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The switch up of terminology annoys me still. Computers don't operate on decimal. Their hardware is built as such. It just seems like a way to mislead customers
by seanw444 4y ago
The switch up of terminology annoys me still. Computers don't operate on decimal. Their hardware is built as such. It just seems like a way to mislead customers into buying less data than they think they're getting.
- welterde 4y agoThe consumer doesn't care though how the computers operate internally, so using the normal SI definitions is the expectation, instead of redefining it just so you get some nice round numbers.
- GuB-42 4y agoThe "1024" scale is the weird one, even in computing, it only makes sense in a limited number of cases, and with modern computers, it is becoming more and more arbitrary. Generally, that scale is only used for storage. A Gigabit network is 1000Mbps, a gigahertz processor is 1000 MHz, a megapixel camera has a million pixels, etc... Even for storage, tapes for instance have no real reason to use powers of two, the tape can be of any arbitrary length, same for disks. Blocks of data can use powers of two, but what is a block? It make be 4096 bytes for the OS, but more than that for the medium because of error correction, and less for the application because of headers. Really, powers of two only make sense for randomly accessible storage, and that's probably why they tend to be only used for RAM and block sizes these days.
- endorphine 4y agoI'd love to grok why powers of two are used in RAM and disks. Any references that explain this?