There's a solution that's been out there for years: binary prefixes. Why use decimal prefixes to mean binary powers? Why say kilobyte and hope that the listener interprets it the correct way, when you can say kibibyte and know that they'll understand? (And the laypeople who've never heard of binary prefixes will pick it up pretty quickly, since kibi is close to kilo, mebi is close to mega, etc.)
Too bad that solution came decades after the computer world needed one--so we used the normal SI prefixes. Now the changes are trying to be forced down everyone's throat much later.
And before anyone starts saying 'We need to fix old mistakes', maybe we should bulldoze all Americans (like me) into the ocean so we can fix the old mistake of taking the land from the Native Americans....eh? What's that? Suddenly the idea of leaving old mistakes in the past sounds good...?;)
It will be easier for the generations to come. People will stop asking "Why does my 200 GB harddisk only have 186 GB capacity?".
Really? Who asks that besides people with a slight technical inclination who can also easily be taught 'Hard drive marketing droids decided to be devious and they are measuring a base-two storage device using base-ten'.
And those people that give you a glossy look are probably the kind of people to just say 'Oh--ok' and accept it. They are also the kind of people who get confused when you start talking about SI in the first place.
Yeah, I can hear Steve Jobs railing on his staff from here.
"Damn it, you boobs! You switched to non-industry-standard units, and you STILL didn't get us darkpixel2k? Don't give me those iPhone and iPad sales numbers, you guys FUCKED UP!"
I know--I totally went out and bought a Nexus One over the whole incident.;)
``Well--except that pesky material on the surface of a disk that can store either a '1' state or a '0' state. Most people call that a 'bit'. Strangely enough, that 'binary' state is conducive to measuring in powers of two...''
At first, I thought "well, duh", of course you're right.
But then I realized that there is absolutely nothing preventing you from measuring storage in SI-multiples of bits. Which is the same thing Ethernet does with transfer rates, incidentally. So really, just because a bit has two states doesn't mean that this somehow makes it easier to express number of bits in powers of two.
Maybe so, but all our existing standards are defined on power-of-two-boundaries. 1-bit (true/false), 2-bit (I forget), 4-bit (nibble), 8-bit (octet/byte), 16- (word), 32-bit (dword), 64-bit (qword), etc...
So since computers operate in that format, and they save in that format, HD sizes should be based on powers of two, not mathematically converting it to base ten.
The only thing a billion times easier is to have one meaning for one prefix.
So you're saying it's easier to:
* Fix decades of code that refer to Mb so they either say the correct numeric value or change the unit to MiB.
* 'Educate' IT to start saying Mebi and also convince them they don't sound retarded when they say it.
* 'Educate' the public so they don't think their IT person is retarded, but rather talking about a convoluted new scheme to 'fix' things because some people don't understand base-2 verses base-10
Or maybe it's just easier to say: SI prefixes are expressed in powers of ten, unless you're dealing with storage in which case it's SI prefixes in powers of two.
why does the It industry get special treatment. I thought the IT industry was one of the industries that wanted to use established standards the most for interoperability.
The day you can find a way to stick a peg^10 into peg^2 hole, let me know and we can just call everything '1000'.
You just lost the war dude. Now shut up, crawl back into your cave the the rest of your hate filled, foul mouthed crew.
Stonewolf
Right--because when I say 'Gay names', I'm talking in super-secret code that really means 'I hate men who like other men'.
I was raised back when, 'gay' meant you thought something was lame (because my parents were raised to think 'gay' meant 'happy'), and 'fag' was a cigarette.
So let me re-write my post for retards like you:
Using gay lame names like mebi instead of mega.
Exactly. Dont give in to the mistakes of HDD manufacturers and legalize their wrong advertising.
Doesn't pint/quart/gallon differ according to geography. Pint, Gallon and so on.
This article and this time of year piss me off.
You're exactly right. We don't suddenly re-define an established standard. And when it comes to physics, we don't suddenly re-define time...like every year when the stupid US government decides that it's magically an hour earlier or an hour later.
When I make a cake, I don't use 1 cup of flower and then decide to make bread, so I redefine the size of 1 cup to make reading the recipe easier...
Looking at the wikipedia article you linked, the only different between the two colums in the table on the right are:
1. Using 1024 verses 1000
2. Using gay names like mebi instead of mega
Wouldn't it be about a billion times easier to leave it as 'mega' and just remember that when you are dealing with base 2 methods of storage, it's 1024 (a power of two) rather than 1000 (a power of ten).
In other words:
* leave everything in the IT industry the way it is
* tell the HD makers that they are wrong to measure in base ten (since the US Gov already requires them to put that on their packaging, no big deal)
* No one has to sound retarded when talking to the 99% of the population who has no clue about this stupid base2/10 war with hard drive marketing droids by saying 'mebi' or 'gibi'.
Hard drives, on the other hand, have nothing that is fundamentally based on a power of 2.
Well--except that pesky material on the surface of a disk that can store either a '1' state or a '0' state. Most people call that a 'bit'. Strangely enough, that 'binary' state is conducive to measuring in powers of two...
But do you actually get 15MBits or is that the name of the product they are selling you. In Germany, the DSL providers sell you a 16mbit connection but you may only get 8mbit, depending on how far you live from the switch. Cable, which I have, seems to come pretty close to the 32mbits they are advertising.
Check out www.speedtest.net to see your actual speed.
Actually, I've never been as slow as they advertise. My connection is supposed to be 15/2, but I almost always get 30/5. (It helps living in a neighborhood where almost no one else has high speed internet or can afford it, but the cable passes by on the way to the industrial areas).;)
No need! You actually sound like a retard just by implying that
using mebi makes one "sound like a retard".
Hey--I'll fully admit that I have no clue when to sound like a retard and when not to. All I care about is that megabits when talking comms gear is base ten, storage is base 2, and marketing folks should be shot for perverting the system.
No kidding. Who the hell in their right mind has a free-form text box to enter *both* your download and upload speed in bits?
My answer: People stopped using 9600 baud modems a long time ago, so I'm not sure how many bits I get--or even kilobits. Sure, I could do the math, but your survey is retarded. I get 15 MEGABITS (or should I sound like a retard and use the prefix MEBI?!?) down burstable to 30, and 2 megabits up, burstable to 0.0005 gigabits up. Have fun with the conversion, fuckers.
This, folks, is why the paperless office isn't here: complete ignorance of technology, and on a nerd site, to boot.
Dude! Wake up. You don't have to pass stuff around. You can both connect to the same file on a server and edit it simultaneously. One of your phones / tablets / computers can even act as the server so that you don't need a standalone one. Look at Abiword's collaboration features. Look at Google Docs'.
My boss just walked out the door for lunch, but I have an important document he needs to sign off real quick...maybe I'll just shout for him to come back in, sign in to his PC, and fire up Google Docs....or maybe I can run out with a sheet of paper and have him scrawl a signature on his way to the car...
Humans... We like to have a piece of paper in our hands, we can easily hand it to a coworker, we can scribble on it to take notes. I know it sounds oldskool, but for many tasks, a piece of paper is just superior.
Exactly. Until someone can come up with something like a tablet or the Star Trek PADD that costs a few bucks to make, is disposable, and can be handed around like paper, the paperless office won't happen.
If the Apple iPad or whatever it's called cost $0.01 to purchase, and everyone had hundreds of them, they wouldn't feel bad about loading a document on it and passing it off to a coworker to tweak and change and then hand back.
Currently there is nothing better than paper in terms of price and ease of use.
The child survived? Or was the child kept alive by medical science basically fulfilling all his bodily functions for him in an incubator?
Yes, doctors kept him alive and he survived.
Maybe we should use the same argument if you have a heart attack at 35 and have to be zapped--or maybe your child has an asthma attack and needs abuterol/atrovent so they can breathe...did they survive? Or were they kept alive by medical science? Are you arguing we *could* have let them die since it was only medical science that kept them alive?
The reality is that we could grow a child outside the womb already, it is just illegal to engage in this sort of research.
Really? Where is it illegal? Maybe the US, Canada, Europe. How about Russia, China, or durkastan? Remember when stem cells were illegal but other countries engaged in the practice? Where are the countries growing babies? I'm willing to bet that no one can grow a child outside the womb.
Does this mean that every time a sperm reaches an egg a new life instantly spring into existence?
Uh...yeah. Unless you can show some 'magical' other point when something goes from non-living to living. Is it when the doctor slaps the kids behind and he starts crying?
Is it murder to turn off a life support machine to someone who is clinically brain dead?
Not if they were a responsible adult and made their wishes clear through a living will that they don't want life support.
We can already take people to hospital and provide all the functions of their organs without the brain being involved.
What? Without the brain being involved? I've heard of artificial hearts, but never artificial brains.
In these situations we eventually switch off the incubator keeping them alive, are you actually saying that is murder?
Your last sentence is a bit confusing. But I think you're getting at something like "If someone is being completely supported by machines for life support, is it murder to turn them off?". Please correct me if I misunderstood your question.
Another longer-winded way of asking that question is "If a human being is alive, but being kept alive by machines and then you end that human beings life without their permission by turning off the machines that support their life, is that murder?". Yeah. Just as if you turned off a patients pacemaker without permission and they died.
But fear not--if you are an adult in the United States, (and I'm sure elsewhere) you can make your wishes known in a legal document. My grandmother did exactly that. When she got very sick, she wasn't hooked up to anything except an IV and she passed away. That's her choice.
That's not to say that your wishes are guaranteed to be followed--sometimes courts, lawyers, and the government get involved. Meh.
It is murder only if you are a living breathing person, or were at one time. And to say otherwise is horrible twisted logic.
Ok--living and breathing. Got it. This child was only in his mothers womb for 3 months--and he survived. So would his abortion at 2.9 months been 'ok' in your book?
in europe you cant put 'you cant sue us' bullshit in eulas and get away with it. that only * may * work in usa.
in eu if you sell something, you have to deliver it. else, your product gets shoved in your butt by Eu regulations.
You're telling me there's no way to sell an online game in Europe unless you are willing to keep servers running forever? Do you guys play World of Warcraft over there?
While I believe you that there is a law that prohibits contracts that say "You can't sue", I would bet money a game company can provide wording that says "You agree that we may shut down our servers at any time which may render the game unplayable".
do you honestly believe such bullshit? there would be 1000 lawyers descending on them for a class action. i know it's popular on here to come up with new ways to trash things like DRM, but let's keep it atleast in the realms of reality....
Do you honestly believe such bullshit? There would be 1000 lines of text descending from the EULA to prevent suing for outages or planned obsolescence of the DRM servers. I know it's popular on here to come up with new ways to trash other users to make yourself look smart, but let's keep in at least in the realm of reality.
No it is called Digital Restrictions Management. They restrict how often you can play as per the current demands of parental and religious groups
WTF? When was the last time DRM was used by parental and/or religious groups to shutdown an entire game? And no, I'm not asking about your mom using netnanny to block some retarded flash website.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a solution that's been out there for years: binary prefixes. Why use decimal prefixes to mean binary powers? Why say kilobyte and hope that the listener interprets it the correct way, when you can say kibibyte and know that they'll understand? (And the laypeople who've never heard of binary prefixes will pick it up pretty quickly, since kibi is close to kilo, mebi is close to mega, etc.)
Too bad that solution came decades after the computer world needed one--so we used the normal SI prefixes. Now the changes are trying to be forced down everyone's throat much later.
;)
And before anyone starts saying 'We need to fix old mistakes', maybe we should bulldoze all Americans (like me) into the ocean so we can fix the old mistake of taking the land from the Native Americans....eh? What's that? Suddenly the idea of leaving old mistakes in the past sounds good...?
It will be easier for the generations to come. People will stop asking "Why does my 200 GB harddisk only have 186 GB capacity?".
Really? Who asks that besides people with a slight technical inclination who can also easily be taught 'Hard drive marketing droids decided to be devious and they are measuring a base-two storage device using base-ten'.
And those people that give you a glossy look are probably the kind of people to just say 'Oh--ok' and accept it. They are also the kind of people who get confused when you start talking about SI in the first place.
Yeah, I can hear Steve Jobs railing on his staff from here.
"Damn it, you boobs! You switched to non-industry-standard units, and you STILL didn't get us darkpixel2k? Don't give me those iPhone and iPad sales numbers, you guys FUCKED UP!"
I know--I totally went out and bought a Nexus One over the whole incident. ;)
``Well--except that pesky material on the surface of a disk that can store either a '1' state or a '0' state. Most people call that a 'bit'. Strangely enough, that 'binary' state is conducive to measuring in powers of two...''
At first, I thought "well, duh", of course you're right.
But then I realized that there is absolutely nothing preventing you from measuring storage in SI-multiples of bits. Which is the same thing Ethernet does with transfer rates, incidentally. So really, just because a bit has two states doesn't mean that this somehow makes it easier to express number of bits in powers of two.
Maybe so, but all our existing standards are defined on power-of-two-boundaries. 1-bit (true/false), 2-bit (I forget), 4-bit (nibble), 8-bit (octet/byte), 16- (word), 32-bit (dword), 64-bit (qword), etc...
So since computers operate in that format, and they save in that format, HD sizes should be based on powers of two, not mathematically converting it to base ten.
The only thing a billion times easier is to have one meaning for one prefix.
So you're saying it's easier to:
* Fix decades of code that refer to Mb so they either say the correct numeric value or change the unit to MiB.
* 'Educate' IT to start saying Mebi and also convince them they don't sound retarded when they say it.
* 'Educate' the public so they don't think their IT person is retarded, but rather talking about a convoluted new scheme to 'fix' things because some people don't understand base-2 verses base-10
Or maybe it's just easier to say: SI prefixes are expressed in powers of ten, unless you're dealing with storage in which case it's SI prefixes in powers of two.
Really?
why does the It industry get special treatment. I thought the IT industry was one of the industries that wanted to use established standards the most for interoperability.
The day you can find a way to stick a peg^10 into peg^2 hole, let me know and we can just call everything '1000'.
"Gay names"
You just lost the war dude. Now shut up, crawl back into your cave the the rest of your hate filled, foul mouthed crew.
Stonewolf
Right--because when I say 'Gay names', I'm talking in super-secret code that really means 'I hate men who like other men'.
I was raised back when, 'gay' meant you thought something was lame (because my parents were raised to think 'gay' meant 'happy'), and 'fag' was a cigarette.
So let me re-write my post for retards like you:
Using gay lame names like mebi instead of mega.
Happy now? Or should I say gay now?
Exactly. Dont give in to the mistakes of HDD manufacturers and legalize their wrong advertising.
Doesn't pint/quart/gallon differ according to geography. Pint, Gallon and so on.
This article and this time of year piss me off.
You're exactly right. We don't suddenly re-define an established standard. And when it comes to physics, we don't suddenly re-define time...like every year when the stupid US government decides that it's magically an hour earlier or an hour later.
When I make a cake, I don't use 1 cup of flower and then decide to make bread, so I redefine the size of 1 cup to make reading the recipe easier...
You missed the Mb = megabit MB = megabyte
Right--that's the way it was originally, although re-reading my post, I totally sound like a ranting loon instead of making that point.
a few years ago you didn't need to: 1kb was 1024 byte. it was defined like that. why don't we define 2 as 1 and 1 as 2 next ?
Not really.
Looking at the wikipedia article you linked, the only different between the two colums in the table on the right are:
1. Using 1024 verses 1000
2. Using gay names like mebi instead of mega
Wouldn't it be about a billion times easier to leave it as 'mega' and just remember that when you are dealing with base 2 methods of storage, it's 1024 (a power of two) rather than 1000 (a power of ten).
In other words:
* leave everything in the IT industry the way it is
* tell the HD makers that they are wrong to measure in base ten (since the US Gov already requires them to put that on their packaging, no big deal)
* No one has to sound retarded when talking to the 99% of the population who has no clue about this stupid base2/10 war with hard drive marketing droids by saying 'mebi' or 'gibi'.
Hard drives, on the other hand, have nothing that is fundamentally based on a power of 2.
Well--except that pesky material on the surface of a disk that can store either a '1' state or a '0' state. Most people call that a 'bit'. Strangely enough, that 'binary' state is conducive to measuring in powers of two...
Basically the same reason for moving the window control buttons to the left:
1. No reason at all 2. Because that's what Mark wants 3. A vague kind of Mac fanboism
Seriously?!? #@$^&@%! I just started testing Lucid on my netbook. I thought that was some horrible fucked-up glitch.
*sigh*
Every new release, switching back to Debian sounds better and better...
Apple started using SI prefixes half a year ago with Mac OS X Snow Leopard.
But do you actually get 15MBits or is that the name of the product they are selling you. In Germany, the DSL providers sell you a 16mbit connection but you may only get 8mbit, depending on how far you live from the switch. Cable, which I have, seems to come pretty close to the 32mbits they are advertising.
Check out www.speedtest.net to see your actual speed.
Actually, I've never been as slow as they advertise. My connection is supposed to be 15/2, but I almost always get 30/5. (It helps living in a neighborhood where almost no one else has high speed internet or can afford it, but the cable passes by on the way to the industrial areas). ;)
No need! You actually sound like a retard just by implying that using mebi makes one "sound like a retard".
Hey--I'll fully admit that I have no clue when to sound like a retard and when not to. All I care about is that megabits when talking comms gear is base ten, storage is base 2, and marketing folks should be shot for perverting the system.
Have fun evaluating all those textboxes!
No kidding. Who the hell in their right mind has a free-form text box to enter *both* your download and upload speed in bits?
My answer: People stopped using 9600 baud modems a long time ago, so I'm not sure how many bits I get--or even kilobits. Sure, I could do the math, but your survey is retarded. I get 15 MEGABITS (or should I sound like a retard and use the prefix MEBI?!?) down burstable to 30, and 2 megabits up, burstable to 0.0005 gigabits up. Have fun with the conversion, fuckers.
This, folks, is why the paperless office isn't here: complete ignorance of technology, and on a nerd site, to boot.
Dude! Wake up. You don't have to pass stuff around. You can both connect to the same file on a server and edit it simultaneously. One of your phones / tablets / computers can even act as the server so that you don't need a standalone one. Look at Abiword's collaboration features. Look at Google Docs'.
My boss just walked out the door for lunch, but I have an important document he needs to sign off real quick...maybe I'll just shout for him to come back in, sign in to his PC, and fire up Google Docs....or maybe I can run out with a sheet of paper and have him scrawl a signature on his way to the car...
Humans... We like to have a piece of paper in our hands, we can easily hand it to a coworker, we can scribble on it to take notes. I know it sounds oldskool, but for many tasks, a piece of paper is just superior.
Exactly. Until someone can come up with something like a tablet or the Star Trek PADD that costs a few bucks to make, is disposable, and can be handed around like paper, the paperless office won't happen.
If the Apple iPad or whatever it's called cost $0.01 to purchase, and everyone had hundreds of them, they wouldn't feel bad about loading a document on it and passing it off to a coworker to tweak and change and then hand back.
Currently there is nothing better than paper in terms of price and ease of use.
The child survived? Or was the child kept alive by medical science basically fulfilling all his bodily functions for him in an incubator?
Yes, doctors kept him alive and he survived.
Maybe we should use the same argument if you have a heart attack at 35 and have to be zapped--or maybe your child has an asthma attack and needs abuterol/atrovent so they can breathe...did they survive? Or were they kept alive by medical science? Are you arguing we *could* have let them die since it was only medical science that kept them alive?
The reality is that we could grow a child outside the womb already, it is just illegal to engage in this sort of research.
Really? Where is it illegal? Maybe the US, Canada, Europe. How about Russia, China, or durkastan? Remember when stem cells were illegal but other countries engaged in the practice? Where are the countries growing babies? I'm willing to bet that no one can grow a child outside the womb.
Does this mean that every time a sperm reaches an egg a new life instantly spring into existence?
Uh...yeah. Unless you can show some 'magical' other point when something goes from non-living to living. Is it when the doctor slaps the kids behind and he starts crying?
Is it murder to turn off a life support machine to someone who is clinically brain dead?
Not if they were a responsible adult and made their wishes clear through a living will that they don't want life support.
We can already take people to hospital and provide all the functions of their organs without the brain being involved.
What? Without the brain being involved? I've heard of artificial hearts, but never artificial brains.
In these situations we eventually switch off the incubator keeping them alive, are you actually saying that is murder?
Your last sentence is a bit confusing. But I think you're getting at something like "If someone is being completely supported by machines for life support, is it murder to turn them off?". Please correct me if I misunderstood your question.
Another longer-winded way of asking that question is "If a human being is alive, but being kept alive by machines and then you end that human beings life without their permission by turning off the machines that support their life, is that murder?". Yeah. Just as if you turned off a patients pacemaker without permission and they died.
But fear not--if you are an adult in the United States, (and I'm sure elsewhere) you can make your wishes known in a legal document. My grandmother did exactly that. When she got very sick, she wasn't hooked up to anything except an IV and she passed away. That's her choice.
That's not to say that your wishes are guaranteed to be followed--sometimes courts, lawyers, and the government get involved. Meh.
It is murder only if you are a living breathing person, or were at one time. And to say otherwise is horrible twisted logic.
Ok--living and breathing. Got it. This child was only in his mothers womb for 3 months--and he survived. So would his abortion at 2.9 months been 'ok' in your book?
Pricewatch wanted to test their servers against brute force attacks. The site's still up, so if it can survive /. it can survive anything.
If you can dodge a slashdotting, you can dodge a DDOS.
in europe you cant put 'you cant sue us' bullshit in eulas and get away with it. that only * may * work in usa.
in eu if you sell something, you have to deliver it. else, your product gets shoved in your butt by Eu regulations.
You're telling me there's no way to sell an online game in Europe unless you are willing to keep servers running forever? Do you guys play World of Warcraft over there?
While I believe you that there is a law that prohibits contracts that say "You can't sue", I would bet money a game company can provide wording that says "You agree that we may shut down our servers at any time which may render the game unplayable".
do you honestly believe such bullshit? there would be 1000 lawyers descending on them for a class action. i know it's popular on here to come up with new ways to trash things like DRM, but let's keep it atleast in the realms of reality....
Do you honestly believe such bullshit? There would be 1000 lines of text descending from the EULA to prevent suing for outages or planned obsolescence of the DRM servers. I know it's popular on here to come up with new ways to trash other users to make yourself look smart, but let's keep in at least in the realm of reality.
No it is called Digital Restrictions Management. They restrict how often you can play as per the current demands of parental and religious groups
WTF? When was the last time DRM was used by parental and/or religious groups to shutdown an entire game? And no, I'm not asking about your mom using netnanny to block some retarded flash website.
He could get trolled on slashdot by the very people he's coming to ask for help to become *less* of a noob.
I'll bet you teach your kid gun safety by shooting him in the neck.
LMAO! Where are my mod points?