4 ms·

There was never one commonly accepted meaning for a MB. Storage has always been base10. Linespeed has always been base10. RAM is native to a matrix, and lazy

by soneil 6y ago

There was never one commonly accepted meaning for a MB. Storage has always been base10. Linespeed has always been base10. RAM is native to a matrix, and lazy programmers like to pretend that means everything is. The first commercial drive, the IBM 305, stored 100,000 characters on each of 50 platters, for 5 million total characters. Drives have been a base10 number of sectors for my entire lifetime.

argvargc 6y ago
> There was never one commonly accepted meaning for a MB. If that was correct, this HN post wouldn't exist. For the 50 years preceding Apple's intervention, any example that can be produced of MB equalling 1,000,000 bytes, likely has about one MiB-worth of counter-examples showing it equalling 1,048,576 bytes.
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  No.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Units_based_on_powers_of_10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Units_based_on_powers_of_...
  - argvargc 6y ago
    This wikipedia article quoting a standard formalised in the late 90's, and only beginning to gain adoption from that point on, largely supports my statement.
    - pseudalopex 6y ago
      The Wikipedia article lists things that always used the base 10 definition. It has examples of disks from the 1970s. And it mentions a 3rd definition of megabyte used since the 1980s.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >For the 50 years preceding Apple's intervention, any example that can be produced of MB equalling 1,000,000 bytes, likely has about one MiB-worth of counter-examples showing it equalling 1,048,576 bytes. You'd be surprised... M has been the accepted prefix for 1,000,000 since the 19th century, widely used in science, networking standards and disks, decades before Apple made any change itself...
  - Aerroon 6y ago
    >M has been the accepted prefix for 1,000,000 since the 19th century Except when it, of course, isn't. $10M is certainly not ten megadollars. Even science isn't that consistent about it. The SI base unit for mass is the kilogram. Yet we don't have megakilograms. We have megagrams, but nobody uses them. Instead we use tons. Somehow kilotons and megatons are used though. If we're willing to accept the above then why couldn't we have stuck with the powers of 2? Digital information at some level is going to become base 2.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      >$10M is certainly not ten megadollars. Money is not covered by S.I./metric units anyway, so not sure what's the point of this argument. And even at that, while M here is the "mega" unit, the value 10M is still 10 million (1010^6) dollars (not 102^20 dollars).
    - turbopony 6y ago
      That's a good point. We might have to start saying megadollars. M$10 looks kind of clumsy, though.
    - rualca 6y ago
      > Except when it, of course, isn't. $10M is certainly not ten megadollars. The unit of currency is the dollar. There is no units of currency that corresponds to 1M dollars. The SI system of units devised a systematic way to define derived units that reflect a certain amount expressed in the base unit. Currency don't have the benefit.
    - soneil 6y ago

by soneil 6y ago

argvargc 6y ago

> There was never one commonly accepted meaning for a MB. If that was correct, this HN post wouldn't exist. For the 50 years preceding Apple's intervention, any example that can be produced of MB equalling 1,000,000 bytes, likely has about one MiB-worth of counter-examples showing it equalling 1,048,576 bytes.

pseudalopex 6y ago
No.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Units_based_on_powers_of_10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#Units_based_on_powers_of_...
- argvargc 6y ago
  This wikipedia article quoting a standard formalised in the late 90's, and only beginning to gain adoption from that point on, largely supports my statement.
  - pseudalopex 6y ago
    The Wikipedia article lists things that always used the base 10 definition. It has examples of disks from the 1970s. And it mentions a 3rd definition of megabyte used since the 1980s.
coldtea 6y ago
>For the 50 years preceding Apple's intervention, any example that can be produced of MB equalling 1,000,000 bytes, likely has about one MiB-worth of counter-examples showing it equalling 1,048,576 bytes. You'd be surprised... M has been the accepted prefix for 1,000,000 since the 19th century, widely used in science, networking standards and disks, decades before Apple made any change itself...
- Aerroon 6y ago
  >M has been the accepted prefix for 1,000,000 since the 19th century Except when it, of course, isn't. $10M is certainly not ten megadollars. Even science isn't that consistent about it. The SI base unit for mass is the kilogram. Yet we don't have megakilograms. We have megagrams, but nobody uses them. Instead we use tons. Somehow kilotons and megatons are used though. If we're willing to accept the above then why couldn't we have stuck with the powers of 2? Digital information at some level is going to become base 2.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    >$10M is certainly not ten megadollars. Money is not covered by S.I./metric units anyway, so not sure what's the point of this argument. And even at that, while M here is the "mega" unit, the value 10M is still 10 million (1010^6) dollars (not 102^20 dollars).
  - turbopony 6y ago
    That's a good point. We might have to start saying megadollars. M$10 looks kind of clumsy, though.
  - rualca 6y ago
    > Except when it, of course, isn't. $10M is certainly not ten megadollars. The unit of currency is the dollar. There is no units of currency that corresponds to 1M dollars. The SI system of units devised a systematic way to define derived units that reflect a certain amount expressed in the base unit. Currency don't have the benefit.
  - soneil 6y ago