAS defined as 1024 bytes. That's how ALL of my textbooks, which I still have btw, defined kB.
Perhaps it was not defined as 1024 bytes everywhere (comp sci types are notorious for having multiple standards), but it was defined as 1024 bytes in a fair number of places.
linquendum tondere
There's no need. We can just use our own OS that will work as we want it to.
"Kilo" meant a factor of 1000, long before bits and bytes came... the pioneers of computing just called 2^10=1024 bytes a kilobyte, because 1024 "is nearly" 1000... but if we want to work precisely and consistently (like we have to, in science), then we CAN'T use the same prefix for different things in very close fields of research.
saying "kilo" for a factor of 1024 is just wrong, because kilo means 1000 - and it is totally correct, to clean this mess up and rename the factor of 1024 to "KIBI", 1048576 to "MEBI" etc, although this means adjustment for all of us. Future generations will thank us for leaving science tidy...
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
go fuck yourself, you arrogant prick
Changing the terminology to be more consistent, even in engineering, may be bad in the short term, but is obviously going to be a benefit in the long (or very long) term.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
So when you see a file size that is 2,700,126,552 bytes, how many gigabytes do you think that is?
(hint: it's not around 2.7)
A broken system needs to be be mended, sorry.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
This is nonsense. Sizes of files and free space are almost never nice round numbers in either base 2 or base 10. I don't know anybody who has a problem comparing quantities of ANYTHING when using decimal.
Most of the time when we talk about disk space and memory space, we use decimal representations anyway. The 1024-based quantities are really only useful for programmers who are dealing with addresses, and even then they usually use hex.
All the those that still think of the kilo as meaning 2^10 should know that 10 is not a power of two. All computers and the computers before that used 2^8 and 2^16 much more often. I therefore suggest you define 2^8 to be the new kilo.
of information.
One bit represents exactly one difference, which is the smallest unit of information no matter what medium you are storing or transmitting it in. The Qubits inside a putative quantum computer are not information yet, but merely the potential for information, which if it is ever read out, will be in bits.
Some of the most promising cosmological physics, imho, involves the holographic theory, wherein the amount of entropy in a spacetime region can be defined in terms of the number of bits that could have passed across the region's boundary. Bits are fundamental to all of information theory, and quite possibly to the simplest understanding of the universe as well.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I have two machines, with 1GB and 2GB sticks of memory in them. I've never bought a "1.07GB" or "2.14GB" stick of memory, that's not the standard. "Binary megabytes" were invented by hard drive manufacturers to make hard drives seem bigger than they are; that's the only reason to have "another standard." Bullshit. My first real "computer" was a Commodore 64, with 64KB of RAM; they never manufactured the "Commodore 65" (64KB = 65,536 bytes). Mac OS X's last update did the same bullshit, and that's just another reason I will never use that OS, even on a "hackintosh."
bah! who cares if you write kb KB kB Kb, it's all the same anyway..
Will Ubuntu start reporting that I have 4.29GB of RAM? What about network connection speeds? I assume they're going to stick with base 2 for those which shows just what bullshit this is.
Still, I'm glad to see that Canonicalis are on the side of the consumer rather than the hard disk manufacturers....
I realize I'm coming in way late to this party, but why is everyone up in arms about this particular change? (Aside from the obvious "I'm stuck in my ways, get off my lawn" reason.) Outside of special cases like file-backed memory mappings, when is it actually useful to know the number of binary kilobytes/megabytes/gigabytes used by a file, as opposed to decimal units? I'll agree those binary units were useful back when the ratio of filesystem size to block size was small, say 10^3:1 (I remember carefully watching free cluster counts on my DOS floppies, and being grateful when 1.2MB floppies offered 1-sector instead of 2-sector clusters). But on modern systems, that ratio is more like 10^7 or 10^8:1, and unless you have OCD and absolutely have to know how every single filesystem block is being used, there's really no benefit to counting in blocks over any other unit. So why not let old hacks pass into history and start counting the way every other field does?
Why don't they use the LoC file size unit?
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Think about why a KB was defined as 2^10 bytes. Because it's closest to the "kilo" or 1000. So whoever came up with this definition is just trying to confuse us.
there's no such thing as a quantity that is fundamentally base 2.
404: sig not found.
As a geek, I am in favor of change... for the better. Geek and pedantic troll are not synonymous. I do not care about grammar distinctions that do not add a useful and functional clarity just for their own sake. I do not support changes to existing well defined and well understood prefixes unless there is a purpose.
Satisfying the anal few by implementing technical correctness of a prefix is NOT a fair trade for breaking every spec of existing computer literature and the majority of software. It is not a valid justification for breaking the math used and making it more difficult. Your pedantic correctness will decrease the efficiency of IT as a whole.
Sorry if you want to pretend people are somehow clinging to old ways. I guess some of us fuddy duddies don't want to get behind the idea of breaking the existing functionality with zero functional gain.
I don't care as long as I can choose *iB or whatever label they use for base 2, rather than Apple's way of Kilo = 1000 and we are not giving you the option to use Kibi = 1024 even though they are both technically correct.
I was so often the target of hated arguments for using the Giga binary Byte notation in my thesis. My professor didn't know it at first but was fine with it. But coworkers just went mental.
They see it as an us vs. them fight, the evil corporate (haha coming from guys working at Intel) system is redefining "our" metrics. As I read in a previous post, this 1. is no big deal: just an "i" to add and 2. it offers so much more clarity.
I don't get how you even can waste time arguing about such a thing.
Wrong, it has 74.4 G i B (Giga binary bytes), and 79.9 GB.
Only unemployed Linux dweebs use gibibytes.
*runs* ;)
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I submitted a bug report. Computers work in powers of two. Deal with it.
Set the 6th bit of the Byte to "Yes" for Bacon.
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How big is a niggerbyte?
kB = 1000 bytes, kiB = 1024 bytes
kb = 1000 bits. ooh! you forgot that one, you 8-bit/byte zeelots?
Why isn't 1 kb 1024-bits? Ha!
I welcome the change. kB should be 1000. And it should be up to the user to select if he/she want to see sizes in kB or kiB.
Gee, I always thought that 10*3 was 1000. Manufacturers of hard disks indicated the 10*3 bytes and a meg, giga or terra were aways in 10*3 multiples. (10*6, 10*9 and 10*12)
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I'm moving to HURD.
(HURD of Ubuntu-Replacing Daemons)
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Haha!
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A bit of historical context for those who think that hard disk manufacturers somehow changed the way they count bytes in the mid-1990s to swindle customers out of a few extra bytes: The first hard disk in the 1950s had a capacity of five million characters - not 5 * 2^20 but 5 * 10^6. (However, I think that one 'character' on this system was not the same as the octet which we nowadays know as a 'byte'.) The classic IBM 'Winchester' disk introduced in 1973 had a capacity of 35 or 70 megabytes. Again, a megabyte is quite simply a million bytes. You might say that floppy disks use binary sizes, and that is true for '360 kilobyte' formatted disks for example, but the '1.44 megabyte' floppy uses a odd mix of conventions: it holds 1.44 * 1024 * 1000 bytes.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Damn! I thought this was going to link to a funny article in The Onion.
Well, this will have to do then.
I'm creating a fork ubuntu-no-SI linux ;-)
I love reading all these comments- they're hilarious. It's better than Comedy Central.
"Those pesky physicists, chemists, and engineers have used a consistent system of measures for ages, but us programmers, computer "engineers" and computer "scientists" (oh the irony) can invent our own units and steal the original meaning of an established way of doing things. And after doing all that we are right and everybody else is wrong".
"And now I will present stupid examples of things that are just plain silly, just to show how right we are and to parade our ignorance".
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So computer scientists fuck up by using prefixes with specific meanings, but it is the other people, reminding them that prefixes are used in a different way, who are introducing the ambiguity?
What an egregious example of revisionism.
The only problem perhaps was that many of the early computing scientists were not conversant with the IS, which is why they fucked up. I am sure no scientist conversant with the IS would have used the prefixes so loosely because he would have been aware of their original meaning.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
People used to ask me if 64000 bytes of memory would be enough for certain tasks.
Only people "in the know" can claim such falsehood.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... yet again an Salshdotter refusing the advice of people that actually know what they are talking about.
What a surprising trend ...
First computing scientists use prefixes with long established meanings to signify something different, then people that know about these things (the "bunch of academics", how telling that academic is used as a term of abuse) try to disambiguate the terms (because, as the poster above shows, the self absorbed geeks and nerds could not be bothered to do this themselves, after all everything that they do is correct) but accoring to many people around here, they are wrong and the confusion is their fault!
Really, people defending the idiotic use of prefixes for powers of 2 numbers should go over the facts and admit that the IT industry cocked up this particular issue.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
1kg = one kilogram = 1000 grams
1KB = one kilobyte = 1024 bytes
1Kb = one kilobit = 1024 bits
1kb = 1000 bits
If you think that KB or Kb looks anything like a SI unit then you should be let near a computer or a physics lab.
> Imperial units are only allowed in addition, but prefixes must be SI. If you don;t believe me, look up your own laws before shooting off your mouths.
Thankfully, the law is better than your punctuation.
Nice how you just gloss over the whole argument of whether "kilobit" should properly mean 1000 bits. We call that "begging the question."
A ounze byte is of course 32 bytes, or 64 nibbles, or 8 long words
Sixteen ounze bytes are a pound byte.
Two pounds are a kilobyte.
- Or 4 pages, with a page being 256 bytes or 8 ounzes, would also make a kilobyte.
(or of course 128 long words.)
An entire page of long words would be a long ton or 1024 kilobytes
If you imagine it as a square with a kilobyte on each side, you can understand why it is often referred to as one Morgan or 1MB. The prefix "G" of course stands for Gross, not for Giga. 1GB is the size a well sorted library of a rich cotton planter would hold.
It equals a long ton of kilobytes.
God gave you 8 fingers, carry and overflow.