3 ms·

Am I the only person that gets slightly annoyed whenever I read "an order of magnitude" and the article doesn't mention whether it's binary or decimal. What do

Am I the only person that gets slightly annoyed whenever I read "an order of magnitude" and the article doesn't mention whether it's binary or decimal. What do you people think they're talking about, I'm guessing decimal order of magnitude?

valarauca1 13y ago
A binary order of magnitude is only doubling, which doubling traffic isn't exactly a DDoS just a busy day and likely within the spec of their current network to handle. A decimal order of magnitude is a factor of 10. And would likely represent a problem. Really not hard, you don't use the term 'order of magnitude' in binary. Instead opting for 'bit shift', or doubling.
pessimizer 13y ago
Doesn't matter to me, 2^X and 10^X are close enough to each other for pretty small to large values of X. When I say it, I usually mean something between x5 and x15. I think avoiding the temptation to false precision is more important. Inconsistent units and the retention of insignificant digits in order to make numbers look bigger (or smaller) drive me up the wall, though.
- marcosdumay 13y ago
  2^10 = 1000 10^10 = 10000000000 Not that close, if you ask me. If you mean something between 5 and 15, you are using base 10. *16 are 4 orders of magnitude in binary, but 1 in decimal. That said, everybody asking that same question, please, do not use binary orders of magnitude. Our language suffers every time somebody does that.
  - valarauca1 13y ago
    3-5 orders of magnitude is a decent margin of error for things like astrophysics.
- stcredzero 13y ago
  I said something like that to a hot redhead geologist once, and she laughed in my face.
jebus989 13y ago
A good heuristic: if in doubt, assume the counting system we all use for everything, all the time.
- danvideo 13y ago
  a common sense suggestion, thank you.
neurobro 13y ago
For binary I would expect them to just say "double".
vacri 13y ago
You're not annoyed that they don't mention octal or hexadecimal? Base 6? Base 60?
mobiplayer 13y ago
Most probably :) I'd be surprised to hear someone using binary to talk about bandwidth... Or pretty much anything else.

valarauca1 13y ago

A binary order of magnitude is only doubling, which doubling traffic isn't exactly a DDoS just a busy day and likely within the spec of their current network to handle. A decimal order of magnitude is a factor of 10. And would likely represent a problem. Really not hard, you don't use the term 'order of magnitude' in binary. Instead opting for 'bit shift', or doubling.

pessimizer 13y ago

Doesn't matter to me, 2^X and 10^X are close enough to each other for pretty small to large values of X. When I say it, I usually mean something between x5 and x15. I think avoiding the temptation to false precision is more important. Inconsistent units and the retention of insignificant digits in order to make numbers look bigger (or smaller) drive me up the wall, though.

marcosdumay 13y ago
2^10 = 1000 10^10 = 10000000000 Not that close, if you ask me. If you mean something between 5 and 15, you are using base 10. *16 are 4 orders of magnitude in binary, but 1 in decimal. That said, everybody asking that same question, please, do not use binary orders of magnitude. Our language suffers every time somebody does that.
- valarauca1 13y ago
  3-5 orders of magnitude is a decent margin of error for things like astrophysics.
stcredzero 13y ago
I said something like that to a hot redhead geologist once, and she laughed in my face.

jebus989 13y ago

A good heuristic: if in doubt, assume the counting system we all use for everything, all the time.

danvideo 13y ago
a common sense suggestion, thank you.

neurobro 13y ago

For binary I would expect them to just say "double".

vacri 13y ago

You're not annoyed that they don't mention octal or hexadecimal? Base 6? Base 60?

mobiplayer 13y ago

Most probably :) I'd be surprised to hear someone using binary to talk about bandwidth... Or pretty much anything else.