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That's just outrageous nonsense. I would agree if the argument was about nomenclature: it should be GiB instead of GB, yes — but things are "naturally base-2" i

by krick 11y ago

That's just outrageous nonsense. I would agree if the argument was about nomenclature: it should be GiB instead of GB, yes — but things are "naturally base-2" in computers. Yes, you can make an SSD base-10 or whatever, the same way as a frequency really could be π^10 Hz or whatever, but your hardware without a software is nothing but a pile of garbage, and your software has really no choice but to deal with stuff that is base-2. RAM is not base-10 and registers are not base-10, the address space for anything is not base 10. Your HDD (or SSD, or some virtual block-device) will have a filesystem on it, which is divided by blocks that are not base-10. In fact, the very flash memory of yours has pages that are 2 or 4 KiB, and not 4000 B. If anything, disk couldn't be "base-10" anyway, as bytes (or, if we ditch them as well) bits are base-2. Even if you'd make a device that would be perfectly base-10 in it's storage capacity, addressing it then would be a problem. And as a post scriptum, that manner of dividing people by "geeks" and "not geeks" is stupid and annoying by itself. It doesn't really matter how ignorant your user is, the reality won't bend to match his expectations: instead, when dealing with something new he would need to adapt his thinking to match reality, or just ignore any discrepancies that occur, if he doesn't care that much. When things can be more "user-friendly" — they should. If they can't because things are what they are — well, that's it.

brucedawson 11y ago
> things are "naturally base-2" in computers No they aren't. Some things are naturally base-2 in computers. Far from all. Read the article. Frequencies already are base 10. And while your HDD is not a tidy power of ten, it also isn't a tidy power of two. Being a huge multiple of 4-KB doesn't make it a power of two. Your SSD isn't a tidy power of two either, for different reasons. Computer specs are non-binary in a surprising number of ways.
- krick 11y ago
  > Read the article. I already did, and already commented that this is ridiculous nonsense. > Frequencies already are base 10 I guess I explicitly mentioned it above, but seems that I have to repeat myself. Frequencies are base nothing. "Frequency" is just how many times something happens in a given period of time. Period of time may be anything: a minute, which doesn't contain 100 seconds, as you are surely aware; a time light in vacuum travels exactly 1 foot, which also wouldn't be a power of 10 compared to a second — anything. How many ticks your processor makes during this time is completely arbitrary as well: you can make it 1 tick more or 77.5 ticks less, it won't care. The reason why you think it's "base 10" is just that it's expressed in Hz, as Hz is an unit of SI, which uses powers of ten for everything. Which makes sense when we are talking about physics. You can "make" the frequency of your processor "base-something-else" without even physically changing anything: just use your own period of time instead of 1 second. How many bytes do you have on your hard drive is not so much about physics, however. You could construct your own storage device with completely arbitrary number of storage cells with completely arbitrary number of states each — that's not the important part. I think you understand that it's absolutely trivial thing to do: in a sense, you can invent a storage device with such a property yourself in a few hours — or even minutes, if you are fine with making that storage device "virtual". What is the important part is that "storage capacity" of your device means absolutely nothing before it's plugged into your computer and used with existing software, which runs on processors that are base-2, using filesystems with address space that are base-2. It's not about the hardware, it's about how we treat it in our software, which is inherently base-2. Calculating sizes for that in base-3 or base-10 is not impossible, of course, but it is just alien. It adds complexity when the whole point of whining in that blogpost is to reduce the complexity. The only way to actually reduce it here is to acknowledge that the things are what they are: even if your HDD has capacity of exactly 3333 bits, your data is in some sense "base-2", even if not literally. Even if your HDD doesn't care "base-what" it is — your RAM and your processor do. So it makes more sense to not use 2 standards and just measure everything information-capacity-related in powers of 2. And if size of your file is expressed in MiB: your HDD should be too, even if it's a fractional number of MiBs on that.

by krick 11y ago

brucedawson 11y ago

> things are "naturally base-2" in computers No they aren't. Some things are naturally base-2 in computers. Far from all. Read the article. Frequencies already are base 10. And while your HDD is not a tidy power of ten, it also isn't a tidy power of two. Being a huge multiple of 4-KB doesn't make it a power of two. Your SSD isn't a tidy power of two either, for different reasons. Computer specs are non-binary in a surprising number of ways.

krick 11y ago
> Read the article. I already did, and already commented that this is ridiculous nonsense. > Frequencies already are base 10 I guess I explicitly mentioned it above, but seems that I have to repeat myself. Frequencies are base nothing. "Frequency" is just how many times something happens in a given period of time. Period of time may be anything: a minute, which doesn't contain 100 seconds, as you are surely aware; a time light in vacuum travels exactly 1 foot, which also wouldn't be a power of 10 compared to a second — anything. How many ticks your processor makes during this time is completely arbitrary as well: you can make it 1 tick more or 77.5 ticks less, it won't care. The reason why you think it's "base 10" is just that it's expressed in Hz, as Hz is an unit of SI, which uses powers of ten for everything. Which makes sense when we are talking about physics. You can "make" the frequency of your processor "base-something-else" without even physically changing anything: just use your own period of time instead of 1 second. How many bytes do you have on your hard drive is not so much about physics, however. You could construct your own storage device with completely arbitrary number of storage cells with completely arbitrary number of states each — that's not the important part. I think you understand that it's absolutely trivial thing to do: in a sense, you can invent a storage device with such a property yourself in a few hours — or even minutes, if you are fine with making that storage device "virtual". What is the important part is that "storage capacity" of your device means absolutely nothing before it's plugged into your computer and used with existing software, which runs on processors that are base-2, using filesystems with address space that are base-2. It's not about the hardware, it's about how we treat it in our software, which is inherently base-2. Calculating sizes for that in base-3 or base-10 is not impossible, of course, but it is just alien. It adds complexity when the whole point of whining in that blogpost is to reduce the complexity. The only way to actually reduce it here is to acknowledge that the things are what they are: even if your HDD has capacity of exactly 3333 bits, your data is in some sense "base-2", even if not literally. Even if your HDD doesn't care "base-what" it is — your RAM and your processor do. So it makes more sense to not use 2 standards and just measure everything information-capacity-related in powers of 2. And if size of your file is expressed in MiB: your HDD should be too, even if it's a fractional number of MiBs on that.