Its not unprofessional, but its certainly a less than consistent way to communicate and so its a less than optimally effective way to communicate. But then many industries have their own definitions. For example acronyms from one industry are used in another industry to mean other things etc.. Really, this is exactly why the SI-standard was introduced. A single standard across industries.
Good luck trying to explain to a civil engineer why we redefined the kilo to 1024. Bonus points if he considers it "professional" to redefine international standards to support nice hacks based on internal workings of our equipment.
Please, tell me what is unreasonable about that? Come over to my mom and try to explain to her why 512GB + 512GB = 1TB, and you will understand whay is unreasonable about that.
Oh, and you know that 2mbps ADSL line I have? How much time to fill a 2GB drive?
That's why we have standards. The above is supposed to be a simple mental arithmetic... We fucked it up, guys.
Your examples do not contradict the point. Bits are not bytes. Excellent.
Waiter! Bring me a 100 TERABIT drive, please. And a toilet plunger, - I'm gonna flush this fucking "7-bit ascii / 8-bit byte / 2-byte unicode character" stinking pile of shit we have as a standard down into the sewage where it belongs!
The same is true for computing, and they would be wise to acknowledge that the same fundamental problems hold true in this area. Utter nonsense.
Reporting memory sizes to end users has nothing to do with the internal workings in base 2. It is our job to convert between this, so the end users can only relate to easy, round numbers. 512 + 512 = 1k does not make sense for anyone outside the IT sector.
Days are very different, since everyone related to earth in a very real and intuitive way. If earth was tucked away into a black box, you would be expected to report the days in units of 1000. Because people would not care, and not want to know, why the earth inside that black box spins at 1/365.25 cycles.
Regardless of whether the IT sector is _technically_ in the wrong it's commonly accepted that in this area we work with powers of two. Can you drop by my mom and explain to her why it is commonly accepted that her 6,92GB free space is exactly the same as 7,434,502,144 bytes? This part of the UI makes absolutely no sense to her.
Computers work in base 2 natively and when the field was first started and the closest prefixes for base 2 'round' numbers in that base were adopted by the vast majority. By who do we STILL insist on reporting the HD size in base 2 to my mother? Trust me, she DOES NOT WANT IT.
Hopefully, other manufacturers will get the hint and start changing their plans. I could just see this going after other manufacturers too, who insist on using smaller sizes for their measurements to seem bigger. I like standards, so I support kilo = 1000.
I would market my drives as GENUINE gigabytes. Exactly 1.000.000.000 bytes or more per megabyte. I am sure they will be able to continue using these measures, and I fully support it.
(Yeah, I know base 2 is handy, but it's my job to do that calculation. No need to bother the end user with it.)
Oh, and he also had a point, too, if you care about that;) Ordinary people have no need to relate to base 2 systems and the OS should report disk size in units of 1000.
My family will never understand why a disk may have 6,92GB (7,434,502,144 bytes) free. And they would not apreciate an explanation about how neat that is if you suddenly need to... er... quicksort their free space or something. I mean, is there anything useful AT ALL about reporting HD size to the end-user in base2, except showing them how inconsiderarte technologists we are?
Within the industry, its known that 1 megabyte is 1048576 bytes Which is extremely unprofessional of us. Can you tell me any other industry where mega is not exactly 1.000.000 ?
Big thanks to the power industry for not selling me kilowatts by the 1013 watts or something. I am sure there are some almost-1000 numbers that are really neat for measuring 110v/60Hz power, but the electricity industry measures with 1000 watt per kilowatt. Why? Because it makes sense for everybody!
Sure, so we use binary numbers a lot. That does NOT allow us to choose our own wacky redefinition of kilo. I can assure you that no other industries have machines and calculations that always come out in nice little 1000s. You just don't know about it, because they are considerate enough to report it to you in units of 1000 anyway.
1024 - Because IT people care about a binary fetish instead of ordinary people... (No, this is not a good thing.)
and with offsite backups, it will survive even the destruction of your house. Without offsite backups, however, it may not even survive a tiny user error / accident.
Suprisingly many people ignore this. But RAID without proper backup will probably do nothing but cause a much greater harm the day things finally go bad, because people thought they were safe.
Though I kinda like hot-swapping mirrored raids, because of the backup ease. Just rip out the drive anytime you feel like an immediate, complete backup. Then plug in an old one for overwrite. Though I doubt you want to store music in a setup like that unless you do it for a living.
Actually, it is the much greater rate of deceleration upon impact that matters here. You can accelerate by 9.8m/s^2 into relativistic speed and be just fine unless you come to an abrupt stop, so you're all arguing the wrong side of the issue.
I should be thrilled to fly, right? Well, last time I was just annoyed at the security checks, bored by the safety lecture, disgusted by the food and spent most of my time reading a book waiting for time to pass. I'm thrilled every time. I'm sitting in a hunk of metal with roaring engines powered by refined hydrocarbons from half a world away. Every reason to be thrilled.
Humans are good at adapting, the drawback is that we take things for granted after one generation. Flight? There are people living today that would find a supermarket is thrilling. Enormous amounts of food, just sitting in a house and waiting for you.
No conspiracy. Just system dynamics. And programmers still think of storage in powers of 2, because that's what they work in. (This is less true when you work in higher level langauges, but if you don't take advantage of the powers of two that the algorithms are friendly with, it will cost you in performance, even if you don't realize it.) However, our job as professionals is to know these facts without bothering the end user with it. 2^10 is a nice and useful hack, but not something to show the end user. Computer users are no longer computer experts, and we should not bother them with internal details.
Disk capacity is reported to my mother in powers of 2. This simply does not make sense.
Technical details should not trump users. This makes us look like geeks with a binary fetish instead of professionals.
A major part of the problem is that the US is such a heavyweight in IT.
When you grow up with SI for everything, you come to expect it. Maybe people that are used to miles and gallons don't really care if you use 1024 instead of 1000.
I blame geek culture for the rest. Demanding that users adopt our binary tech-fetish because "that's how computers work", instead of following the proper standards. Our job as professionals is to handle the 2^20 conversion.
Property windows with stuff like "51,526,729,728 bytes (47.9 GB)" simply does not make sense.
Dude... I know techies has a binary fetish, but get this:
People don't fucking care about the manufacturing process or memory adressing details. Non-techies always count in powers of ten, and I and you will do nothing but making ourselves look like retards if we try to argue that 512 + 512 = 1k.
Does power stations redefine a kilowatt to 978W? Does butchers sell kilos of meat by the 1012th gram? Nope. Would I allow them to redefine these terms based their maufacturing process? Nope.
This is probably harder to grap for someone living in the US. But keep in mind that in other parts of the world, every single person used base 10 for everything (except time). Kilo = 1000. Always. No exceptions. For all you care, that's what God wrote on the stone tablets he handed over to Moses. You learned that in elementary school and have been using the fact daily, for everything from driving to buying meat.
Thus: 64Mb = 64,000,000.
Obviously. What else could it possibly be? We are talking about a number that is on the packaging shown to end-users, correct? Not predicting the future here, this is a guarantee: Base 10.
Oh, and I killed the Byte for you. Bits all the way. These international unicode-days, the arachaic byte won't last much longer than base2. (Not to mention that marketing can 8-up the numbers just by switching case of the 'B'. Bring a camera when you tell them!)
3. it's a small fraction of the work, yet non-trivial - a wash A lot of people only factor in the length here.
A CD playing in the background, recorded with a camcorder, has very little left of the original recodring by the time you watch it on YouTube. IMO, this is clearly a trivial fraction of the work, and very different from, say, a 29-second lossless sample.
People who tout their own "free will" should think long and hard about that and realize that simply being able to imagine a multitude of choices does not mean that each is likely to occur. Well... Free will is impossible.
2: Your experiences and cognitive choices? Shaped by genes and environment. Missing a bootstrap, there is no point when your free will can make a descion that later choices can be based on.
3: A soul? No. It could be: 3a: two-way linked, meaning your genes and environment could impact your soul, thus change what was supposed to be your free will. 3b: one-way linked, meaning your soul cannot be impacted by your life in any way. This means the soul cannot care about what happens to you, which renders the whole idea utterly meaningless.
Obviously, I'm not going to disprove the concept of free will in a 6-line argument (plus linebreaks). Just posting a summary if anyone was interested in pondering it. I'll try to refine it into a zen-one-liner over the next 10-30 years. anyhow, it's pretty clear that "free will" is an utterly impossible concept.
Which is fine. Then you can realize that you are a marvelous, complex being, capable of organizing and abstracting life from the swirling vortex of unfathomable mayhem and chaos that the universe is on the nano scale.
Slashdot Mirror
First time a non-computer TFA answers a meme!
Mighty mice does not run Linux. They run 20m/min treadmills.
Good luck trying to explain to a civil engineer why we redefined the kilo to 1024. Bonus points if he considers it "professional" to redefine international standards to support nice hacks based on internal workings of our equipment.
Oh, and you know that 2mbps ADSL line I have? How much time to fill a 2GB drive?
That's why we have standards. The above is supposed to be a simple mental arithmetic... We fucked it up, guys.
You know, there is a reason IT people are considered geeks and oddballs.
Trying to push our binary fetish down the throats of others instead of using a standard approach...
Waiter! Bring me a 100 TERABIT drive, please. And a toilet plunger, - I'm gonna flush this fucking "7-bit ascii / 8-bit byte / 2-byte unicode character" stinking pile of shit we have as a standard down into the sewage where it belongs!
Reporting memory sizes to end users has nothing to do with the internal workings in base 2. It is our job to convert between this, so the end users can only relate to easy, round numbers. 512 + 512 = 1k does not make sense for anyone outside the IT sector.
Days are very different, since everyone related to earth in a very real and intuitive way. If earth was tucked away into a black box, you would be expected to report the days in units of 1000. Because people would not care, and not want to know, why the earth inside that black box spins at 1/365.25 cycles.
I would market my drives as GENUINE gigabytes. Exactly 1.000.000.000 bytes or more per megabyte. I am sure they will be able to continue using these measures, and I fully support it.
(Yeah, I know base 2 is handy, but it's my job to do that calculation. No need to bother the end user with it.)
Parent allows us to: Blame Windows! Yay!
;) Ordinary people have no need to relate to base 2 systems and the OS should report disk size in units of 1000.
Oh, and he also had a point, too, if you care about that
My family will never understand why a disk may have 6,92GB (7,434,502,144 bytes) free. And they would not apreciate an explanation about how neat that is if you suddenly need to... er... quicksort their free space or something. I mean, is there anything useful AT ALL about reporting HD size to the end-user in base2, except showing them how inconsiderarte technologists we are?
Big thanks to the power industry for not selling me kilowatts by the 1013 watts or something. I am sure there are some almost-1000 numbers that are really neat for measuring 110v/60Hz power, but the electricity industry measures with 1000 watt per kilowatt. Why? Because it makes sense for everybody!
Sure, so we use binary numbers a lot. That does NOT allow us to choose our own wacky redefinition of kilo. I can assure you that no other industries have machines and calculations that always come out in nice little 1000s. You just don't know about it, because they are considerate enough to report it to you in units of 1000 anyway.
1024 - Because IT people care about a binary fetish instead of ordinary people... (No, this is not a good thing.)
With 8GB MicroSD cards availiable, can we even manage to fill a station wagon these days?
If not, we could get even higher bandwith with something nicer, like a Ferarri.
Off-site backups are paramount. With Ferrais dramatically increasing the bandwidth of our backup operations, I have a great idea for year's budget.
Cognitive dissonance also explains why many experienced VB-programmers consider it a decent language.
Suprisingly many people ignore this. But RAID without proper backup will probably do nothing but cause a much greater harm the day things finally go bad, because people thought they were safe.
Though I kinda like hot-swapping mirrored raids, because of the backup ease. Just rip out the drive anytime you feel like an immediate, complete backup. Then plug in an old one for overwrite. Though I doubt you want to store music in a setup like that unless you do it for a living.
Vinly is simply better because they know it in their hearts, and no science can disprove that fact.
Actually, it is the much greater rate of deceleration upon impact that matters here. You can accelerate by 9.8m/s^2 into relativistic speed and be just fine unless you come to an abrupt stop, so you're all arguing the wrong side of the issue.
;)
(What? There was a joke there? Where?
Humans are good at adapting, the drawback is that we take things for granted after one generation. Flight? There are people living today that would find a supermarket is thrilling. Enormous amounts of food, just sitting in a house and waiting for you.
Disk capacity is reported to my mother in powers of 2. This simply does not make sense.
Technical details should not trump users. This makes us look like geeks with a binary fetish instead of professionals.
A major part of the problem is that the US is such a heavyweight in IT. When you grow up with SI for everything, you come to expect it. Maybe people that are used to miles and gallons don't really care if you use 1024 instead of 1000. I blame geek culture for the rest. Demanding that users adopt our binary tech-fetish because "that's how computers work", instead of following the proper standards. Our job as professionals is to handle the 2^20 conversion. Property windows with stuff like "51,526,729,728 bytes (47.9 GB)" simply does not make sense.
If you worry about wear, why not move your logging to a secondary USB flash disk?
Then you would be able to swap out your high-access part of the system without touching your OS and other setup.
Dude... I know techies has a binary fetish, but get this:
People don't fucking care about the manufacturing process or memory adressing details. Non-techies always count in powers of ten, and I and you will do nothing but making ourselves look like retards if we try to argue that 512 + 512 = 1k.
Does power stations redefine a kilowatt to 978W? Does butchers sell kilos of meat by the 1012th gram? Nope. Would I allow them to redefine these terms based their maufacturing process? Nope.
This is probably harder to grap for someone living in the US. But keep in mind that in other parts of the world, every single person used base 10 for everything (except time). Kilo = 1000. Always. No exceptions. For all you care, that's what God wrote on the stone tablets he handed over to Moses. You learned that in elementary school and have been using the fact daily, for everything from driving to buying meat.
Thus: 64Mb = 64,000,000.
Obviously. What else could it possibly be? We are talking about a number that is on the packaging shown to end-users, correct? Not predicting the future here, this is a guarantee: Base 10.
Oh, and I killed the Byte for you. Bits all the way. These international unicode-days, the arachaic byte won't last much longer than base2. (Not to mention that marketing can 8-up the numbers just by switching case of the 'B'. Bring a camera when you tell them!)
Ugh. And I though that they had seen the light and decided to go in base 10 and count the actual bits.
A CD playing in the background, recorded with a camcorder, has very little left of the original recodring by the time you watch it on YouTube. IMO, this is clearly a trivial fraction of the work, and very different from, say, a 29-second lossless sample.
Where should such free will stem from?
1: Quantum randomness? Unpredictable, maybe. Free? Nope.
2: Your experiences and cognitive choices? Shaped by genes and environment. Missing a bootstrap, there is no point when your free will can make a descion that later choices can be based on.
3: A soul? No. It could be:
3a: two-way linked, meaning your genes and environment could impact your soul, thus change what was supposed to be your free will.
3b: one-way linked, meaning your soul cannot be impacted by your life in any way. This means the soul cannot care about what happens to you, which renders the whole idea utterly meaningless.
Obviously, I'm not going to disprove the concept of free will in a 6-line argument (plus linebreaks). Just posting a summary if anyone was interested in pondering it. I'll try to refine it into a zen-one-liner over the next 10-30 years. anyhow, it's pretty clear that "free will" is an utterly impossible concept.
Which is fine. Then you can realize that you are a marvelous, complex being, capable of organizing and abstracting life from the swirling vortex of unfathomable mayhem and chaos that the universe is on the nano scale.
We've got something way better than free will.