5 ms·
Small suggestion -- it seems like you're using the wrong units (or maybe abbreviations) for your displayed average page sizes. You're using lower-case b to ind
by CydeWeys 6y ago
Small suggestion -- it seems like you're using the wrong units (or maybe abbreviations) for your displayed average page sizes. You're using lower-case b to indicate bits, but I suspect you mean upper-case B to indicate bytes? Also, the lower-case k is the correct prefix for 1,000, but lower case m is milli, or 1/000. You want M for mega, which is 1,000,000.
Also if you really want to be precise you should consider whether you're using binary prefixes vs SI prefixes, e.g. kB (10^3 bytes) vs kiB (2^10 bytes). That doesn't matter as much because the error is small for these lower values, but the casing errors definitely do matter. "mb" means millibars to me, not Megabytes!
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- diarrhea 6y ago"mb" is not millibar; "mbar" is.
- snazz 6y agoMaybe not officially, but in practice that's how it's used: The unit's official symbol is bar; the earlier symbol b is now deprecated and conflicts with the use of b denoting the unit barn, but it is still encountered, especially as mb (rather than the proper mbar) to denote the millibar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_(unit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_(unit)
- dktoao 6y agoYeah, in general, there are many, many "unit collisions" that can really only be exactly interpreted from context. I think it would be great if everyone started using bracket notation (or similar) for prefixes. E.g. [k]B [Mi]B This is the convention used in pqm.js and it works really well. this would go a long way toward units that can be accurately read by a computer.
- diarrhea 6y agoBut is the SI system ambiguous? I almost never have to think about prefix v unit, it is always quite clear. Of course, strange combinations can occur (MNm - Meganewtonmeter as an example perhaps), but even those are unambiguous on second thought. Collisions seem to be most prevalent in "IT" units or for improper SI usage. But maybe the latter is really the reason for the former in this case: if people separated SI and other units properly for IT units, it seems to be it would also be perfectly fine (but like me, a lot of people seem to have no idea of the correct definitions).
- dktoao 6y agoIf you are strictly sticking to the SI system of units, you should be fine. However, some of us work in industries and countries (You know where) that don't fully embrace SI, and mixing other systems with SI is common.
- 2038AD 6y ago> some of us work in industries and countries (You know where) that don't fully embrace SI, and mixing other systems with SI is common That's actually pretty much everywhere since metric and SI are two different things. Use of the litre is deprecated under SI.
- diarrhea 6y agoPressure measurements/specifications are part of my daily work. I have never seen "b" referring to bar, also not in any of the many American (imperial) papers I have come across. So this is either properly old usage indeed, or very specific to certain regions or industries (like usage of relative v absolute pressure). Or Wikipedia being properly pedantic.
- CivBase 6y agoHuh... I've always described 2^10 bytes as a "kilobyte" (kB) but I've always hated the ambiguity, even if the difference between 2^10 and 10^3 is usually not important. Thanks to this comment, I learned there is an formal set of units which are distinct from their SI counterparts[0]. 1000^1 kB, 1024^1 kibibyte (kiB) 1000^2 MB, 1024^2 mebibyte (MiB) 1000^3 GB, 1024^3 gibibyte (GiB) 1000^4 TB, 1024^4 tebibyte (TiB) 1000^5 PB, 1024^5 pebibyte (PiB) 1000^6 EB, 1024^6 exbibyte (EiB) 1000^7 ZB, 1024^7 zebibyte (ZiB) 1000^8 YB, 1024^8 yobibyte (YiB) It looks like those units have been around since 1995, but they haven't seen much mainstream adoption. Too bad. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte
- snazz 6y agoNotably, storage vendors and many operating system vendors use different units to describe capacity, so hard disks will always seem small as a result of this. [edit: add qualifying "many"]
- ken 6y agoWho? Not macOS [1], or Ubuntu [2]. Does Windows still use base-2? They probably shouldn't [3]. [1]: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201402 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201402 [2]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnitsPolicy https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UnitsPolicy [3]: https://www.tarsnap.com/GB-why.html https://www.tarsnap.com/GB-why.html
- snazz 6y agoWindows does. The df command does by default. Those are the two I use.
- brnt 6y agoI distinctly recall GNOME on Ubuntu using kibibytes. This may have been in the GNOME 2 era. Had thuis changed?
- jtvjan 6y agoWindows uses KB to mean KiB. Raymond Chen explained it in a blog post.[1] [1]: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=17933 https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=17933
- mbrameld 6y agomb means millibars to you in the context of file size? How does that make any sense?
- petee 6y agoWell of course when you have enough 'file' in one place it starts to exert outward pressure
- gitgud 6y agoThis is a hilarious nit-pick. In the context of an internet blog describing average page-size, it's completely obvious that mb == MB ... not millibars... There's an insane amount of abbreviations and acronyms that have multiple meanings in different contexts. How many Wikipedia pages have [disambiguation] here?...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Ma8ee 6y agoIt is not disambiguous, it is wrong. People will probably figure out what it is meant from the context, but it will slow them down. Are there really any reasons for using the wrong abbrevation other than lazyness or ignorance in this case?
- cwhiz 6y agoYup. I definitely got caught doing double takes. Too distracted by millibars to even finish the article.
- alphachloride 6y ago"""context"""
- okasaki 6y agoYou should learn to understand MB/mb/Mb/mB for megabyte and mbit for megabit. Anything else is inviting error and sorrow, because many people use it that way.
- CydeWeys 6y agoThis is flat-out wrong. Most times when I see a lower-case b in software or documentation it really does mean bit, not byte. The standards exist for a reason and you should follow them. Anything else is inviting error and sorrow. And no one says "mbit".
- okasaki 6y agoNo, you're wrong. My network card is 1gbit/s, my disk space is 4TB, my internet speed is 100mbitps and DVD capacity is 4gb. This is how everyone uses it and it's much clearer and better than B/b.