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I still say the US Office of Weights and Measures should require all computer storage (either RAM or SSD/HD) in the US be measured in base 2 units. This contin
by protomyth 6y ago
I still say the US Office of Weights and Measures should require all computer storage (either RAM or SSD/HD) in the US be measured in base 2 units. This continued base 10 usage in a binary world is confusing and frankly done to rip-off consumers.
- deaddodo 6y agoOne of the responses in that discussion: > However, if you think about, it does make sense for the computer to use the same standard as the HD manufacturers. No, it makes more sense for hard drive manufacturers to stop using a system that artificially inflates their disk size advertisements.
- grishka 6y ago1 MB = 1 million bytes. Formatted capacity less. Somehow they're getting away with this.
- deaddodo 6y agoThey obligatory HDD KMA disclaimer.
- hypertele-Xii 6y agoMeaning, there are 1 million bytes of storage, but pretty much all filesystems use some of those bytes to represent information about the files in addition to the files themselves. Hence, formatted, the resulting filesystem will have capacity less than that. You could, if you really wanted to, write 1 million raw bytes to the disk. But you'd need special software to read and write it, because de facto software expect there to be a master partitioning table or whatever it's called.
- grishka 6y agoI understand how file systems work, but then the properties window, in any OS, shows you the raw size anyway. Probably minus the tiniest fraction that the partition table occupies, but still. My point was that storage device manufacturers somehow get away with redefining units. No one else does this. Imagine if you bought a 1L bottle of milk, only to see in fine print that "1L = 800 ml".
- colejohnson66 6y agoIt’s more equivalent to “this package is sold by weight not volume”. You’re getting what you paid for (16 oz of cereal, not that sized box). They’re not redefining measurements (like 1L=800mL would do), just measuring it in a different way.
- blawson 6y agoApparently you're meant to use kibibyte for 2^10 (1024) bytes, with the prefix kilo being the International System of Units' version of 1000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Multiple-byte_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Multiple-byte_units
- hocuspocus 6y agoNetworking is also a binary world, yet nobody is using binary prefixes. Storage manufacturers have been using decimal prefixes for decades, you should probably get over it at this point.
- deaddodo 6y agoWhat do you mean? Networking is definitely done in binary standards. Your router/switch/NIC is almost definitely rated in a bitrate standard.
- qeternity 6y agoBitrates are base 10...
- protomyth 6y agoYep. Communication is its own confusing world given the odd packet sizes. Look up a jumbo frame discussion and reading it efficiently into pages of memory for a bit of a head bender.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y agoIEEE units are base 10. 10Gb/s is 10,000,000,000 bits per second.
- wiml 6y agoDisk manufacturers use a hybrid system, don't they, since the sectors are powers-of-two but they use decimal multipliers to inflate the size beyond that? So that a "marketing gigabyte" might actually be a megakibibyte.
- dataflow 6y agoDon't forget 1.44M floppies.
- 6y ago
- pmw 6y agoI disagree. As Michael Bolton said, "Why should I change? He's the one who sucks!" Kilo, mega, and other prefixes predate computer storage, and SI is beautiful because it is consistent. The computer industry decided to use standard prefixes with non-standard (base-2) quantities. Now let's cut our losses and return to consistency with everything else.
- dataflow 6y agoYou're not disagreeing. Parent is talking about the measurement units changing, whereas you're saying the meaning of the SI prefixes shouldn't change. You can have both: require KiB, MiB, etc.
- iab 6y agoHow about micro-inches, or kilo-furlongs. Let's get chaotic in here.
- dataflow 6y agoYour proposal lacks what is commonly called a "motivation".
- mattashii 6y agoI'd be all for that. Please standardize your measurements to one unit, and use constant logarithmically incrementing indicators for larger amounts of these units. Better yet: do not base them on (or name them after) a unit that differs for each person (why does my foot measure 0'11"?)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- axaxs 6y agoThat would only make sense if these storage mediums had to have sizes exactly aligning on them, but that isn't the case.
- perl4ever 6y agoIf memory is going to be measured in powers of two, shouldn't disks be, so that you can easily tell how many multiples of your memory size they store?
- pseudalopex 6y agoMost of my files aren't memory dumps.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rsj_hn 6y agoBy "US Office of Weights and Measures", I take it you are referring to NIST's Weights and Measures division? They do not have the power to require anything, they publish standards documents and make reference measures available to the public if someone needs to calibrate.
- protomyth 6y agoCongress is capable of writing legislation to force a measurement.
- pseudalopex 6y agoCongress passed legislation preferring the metric system.[1] [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/205b https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/205b