Michael Jennings <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Thursday, 21 July 2005, at 11:59:54 (+0200), > Martin Geisler wrote: > >> Would you consider changing the texts to reflect the IEC standard of >> KiB for 1024 bytes, MiB for 1024 KiB, and GiB for 1024 MiB? > > Boy I hope not. Such nonsense has no place in Enlightened software. > >> I think it makes things clearer in the long run if we begin using >> these units. > > No it doesn't. When you're dealing with bytes, units are multiples of > 1024 instead of 1000. It doesn't get any clearer than that.
Well, reading through the Usage Notes section on Wikipedia is interesting. We're dealing with bytes in all six cases, but there are differences: * A MB of RAM is 1024 * 1024 bytes. * A MB on a harddisk is 1000 * 1000 bytes if you're the manufacturer, but 1024 * 1024 if youre the OS, * A MB on a floppy disk is 1000 * 1024 bytes, * A MB on a CD is 1024 * 1024 bytes. * A MB on a DVD is 1000 * 1000 bytes. * A MB/s on a bus means 1000 * 1000 bytes/s. You must admit that this context sensitive unit 'MB' is everything but clear with no less than three different interpretations. The difference between CDs and DVDs surprised me. I agree that it looks funny --- I always think of 'Men in Black' when I see 'MiB' somewhere :-) -- Martin Geisler GnuPG Key: 0x7E45DD38 PHP EXIF Library | PHP Weather | PHP Shell http://pel.sf.net/ | http://phpweather.net/ | http://mgeisler.net/ Read/write EXIF data | Show current weather | A shell in a browser
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