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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 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.
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).
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
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.
Because the context is a problem every time you mix computers and what you're doing on a computer. Let's say you record a CD, 16 bits/sample @ 44.1kHz. That's a bitrate of 16 * 44.1 = 705.6 kbit/s second right? If I want to send it over the LAN too? What if I need to allocate a memory buffer, is it still 705.6 kbit/s? And what if I want to store it to disk, do I need to allocate 705.6 kbit per second of music? Computers aren't not remotely consistent with themselves, a 100 Mbit LAN is 100,000,000 bits/second. Hard drives too but they're hardly the only ones, floppies weren't even consistent with themselves most being 1.44*1000*1024 bytes.
Things get confusing all the time because a 1 MB, 1 KHz (1024*1024*1000) bus is not equal to a 1 kB, 1MHz bus (1024*1000*1000) which is why everyone dealing with networks never used kilo = 1024. The 56k modem is 56,000 bits, ISDN is 64,000 bits and so on right up to SATA 6Gbit/s which is 6,000,000,000 Gbit/s (and even more confusing because it's in 8/10 bit encoding, but that's another story). So both inside and outside the machine we're switching between base 2 and base 10 all the time.
A particularly confusing item was codecs. Should they follow the "size" standard so a 128 kbit/s MP3 would take up 128 kbit/s, or the network standard so that a 128 kbit/s would take 128 kbit/s of network bandwidth? I think now most settled on k = 1000, that is to say if you encode a one second clip at 128 kbit/s it'll only take up 125 kbit on your disk. Confusing as fuck? Hell yeah. Let's just settle this and be done with it, with the i = base 2, without it base 10. Just forget the lame names, and let the prefixes do the talking. MB = megabyte, MiB = megabyte. That's what I'm doing at least.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Nothing? How many clocks per second does a 2GHz CPU run at?
There is nothing interesting going on at my blog
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.
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
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.
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!
FIrst off, young sprat, I've used decimal hardware. So are you going to force me to say 1KB is 1024 even though it makes no sense on that system?
Second, I've used disk drives for other purposes than computers - data logging using dedicated hardware. Why should I be tied to your computer idiosyncrasies? Mass storage was around before computers settled on binary. It has always used decimal units. You are making a common mistake - assuming that because something is some way now, that it was always that way.
Third, if base two is so critical to computers, then how many Hertz are in 1 MHz?
And finally, I'm now working on ternary logic. Storing information as 3^N is already inside some devices you're using, so maybe binary is not so critical after all.
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%.
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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Yeah, I really hate when the tools are use daily are made more standardized and sensible. I mean really, I know how you feel. I was RAGING the day I worked on my first motherboard that didn't require me to fiddle with jumpers and man, oh man, I about blew a gasket when I didn't have manually configure my autoexec.bat file anymore so I could play games.
What the fuck is wrong with people trying to make computers accessible? Fucking pussies and their keyboards and their mice. Gimme my damn punch cards!
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.
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