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Nothing new there - even in our industry, specifically computer data storage. It's been forever since backup tape manufacturers started describing their tape c

Nothing new there - even in our industry, specifically computer data storage. It's been forever since backup tape manufacturers started describing their tape capacity assuming constant 2:1 compression ratios - even though that's a bad assumption to make as compression ratios wary wildly based on the original data. I think this started happening in the mid-1990s when tape drives had built-in hardware compression to save the host CPU from doing it in software? And of course, the canonical example of HDD vendors using "megabyte == 1000 kilobytes". Of course this results in a Nash equilibrium because vendors can't risk being honest if everyone else is dishonest/misleading because there's simply too many ignorant purchasers in the market - which is the exact same problem JC Penny had. At least AT&T is using "5Ge" instead of "5G" unlike they did with HSPA+ and "4G", and I'm okay with that, provided consumers won't think that "5Ge" stands for "Enhanced" instead of "Ersatz".

gruez 8y ago
>And of course, the canonical example of HDD vendors using "megabyte == 1000 kilobytes". That's a bad example because megabyte is defined as being 1000 kilobytes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  It's not a bad example because that definition was not in general use when the marketing practice started; at that time, kilobyte and megabyte had, in general use, exclusively the definitions later attached to kibibyte and mebibyte.
  - pseudalopex 8y ago
    When would you say the practice started?
  - mark-r 8y ago
    Just because the terms were in widespread use doesn't make them correct; the prefixes "kilo" and "mega" had well defined meanings long before the computer industry tried to redefine them. I side with the disk makers on this one.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Just because the terms were in widespread use doesn't make them correct That's exactly what makes uses of words correct. The disk manufacturers adopted a different usage than had theretofore been used in the computing industry (including previous usage by the same diskmakers!) deliberately to exploit consumers understanding of the preestsablished usage to create a false impression on which buying decisions would be made; it was, in simple terms even if legal laibility was escaped, a deliberate fraud.
- mdpopescu 8y ago
  It was only defined as such long after the marketers took over. Until then, sizes in computers were always defined as powers of 2. Sure, it was an overloading of prefixes already in use, but everyone understood them as such until companies started lying about it.

gruez 8y ago

>And of course, the canonical example of HDD vendors using "megabyte == 1000 kilobytes". That's a bad example because megabyte is defined as being 1000 kilobytes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megabyte

dragonwriter 8y ago
It's not a bad example because that definition was not in general use when the marketing practice started; at that time, kilobyte and megabyte had, in general use, exclusively the definitions later attached to kibibyte and mebibyte.
- pseudalopex 8y ago
  When would you say the practice started?
- mark-r 8y ago
  Just because the terms were in widespread use doesn't make them correct; the prefixes "kilo" and "mega" had well defined meanings long before the computer industry tried to redefine them. I side with the disk makers on this one.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Just because the terms were in widespread use doesn't make them correct That's exactly what makes uses of words correct. The disk manufacturers adopted a different usage than had theretofore been used in the computing industry (including previous usage by the same diskmakers!) deliberately to exploit consumers understanding of the preestsablished usage to create a false impression on which buying decisions would be made; it was, in simple terms even if legal laibility was escaped, a deliberate fraud.
mdpopescu 8y ago
It was only defined as such long after the marketers took over. Until then, sizes in computers were always defined as powers of 2. Sure, it was an overloading of prefixes already in use, but everyone understood them as such until companies started lying about it.