Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Sat, Jan 20, 2007 at 09:08:47AM +0100, Michał Kudła wrote: > Hello, > after > ... > hdb: max request size: 512KiB > hdb: 488397168 sectors (250059 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=30401/255/63, > > Should be everywere KiB, MiB, GiB, ... according to IEC 60027-2 You are mistaken. The MB here are actual megabytes (million bytes), not MiB. Read the code, or do the computation: 488397168*512 = 250059350016. (Precisely what one wants - the kernel gives the correct size, just like the disk manufacturers, and there is no discrepancy. Binary abuse for decimal prefixes is a sloppiness that might be acceptable for stuff that naturally comes in powers of two. It is long ago that that was true for disks.) Andries - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Sat, Jan 20, 2007 at 09:08:47AM +0100, Michał Kudła wrote: Hello, after ... hdb: max request size: 512KiB hdb: 488397168 sectors (250059 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=30401/255/63, Should be everywere KiB, MiB, GiB, ... according to IEC 60027-2 You are mistaken. The MB here are actual megabytes (million bytes), not MiB. Read the code, or do the computation: 488397168*512 = 250059350016. (Precisely what one wants - the kernel gives the correct size, just like the disk manufacturers, and there is no discrepancy. Binary abuse for decimal prefixes is a sloppiness that might be acceptable for stuff that naturally comes in powers of two. It is long ago that that was true for disks.) Andries - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Andreas Schwab <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > The exact number of sectors is often printend on the label. Sure, I'd even say "almost always" for recent disks. Still, they count in GBs, not sectors. OTOH it would be great if they say "xxx,xxx,xxx 512-byte sectors", and maybe "approx. X GB". -- Krzysztof Halasa - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Krzysztof Halasa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Andreas Schwab <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> But other than the sector size there is no natural power of 2 connected to >> disk size. A disk can have any odd number of sectors. > > But the manufacturers don't count in sectors. The exact number of sectors is often printend on the label. Andreas. -- Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, [EMAIL PROTECTED] SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany PGP key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756 01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5 "And now for something completely different." - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Krzysztof Halasa [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Andreas Schwab [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But other than the sector size there is no natural power of 2 connected to disk size. A disk can have any odd number of sectors. But the manufacturers don't count in sectors. The exact number of sectors is often printend on the label. Andreas. -- Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, [EMAIL PROTECTED] SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany PGP key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756 01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5 And now for something completely different. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Andreas Schwab [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The exact number of sectors is often printend on the label. Sure, I'd even say almost always for recent disks. Still, they count in GBs, not sectors. OTOH it would be great if they say xxx,xxx,xxx 512-byte sectors, and maybe approx. X GB. -- Krzysztof Halasa - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Jan 23 2007 02:04, Krzysztof Halasa wrote: >Andreas Schwab <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> But other than the sector size there is no natural power of 2 connected to >> disk size. A disk can have any odd number of sectors. > >But the manufacturers don't count in sectors. > >It should be consistent, though. "How many GB of disk space do you >need to store 2 GB of USB flash, and how many to store 2 GB RAM image"? Here's the marketing gap a company could jump in: "first to count in real GB" -`J' -- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Andreas Schwab <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > But other than the sector size there is no natural power of 2 connected to > disk size. A disk can have any odd number of sectors. But the manufacturers don't count in sectors. It should be consistent, though. "How many GB of disk space do you need to store 2 GB of USB flash, and how many to store 2 GB RAM image"? :-) -- Krzysztof Halasa - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Mon, 22 Jan 2007, Tony Foiani wrote: > > "Jan" == Jan Engelhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > Jan> For "F"s sake, when you gotta use abbreviations, then just use > Jan> k=1000 and K=1024 already, b for bits and B for bytes. Problem > Jan> gone. > >The one-letter abbreviations are identical to SI prefixes, except >for "K", which is used interchangeably with "k" (in SI, "K" stands >for the kelvin, and only "k" stands for 1,000). > >[...] > >BIPM (which maintains SI) expressly prohibits the binary prefix >usage, and recommends the use of the IEC prefixes as an alternative >(computing units are not included in SI). > >Some have suggested that "k" be used for 1,000, and "K" for 1,024, >but this cannot be extended to the higher order prefixes and has >never been widely recognised. >-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix > > So if you continue insisting that "MB" is really 2^20 bytes, you're > flouting the SI in at least two ways. The use of SI is not even accepted on bytes. See http://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/si_brochure_8_en.pdf>. Therefore "MB" is undefined in the SI world, and 2^20 B in the IT world. > I'd expect that from an USAian, > not a German. ;-> (To be clear, I *am* a USAian, and I really > desperately wish this country were metric...) I'd even prefer decimal hours, minutes and seconds. > Some other gems from that article that haven't been covered in this > thread: > > * CD-Rs are generally specified in MiB, but DVD-Rs in GB > * CPU clocks are given in decimal Hz is a supplementary SI unit. -- "Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Jan 22 2007 15:43, Lennart Sorensen wrote: > >On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 05:58:42PM +0100, Jan Engelhardt wrote: >> For "F"s sake, when you gotta use abbreviations, then just use k=1000 and >> K=1024 already, b for bits and B for bytes. Problem gone. > >And for 10^6 vs 2^20? "My harddisk is a 251 gB" actually even though it is advertised as 250 GB. -`J' -- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Mon, 22 Jan 2007, Lennart Sorensen wrote: > On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 06:36:19PM +, Alan wrote: >> K is Kelvin, k is kilo- > > K is a unit is Kelvin, k/K as a prefix is kilo. > >> See ISO 31. There is a standard for this stuff which is used worldwide >> and only bits of the computing industry appear incapable of following it. > > -- > Len Sorensen Perhaps. However, in the days of kilomegacycles (KMC), micromicrofarads (MMFD), and megohms (MEG), few misunderstood what was being read. Now, with the international symbols (http://www.bipm.org/si/si_brochure/) many seem downright confounded because it has turned out be be more politics than engineering. I well remember an early chart being published with cycles-per-second as the ordinate and hertz as the abscissa. There are now "advertising units" where a gigabyte is something greater than what's really on the drive, where power consumption, clock speeds, transfer rates, acoustic noise, and other technical specifications do not have any basis in reality. It is probably caused by the relegation of computers to "consumer goods." Such goods brought out such hype as IHF audio power ratings, and EPA mileage, which have nothing whatsoever to do with reality. It's not just the specs. In the United States, check out your telephone bill. What is supposed to be a US$29.95 service, bills out at nearly US$40.00. "There are lies --and damned lies..." Cheers, Dick Johnson Penguin : Linux version 2.6.16.24 on an i686 machine (5592.59 BogoMips). New book: http://www.AbominableFirebug.com/ _ The information transmitted in this message is confidential and may be privileged. Any review, retransmission, dissemination, or other use of this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify Analogic Corporation immediately - by replying to this message or by sending an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - and destroy all copies of this information, including any attachments, without reading or disclosing them. Thank you. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 06:36:19PM +, Alan wrote: > K is Kelvin, k is kilo- K is a unit is Kelvin, k/K as a prefix is kilo. > See ISO 31. There is a standard for this stuff which is used worldwide > and only bits of the computing industry appear incapable of following it. -- Len Sorensen - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 05:58:42PM +0100, Jan Engelhardt wrote: > For "F"s sake, when you gotta use abbreviations, then just use k=1000 and > K=1024 already, b for bits and B for bytes. Problem gone. And for 10^6 vs 2^20? > kegs perhaps? :) Hmm, Mega -> Megs, Kilo -> Kils? -- Len Sorensen - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
> "Jan" == Jan Engelhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Jan> For "F"s sake, when you gotta use abbreviations, then just use Jan> k=1000 and K=1024 already, b for bits and B for bytes. Problem Jan> gone. The one-letter abbreviations are identical to SI prefixes, except for "K", which is used interchangeably with "k" (in SI, "K" stands for the kelvin, and only "k" stands for 1,000). [...] BIPM (which maintains SI) expressly prohibits the binary prefix usage, and recommends the use of the IEC prefixes as an alternative (computing units are not included in SI). Some have suggested that "k" be used for 1,000, and "K" for 1,024, but this cannot be extended to the higher order prefixes and has never been widely recognised. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix So if you continue insisting that "MB" is really 2^20 bytes, you're flouting the SI in at least two ways. I'd expect that from an USAian, not a German. ;-> (To be clear, I *am* a USAian, and I really desperately wish this country were metric...) Some other gems from that article that haven't been covered in this thread: * CD-Rs are generally specified in MiB, but DVD-Rs in GB * CPU clocks are given in decimal (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#Usage_notes ) It also points out that there are some ongoing lawsuits on exactly this topic, completely analogous to the CRT diagonal cases. > "Alan" == Alan Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Alan> K is Kelvin, k is kilo- One nice thing about IEC 60027-2 is that it seems to have fixed the capitalization inconsistency; kibi- really is "Ki". (I never cared for the lower-case "k" for "kilo-"; there are other clashes of symbols in the SI system proper; think "milli-" and "meter".) The standard also specifically states that "B", when used with the binary prefixes, is "byte" not "Bel". Which is nice. t. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
> For "F"s sake, when you gotta use abbreviations, then just use k=1000 and > K=1024 already, b for bits and B for bytes. Problem gone. K is Kelvin, k is kilo- See ISO 31. There is a standard for this stuff which is used worldwide and only bits of the computing industry appear incapable of following it. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Jan 22 2007 10:53, Lennart Sorensen wrote: > >> You talk for everybody, or is it just your (and only your) mind refusing >> to accept new terms? For my taste, kib and mib are even easier to >> speech, easier than {KiLoBytE} resp. {MeGaBytE} or KaaaBe / eMmmBe. > >There is too much legacy code and systems around for it to ever be >nonambiguous. It is too late to fix it, and the units that this >"standard" came up with just sound too stupid to be taken seriously. For "F"s sake, when you gotta use abbreviations, then just use k=1000 and K=1024 already, b for bits and B for bytes. Problem gone. >You also don't pronounce units just because it looks like you can. So >KiB is not easier than KB. Heck most people in speach wouild just call >them Ks (kays or something like that). And MBs just become Megs. Same kegs perhaps? :) -`J' -- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Sun, Jan 21, 2007 at 12:10:00PM +0100, Eduard Bloch wrote: > And I cannot seriosly believe that you are cappable of reading his > examples. Megabananas are a ridiculous demonstration becase of the > object beeing counted itself, but if you take stuff from real life then > I doubt that you expect a kilometer to be 1024 meters. Same for > kilogram. And a megatone is not 1048576 tones, even not 104857600 kg, > and not 107374182400 grams. Wanna more stupid examples created by > abusing decimal units? The computer world has a long history of borrowing and abusing terms. Probably the majority of computer terms came to be that way. Why should we change any of them now? Should we stop calling it booting because some people might be confused and think it means kicking the computer? Should we rename threads because people might think it has something to do with sewing stuff together? > You talk for everybody, or is it just your (and only your) mind refusing > to accept new terms? For my taste, kib and mib are even easier to > speech, easier than {KiLoBytE} resp. {MeGaBytE} or KaaaBe / eMmmBe. There is too much legacy code and systems around for it to ever be nonambiguous. It is too late to fix it, and the units that this "standard" came up with just sound too stupid to be taken seriously. You also don't pronounce units just because it looks like you can. So KiB is not easier than KB. Heck most people in speach wouild just call them Ks (kays or something like that). And MBs just become Megs. Same for Gigs. Whoever wasted their time coming up with this standard, well they simply wasted their time. It will NEVER catch on, and it will never replace the common usage. It's about 50 or 60 years to late for that. -- Len Sorensen - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Sun, Jan 21, 2007 at 10:12:55PM +0100, Jan Engelhardt wrote: > Same lie like with harddrives. It's around 80, not 100. > But it depends on how you look at it. 80 for Layer3, possibly > a little more for Layer2/1. Strange, I tend to get about 95 for layer 3. -- Len Sorensen - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Krzysztof Halasa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Jan Engelhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> It's just that storage vendors broke the computer rule and went with 1000. > > 1024 etc. is (should be) natural to disks because the sector size > is 512 B, 2048 B or something like that. But other than the sector size there is no natural power of 2 connected to disk size. A disk can have any odd number of sectors. Andreas. -- Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, [EMAIL PROTECTED] SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany PGP key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756 01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5 "And now for something completely different." - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Mon, 2007-01-22 at 02:56 +0100, Krzysztof Halasa wrote: > Jan Engelhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Bleh. Except for storage, base 1024 was used for almost everything > > I remember. 4 MB memory meant 4096 KB, and that's still the case today. > > Most likely the same for transfer rates. > > Nope, transfer rates were initially 1000-based: 9.6 kbps = 9600 bps, > 28.8 kbps = 28800 bps, 64 kbps = 64000 bps. Then it went 128, 256, > 512 kbps = 512000 bps and 1 Mbps = 2 * 512 kbps = 1024000 bps. ACK. But this and harddisk sizes are really the only areas. > But it's limited mostly to serial interfaces. Other networks use > 10, 1000 etc. because they have nothing natural in (powers of) 2 > so 1 Mbps may be 100 bps as well. > > > It's just that storage vendors broke the computer rule and went with 1000. > > 1024 etc. is (should be) natural to disks because the sector size > is 512 B, 2048 B or something like that. Yes, but it sounds in commercials better if there is a larger number there. And you can raise the result of a fraction if you lower the divisor. Bernd -- Firmix Software GmbH http://www.firmix.at/ mobil: +43 664 4416156 fax: +43 1 7890849-55 Embedded Linux Development and Services - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Hi Jan! On 21 Jan 2007, at 22:12, Jan Engelhardt wrote: How fast is your Ethernet port? 100Mbps or 95.37Mbps? Same lie like with harddrives. It's around 80, not 100. But it depends on how you look at it. 80 for Layer3, possibly a little more for Layer2/1. Nope, I get consistently 12e6 bytes/sec, which is 96e6 bits/sec across 100Mbps ethernet, fitting nicely with the frame overhead (some 50 bytes out of 1500, without TCP options). So no lie here. With gigabit I'm not completely sure yet, still have to see the advertised 125e6 symbols/sec (got only as far as 115e6 up to now). Ciao, Roland -- TU Muenchen, Physik-Department E18, James-Franck-Str., 85748 Garching Telefon 089/289-12575; Telefax 089/289-12570 -- CERN office: 892-1-D23 phone: +41 22 7676540 mobile: +41 76 487 4482 -- Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. - Benjamin Franklin -BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK- Version: 3.12 GS/CS/M/MU d-(++) s:+ a-> C+++ UL P+++ L+++ E(+) W+ !N K- w--- M + !V Y+ PGP++ t+(++) 5 R+ tv-- b+ DI++ e+++> h y+++ --END GEEK CODE BLOCK-- smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature PGP.sig Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
> "DS" == David Schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: DS> If you are right, a "512MB" RAM stick is mislabelled and is more DS> correctly labelled as "536.8MB". (With 512MiB being equally DS> correct.) DS> Isn't that obviously not just wrong but borderline crazy? No. It is not obvious to me what is wrong with that. RAM is the only thing using binary units, everything else is decimal. It is about time that RAM switched too. /Benny - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
DS == David Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: DS If you are right, a 512MB RAM stick is mislabelled and is more DS correctly labelled as 536.8MB. (With 512MiB being equally DS correct.) DS Isn't that obviously not just wrong but borderline crazy? No. It is not obvious to me what is wrong with that. RAM is the only thing using binary units, everything else is decimal. It is about time that RAM switched too. /Benny - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Hi Jan! On 21 Jan 2007, at 22:12, Jan Engelhardt wrote: How fast is your Ethernet port? 100Mbps or 95.37Mbps? Same lie like with harddrives. It's around 80, not 100. But it depends on how you look at it. 80 for Layer3, possibly a little more for Layer2/1. Nope, I get consistently 12e6 bytes/sec, which is 96e6 bits/sec across 100Mbps ethernet, fitting nicely with the frame overhead (some 50 bytes out of 1500, without TCP options). So no lie here. With gigabit I'm not completely sure yet, still have to see the advertised 125e6 symbols/sec (got only as far as 115e6 up to now). Ciao, Roland -- TU Muenchen, Physik-Department E18, James-Franck-Str., 85748 Garching Telefon 089/289-12575; Telefax 089/289-12570 -- CERN office: 892-1-D23 phone: +41 22 7676540 mobile: +41 76 487 4482 -- Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both. - Benjamin Franklin -BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK- Version: 3.12 GS/CS/M/MU d-(++) s:+ a- C+++ UL P+++ L+++ E(+) W+ !N K- w--- M + !V Y+ PGP++ t+(++) 5 R+ tv-- b+ DI++ e+++ h y+++ --END GEEK CODE BLOCK-- smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature PGP.sig Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Mon, 2007-01-22 at 02:56 +0100, Krzysztof Halasa wrote: Jan Engelhardt [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Bleh. Except for storage, base 1024 was used for almost everything I remember. 4 MB memory meant 4096 KB, and that's still the case today. Most likely the same for transfer rates. Nope, transfer rates were initially 1000-based: 9.6 kbps = 9600 bps, 28.8 kbps = 28800 bps, 64 kbps = 64000 bps. Then it went 128, 256, 512 kbps = 512000 bps and 1 Mbps = 2 * 512 kbps = 1024000 bps. ACK. But this and harddisk sizes are really the only areas. But it's limited mostly to serial interfaces. Other networks use 10, 1000 etc. because they have nothing natural in (powers of) 2 so 1 Mbps may be 100 bps as well. It's just that storage vendors broke the computer rule and went with 1000. 1024 etc. is (should be) natural to disks because the sector size is 512 B, 2048 B or something like that. Yes, but it sounds in commercials better if there is a larger number there. And you can raise the result of a fraction if you lower the divisor. Bernd -- Firmix Software GmbH http://www.firmix.at/ mobil: +43 664 4416156 fax: +43 1 7890849-55 Embedded Linux Development and Services - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Krzysztof Halasa [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jan Engelhardt [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: It's just that storage vendors broke the computer rule and went with 1000. 1024 etc. is (should be) natural to disks because the sector size is 512 B, 2048 B or something like that. But other than the sector size there is no natural power of 2 connected to disk size. A disk can have any odd number of sectors. Andreas. -- Andreas Schwab, SuSE Labs, [EMAIL PROTECTED] SuSE Linux Products GmbH, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany PGP key fingerprint = 58CA 54C7 6D53 942B 1756 01D3 44D5 214B 8276 4ED5 And now for something completely different. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Sun, Jan 21, 2007 at 10:12:55PM +0100, Jan Engelhardt wrote: Same lie like with harddrives. It's around 80, not 100. But it depends on how you look at it. 80 for Layer3, possibly a little more for Layer2/1. Strange, I tend to get about 95 for layer 3. -- Len Sorensen - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Sun, Jan 21, 2007 at 12:10:00PM +0100, Eduard Bloch wrote: And I cannot seriosly believe that you are cappable of reading his examples. Megabananas are a ridiculous demonstration becase of the object beeing counted itself, but if you take stuff from real life then I doubt that you expect a kilometer to be 1024 meters. Same for kilogram. And a megatone is not 1048576 tones, even not 104857600 kg, and not 107374182400 grams. Wanna more stupid examples created by abusing decimal units? The computer world has a long history of borrowing and abusing terms. Probably the majority of computer terms came to be that way. Why should we change any of them now? Should we stop calling it booting because some people might be confused and think it means kicking the computer? Should we rename threads because people might think it has something to do with sewing stuff together? You talk for everybody, or is it just your (and only your) mind refusing to accept new terms? For my taste, kib and mib are even easier to speech, easier than {KiLoBytE} resp. {MeGaBytE} or KaaaBe / eMmmBe. There is too much legacy code and systems around for it to ever be nonambiguous. It is too late to fix it, and the units that this standard came up with just sound too stupid to be taken seriously. You also don't pronounce units just because it looks like you can. So KiB is not easier than KB. Heck most people in speach wouild just call them Ks (kays or something like that). And MBs just become Megs. Same for Gigs. Whoever wasted their time coming up with this standard, well they simply wasted their time. It will NEVER catch on, and it will never replace the common usage. It's about 50 or 60 years to late for that. -- Len Sorensen - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Jan 22 2007 10:53, Lennart Sorensen wrote: You talk for everybody, or is it just your (and only your) mind refusing to accept new terms? For my taste, kib and mib are even easier to speech, easier than {KiLoBytE} resp. {MeGaBytE} or KaaaBe / eMmmBe. There is too much legacy code and systems around for it to ever be nonambiguous. It is too late to fix it, and the units that this standard came up with just sound too stupid to be taken seriously. For Fs sake, when you gotta use abbreviations, then just use k=1000 and K=1024 already, b for bits and B for bytes. Problem gone. You also don't pronounce units just because it looks like you can. So KiB is not easier than KB. Heck most people in speach wouild just call them Ks (kays or something like that). And MBs just become Megs. Same kegs perhaps? :) -`J' -- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
For Fs sake, when you gotta use abbreviations, then just use k=1000 and K=1024 already, b for bits and B for bytes. Problem gone. K is Kelvin, k is kilo- See ISO 31. There is a standard for this stuff which is used worldwide and only bits of the computing industry appear incapable of following it. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Jan == Jan Engelhardt [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jan For Fs sake, when you gotta use abbreviations, then just use Jan k=1000 and K=1024 already, b for bits and B for bytes. Problem Jan gone. The one-letter abbreviations are identical to SI prefixes, except for K, which is used interchangeably with k (in SI, K stands for the kelvin, and only k stands for 1,000). [...] BIPM (which maintains SI) expressly prohibits the binary prefix usage, and recommends the use of the IEC prefixes as an alternative (computing units are not included in SI). Some have suggested that k be used for 1,000, and K for 1,024, but this cannot be extended to the higher order prefixes and has never been widely recognised. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix So if you continue insisting that MB is really 2^20 bytes, you're flouting the SI in at least two ways. I'd expect that from an USAian, not a German. ;- (To be clear, I *am* a USAian, and I really desperately wish this country were metric...) Some other gems from that article that haven't been covered in this thread: * CD-Rs are generally specified in MiB, but DVD-Rs in GB * CPU clocks are given in decimal (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#Usage_notes ) It also points out that there are some ongoing lawsuits on exactly this topic, completely analogous to the CRT diagonal cases. Alan == Alan Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Alan K is Kelvin, k is kilo- One nice thing about IEC 60027-2 is that it seems to have fixed the capitalization inconsistency; kibi- really is Ki. (I never cared for the lower-case k for kilo-; there are other clashes of symbols in the SI system proper; think milli- and meter.) The standard also specifically states that B, when used with the binary prefixes, is byte not Bel. Which is nice. t. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 05:58:42PM +0100, Jan Engelhardt wrote: For Fs sake, when you gotta use abbreviations, then just use k=1000 and K=1024 already, b for bits and B for bytes. Problem gone. And for 10^6 vs 2^20? kegs perhaps? :) Hmm, Mega - Megs, Kilo - Kils? -- Len Sorensen - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 06:36:19PM +, Alan wrote: K is Kelvin, k is kilo- K is a unit is Kelvin, k/K as a prefix is kilo. See ISO 31. There is a standard for this stuff which is used worldwide and only bits of the computing industry appear incapable of following it. -- Len Sorensen - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Mon, 22 Jan 2007, Lennart Sorensen wrote: On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 06:36:19PM +, Alan wrote: K is Kelvin, k is kilo- K is a unit is Kelvin, k/K as a prefix is kilo. See ISO 31. There is a standard for this stuff which is used worldwide and only bits of the computing industry appear incapable of following it. -- Len Sorensen Perhaps. However, in the days of kilomegacycles (KMC), micromicrofarads (MMFD), and megohms (MEG), few misunderstood what was being read. Now, with the international symbols (http://www.bipm.org/si/si_brochure/) many seem downright confounded because it has turned out be be more politics than engineering. I well remember an early chart being published with cycles-per-second as the ordinate and hertz as the abscissa. There are now advertising units where a gigabyte is something greater than what's really on the drive, where power consumption, clock speeds, transfer rates, acoustic noise, and other technical specifications do not have any basis in reality. It is probably caused by the relegation of computers to consumer goods. Such goods brought out such hype as IHF audio power ratings, and EPA mileage, which have nothing whatsoever to do with reality. It's not just the specs. In the United States, check out your telephone bill. What is supposed to be a US$29.95 service, bills out at nearly US$40.00. There are lies --and damned lies... Cheers, Dick Johnson Penguin : Linux version 2.6.16.24 on an i686 machine (5592.59 BogoMips). New book: http://www.AbominableFirebug.com/ _ The information transmitted in this message is confidential and may be privileged. Any review, retransmission, dissemination, or other use of this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify Analogic Corporation immediately - by replying to this message or by sending an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] - and destroy all copies of this information, including any attachments, without reading or disclosing them. Thank you. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Jan 22 2007 15:43, Lennart Sorensen wrote: On Mon, Jan 22, 2007 at 05:58:42PM +0100, Jan Engelhardt wrote: For Fs sake, when you gotta use abbreviations, then just use k=1000 and K=1024 already, b for bits and B for bytes. Problem gone. And for 10^6 vs 2^20? My harddisk is a 251 gB actually even though it is advertised as 250 GB. -`J' -- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Mon, 22 Jan 2007, Tony Foiani wrote: Jan == Jan Engelhardt [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jan For Fs sake, when you gotta use abbreviations, then just use Jan k=1000 and K=1024 already, b for bits and B for bytes. Problem Jan gone. The one-letter abbreviations are identical to SI prefixes, except for K, which is used interchangeably with k (in SI, K stands for the kelvin, and only k stands for 1,000). [...] BIPM (which maintains SI) expressly prohibits the binary prefix usage, and recommends the use of the IEC prefixes as an alternative (computing units are not included in SI). Some have suggested that k be used for 1,000, and K for 1,024, but this cannot be extended to the higher order prefixes and has never been widely recognised. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix So if you continue insisting that MB is really 2^20 bytes, you're flouting the SI in at least two ways. The use of SI is not even accepted on bytes. See URL:http://www.bipm.org/utils/common/pdf/si_brochure_8_en.pdf. Therefore MB is undefined in the SI world, and 2^20 B in the IT world. I'd expect that from an USAian, not a German. ;- (To be clear, I *am* a USAian, and I really desperately wish this country were metric...) I'd even prefer decimal hours, minutes and seconds. Some other gems from that article that haven't been covered in this thread: * CD-Rs are generally specified in MiB, but DVD-Rs in GB * CPU clocks are given in decimal Hz is a supplementary SI unit. -- Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. -- Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Andreas Schwab [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But other than the sector size there is no natural power of 2 connected to disk size. A disk can have any odd number of sectors. But the manufacturers don't count in sectors. It should be consistent, though. How many GB of disk space do you need to store 2 GB of USB flash, and how many to store 2 GB RAM image? :-) -- Krzysztof Halasa - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Jan 23 2007 02:04, Krzysztof Halasa wrote: Andreas Schwab [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: But other than the sector size there is no natural power of 2 connected to disk size. A disk can have any odd number of sectors. But the manufacturers don't count in sectors. It should be consistent, though. How many GB of disk space do you need to store 2 GB of USB flash, and how many to store 2 GB RAM image? Here's the marketing gap a company could jump in: first to count in real GB -`J' -- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
> "Tony" == Tony Foiani <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Tony> How fast is your Ethernet port? 100Mbps or 95.37Mbps? > "Jan" == Jan Engelhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Jan> Same lie like with harddrives. It's around 80, not 100. But it Jan> depends on how you look at it. 80 for Layer3, possibly a little Jan> more for Layer2/1. No, it's not the same lie. The physical media -- as presented to the next higher layer -- really has 100Mbps capability. Likewise, the "physical media" of a hard drive (as seen outside the controller on the disk) really is 500GB/465GiB (or whatever). [1] The overhead caused by Ethernet frames (level 2) and then IP packets (level 3) and then TCP or UDP (level 4) are more closely related to the losses you get on filesystem overhead (superblock, inodes, directories) and "slack" in block-allocated systems (having to round sizes up to the next 512 or whatever). [2] The problem is that a drive labelled "500GB" on its packaging is displayed as "465GB" on the computer. The fix is to have the computer display either "500GB" or "465GiB". t. [1] SFAIK, what's really on hard drive platters anymore is something much closer to "symbols", not just 1s and 0s. In the same way that "baud" is "symbols per second", the actual thingies on the platters are symbols, and it's up to the drive electronics to make sense of them. [2] Level numbers from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_model - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Jan Engelhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Bleh. Except for storage, base 1024 was used for almost everything > I remember. 4 MB memory meant 4096 KB, and that's still the case today. > Most likely the same for transfer rates. Nope, transfer rates were initially 1000-based: 9.6 kbps = 9600 bps, 28.8 kbps = 28800 bps, 64 kbps = 64000 bps. Then it went 128, 256, 512 kbps = 512000 bps and 1 Mbps = 2 * 512 kbps = 1024000 bps. But it's limited mostly to serial interfaces. Other networks use 10, 1000 etc. because they have nothing natural in (powers of) 2 so 1 Mbps may be 100 bps as well. > It's just that storage vendors broke the computer rule and went with 1000. 1024 etc. is (should be) natural to disks because the sector size is 512 B, 2048 B or something like that. -- Krzysztof Halasa - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
RE: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
> > Talk about a cure worse than the disease! So you're > > saying that 256MB flash > > cards could be advertised as having 268.4MB? A 512MB RAM stick is > > mislabelled and could correctly say 536.8MB? That's just plain > > craziness. > No, I meant to advertise it as a 256 MiB flash device and a 512 MiB > flash device, as the Mi prefix has a single interpretation, that is 2 > to the power of 20, as per IEC 60027-2, whereas M has not if used > outside SI units. If it actually has 256*2^20 bytes, why advertise it as "256 MiB" when "268.4 MB" is equally valid and looks better? It really comes down to this: is it your position that "256 MB" can only correctly mean 256 million bytes? If you are right, a "512MB" RAM stick is mislabelled and is more correctly labelled as "536.8MB". (With 512MiB being equally correct.) Isn't that obviously not just wrong but borderline crazy? Yes, your position has some nice consequences, but that doesn't allow you to ignore the bad ones. Unfortunately, we're not writing on a clean slate here. DS - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Eduard Bloch wrote: > * Bodo Eggert [Sun, Jan 21 2007, 11:40:40AM]: >> 2) No sane person would say kibibyte as required by the standard. You'd need >>a sppech defect in order to do this, and a mental defect in order to try. >>So why should anybody adhere to the rest of this bullshit? > > You talk for everybody, or is it just your (and only your) mind refusing > to accept new terms? I'd say it is the refusal to accept new *dumb* terms. -- Stefan Richter -=-=-=== ---= =-=-= http://arcgraph.de/sr/ - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Jan 21 2007 17:06, Heikki Orsila wrote: > >> 2) No sane person would say kibibyte as required by the standard. You'd need >>a sppech defect in order to do this, and a mental defect in order to try. >>So why should anybody adhere to the rest of this bullshit? > >I think I'm not sane then. I find it easy to use and pronounce. > >IEC 60027-2 is a great standard! It removes some annoying ambiquity in >speech and text. Adhering strictly to proper SI units (k, M, G, ...) >makes life easier as they are taught in school to everyone. Bleh. Except for storage, base 1024 was used for almost everything I remember. 4 MB memory meant 4096 KB, and that's still the case today. Most likely the same for transfer rates. It's just that storage vendors broke the computer rule and went with 1000. Just teach all the exceptions. No life is without. -`J' -- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
>How fast is your Ethernet port? 100Mbps or 95.37Mbps? Same lie like with harddrives. It's around 80, not 100. But it depends on how you look at it. 80 for Layer3, possibly a little more for Layer2/1. -`J' -- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Geert Uytterhoeven wrote: Yeah, and Ethernet speed is measured in Mbps, not Mibps. Indeed. -hpa - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Sat, 20 Jan 2007, H. Peter Anvin wrote: > David Schwartz wrote: > > Talk about a cure worse than the disease! So you're saying that 256MB > > flash > > cards could be advertised as having 268.4MB? A 512MB RAM stick is > > mislabelled and could correctly say 536.8MB? That's just plain craziness. > > > > Adopting IEC 60027-2 just replaces a set of well-understood problems > > with > > all new problems. > > Except that you're wrong above. Most 512 MB flash cards are less than 512 > MiB; most of them are, in fact, around 512 MB! RAM, of course, is > consistently 512 MiB. > > This little tidbit discovered in the process of working on an application > which required powers-of-two flash cards, and finding that one does have to > use one size larger... Yeah, and Ethernet speed is measured in Mbps, not Mibps. Gr{oetje,eeting}s, Geert -- Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say "programmer" or something like that. -- Linus Torvalds - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
David, On 1/20/07, David Schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [Leon said:] > One way of getting rid of those inconsistencies would be to follow IEC > 60027-2 for those cases where SI is inappropriate. Talk about a cure worse than the disease! So you're saying that 256MB flash cards could be advertised as having 268.4MB? A 512MB RAM stick is mislabelled and could correctly say 536.8MB? That's just plain craziness. No, I meant to advertise it as a 256 MiB flash device and a 512 MiB flash device, as the Mi prefix has a single interpretation, that is 2 to the power of 20, as per IEC 60027-2, whereas M has not if used outside SI units. Leon. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Sun, Jan 21, 2007 at 11:40:40AM +0100, Bodo Eggert wrote: > 1) This change isn't nescensary - any sane person will know that it's not a >SI unit. You wouldn't talk about megabananas == 100 bananas and >expect to be taken seriously. I've met quite a few non-sane persons then. I find using kilo, mega and giga prefixes convenient to use. For example, I often use GEUR to refer to Giga Euros, because the word billion is overloaded. > 2) No sane person would say kibibyte as required by the standard. You'd need >a sppech defect in order to do this, and a mental defect in order to try. >So why should anybody adhere to the rest of this bullshit? I think I'm not sane then. I find it easy to use and pronounce. IEC 60027-2 is a great standard! It removes some annoying ambiquity in speech and text. Adhering strictly to proper SI units (k, M, G, ...) makes life easier as they are taught in school to everyone. -- Heikki Orsila Barbie's law: [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Math is hard, let's go shopping!" http://www.iki.fi/shd - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
> "BE" == Bodo Eggert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: BE> 1) This change isn't nescensary - any sane person will know that BE> it's not a SI unit. You wouldn't talk about megabananas == 100 BE> bananas and expect to be taken seriously. What about megaparsec? I have also seen graphs delimited in megayears. Millibar, that's another one. Not that I would have any problems talking about megabananas, if I ever had to deal with that many bananas. /Benny - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
#include * Bodo Eggert [Sun, Jan 21 2007, 11:40:40AM]: > Tony Foiani <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> "David" == David Schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > Just last night I formatted some new "500GB" drives, and they > > eventually came back with 465GB as the displayed capacity. Wouldn't > > it make more sense to display that as "465GiB"? > > [...] > > > David> Adopting IEC 60027-2 just replaces a set of well-understood > > David> problems with all new problems. > > > > Which are clearly solved in the standards document, and remove any > > ambiguity. Is one extra character really that painful to you? > > If it's done in order to make disk vendors look good in spite of > advertizing more than they deliver, yes. > > 1) This change isn't nescensary - any sane person will know that it's not a >SI unit. You wouldn't talk about megabananas == 100 bananas and >expect to be taken seriously. And I cannot seriosly believe that you are cappable of reading his examples. Megabananas are a ridiculous demonstration becase of the object beeing counted itself, but if you take stuff from real life then I doubt that you expect a kilometer to be 1024 meters. Same for kilogram. And a megatone is not 1048576 tones, even not 104857600 kg, and not 107374182400 grams. Wanna more stupid examples created by abusing decimal units? > 2) No sane person would say kibibyte as required by the standard. You'd need >a sppech defect in order to do this, and a mental defect in order to try. >So why should anybody adhere to the rest of this bullshit? You talk for everybody, or is it just your (and only your) mind refusing to accept new terms? For my taste, kib and mib are even easier to speech, easier than {KiLoBytE} resp. {MeGaBytE} or KaaaBe / eMmmBe. Eduard. -- Das Geheimnis der kleinsten natürlichen Freude geht über die Vernunft hinaus. -- Luc de Clapiers Vauvenargues - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Tony Foiani <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> "David" == David Schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Just last night I formatted some new "500GB" drives, and they > eventually came back with 465GB as the displayed capacity. Wouldn't > it make more sense to display that as "465GiB"? [...] > David> Adopting IEC 60027-2 just replaces a set of well-understood > David> problems with all new problems. > > Which are clearly solved in the standards document, and remove any > ambiguity. Is one extra character really that painful to you? If it's done in order to make disk vendors look good in spite of advertizing more than they deliver, yes. 1) This change isn't nescensary - any sane person will know that it's not a SI unit. You wouldn't talk about megabananas == 100 bananas and expect to be taken seriously. 2) No sane person would say kibibyte as required by the standard. You'd need a sppech defect in order to do this, and a mental defect in order to try. So why should anybody adhere to the rest of this bullshit? -- "Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons." -Gen. Douglas MacArthur Friß, Spammer: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Tony Foiani [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: David == David Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Just last night I formatted some new 500GB drives, and they eventually came back with 465GB as the displayed capacity. Wouldn't it make more sense to display that as 465GiB? [...] David Adopting IEC 60027-2 just replaces a set of well-understood David problems with all new problems. Which are clearly solved in the standards document, and remove any ambiguity. Is one extra character really that painful to you? If it's done in order to make disk vendors look good in spite of advertizing more than they deliver, yes. 1) This change isn't nescensary - any sane person will know that it's not a SI unit. You wouldn't talk about megabananas == 100 bananas and expect to be taken seriously. 2) No sane person would say kibibyte as required by the standard. You'd need a sppech defect in order to do this, and a mental defect in order to try. So why should anybody adhere to the rest of this bullshit? -- Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons. -Gen. Douglas MacArthur Friß, Spammer: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
#include hallo.h * Bodo Eggert [Sun, Jan 21 2007, 11:40:40AM]: Tony Foiani [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: David == David Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Just last night I formatted some new 500GB drives, and they eventually came back with 465GB as the displayed capacity. Wouldn't it make more sense to display that as 465GiB? [...] David Adopting IEC 60027-2 just replaces a set of well-understood David problems with all new problems. Which are clearly solved in the standards document, and remove any ambiguity. Is one extra character really that painful to you? If it's done in order to make disk vendors look good in spite of advertizing more than they deliver, yes. 1) This change isn't nescensary - any sane person will know that it's not a SI unit. You wouldn't talk about megabananas == 100 bananas and expect to be taken seriously. And I cannot seriosly believe that you are cappable of reading his examples. Megabananas are a ridiculous demonstration becase of the object beeing counted itself, but if you take stuff from real life then I doubt that you expect a kilometer to be 1024 meters. Same for kilogram. And a megatone is not 1048576 tones, even not 104857600 kg, and not 107374182400 grams. Wanna more stupid examples created by abusing decimal units? 2) No sane person would say kibibyte as required by the standard. You'd need a sppech defect in order to do this, and a mental defect in order to try. So why should anybody adhere to the rest of this bullshit? You talk for everybody, or is it just your (and only your) mind refusing to accept new terms? For my taste, kib and mib are even easier to speech, easier than {KiLoBytE} resp. {MeGaBytE} or KaaaBe / eMmmBe. Eduard. -- Das Geheimnis der kleinsten natürlichen Freude geht über die Vernunft hinaus. -- Luc de Clapiers Vauvenargues - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
BE == Bodo Eggert [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: BE 1) This change isn't nescensary - any sane person will know that BE it's not a SI unit. You wouldn't talk about megabananas == 100 BE bananas and expect to be taken seriously. What about megaparsec? I have also seen graphs delimited in megayears. Millibar, that's another one. Not that I would have any problems talking about megabananas, if I ever had to deal with that many bananas. /Benny - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Sun, Jan 21, 2007 at 11:40:40AM +0100, Bodo Eggert wrote: 1) This change isn't nescensary - any sane person will know that it's not a SI unit. You wouldn't talk about megabananas == 100 bananas and expect to be taken seriously. I've met quite a few non-sane persons then. I find using kilo, mega and giga prefixes convenient to use. For example, I often use GEUR to refer to Giga Euros, because the word billion is overloaded. 2) No sane person would say kibibyte as required by the standard. You'd need a sppech defect in order to do this, and a mental defect in order to try. So why should anybody adhere to the rest of this bullshit? I think I'm not sane then. I find it easy to use and pronounce. IEC 60027-2 is a great standard! It removes some annoying ambiquity in speech and text. Adhering strictly to proper SI units (k, M, G, ...) makes life easier as they are taught in school to everyone. -- Heikki Orsila Barbie's law: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Math is hard, let's go shopping! http://www.iki.fi/shd - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
David, On 1/20/07, David Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [Leon said:] One way of getting rid of those inconsistencies would be to follow IEC 60027-2 for those cases where SI is inappropriate. Talk about a cure worse than the disease! So you're saying that 256MB flash cards could be advertised as having 268.4MB? A 512MB RAM stick is mislabelled and could correctly say 536.8MB? That's just plain craziness. No, I meant to advertise it as a 256 MiB flash device and a 512 MiB flash device, as the Mi prefix has a single interpretation, that is 2 to the power of 20, as per IEC 60027-2, whereas M has not if used outside SI units. Leon. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Sat, 20 Jan 2007, H. Peter Anvin wrote: David Schwartz wrote: Talk about a cure worse than the disease! So you're saying that 256MB flash cards could be advertised as having 268.4MB? A 512MB RAM stick is mislabelled and could correctly say 536.8MB? That's just plain craziness. Adopting IEC 60027-2 just replaces a set of well-understood problems with all new problems. Except that you're wrong above. Most 512 MB flash cards are less than 512 MiB; most of them are, in fact, around 512 MB! RAM, of course, is consistently 512 MiB. This little tidbit discovered in the process of working on an application which required powers-of-two flash cards, and finding that one does have to use one size larger... Yeah, and Ethernet speed is measured in Mbps, not Mibps. Gr{oetje,eeting}s, Geert -- Geert Uytterhoeven -- There's lots of Linux beyond ia32 -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] In personal conversations with technical people, I call myself a hacker. But when I'm talking to journalists I just say programmer or something like that. -- Linus Torvalds - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Geert Uytterhoeven wrote: Yeah, and Ethernet speed is measured in Mbps, not Mibps. Indeed. -hpa - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
How fast is your Ethernet port? 100Mbps or 95.37Mbps? Same lie like with harddrives. It's around 80, not 100. But it depends on how you look at it. 80 for Layer3, possibly a little more for Layer2/1. -`J' -- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
On Jan 21 2007 17:06, Heikki Orsila wrote: 2) No sane person would say kibibyte as required by the standard. You'd need a sppech defect in order to do this, and a mental defect in order to try. So why should anybody adhere to the rest of this bullshit? I think I'm not sane then. I find it easy to use and pronounce. IEC 60027-2 is a great standard! It removes some annoying ambiquity in speech and text. Adhering strictly to proper SI units (k, M, G, ...) makes life easier as they are taught in school to everyone. Bleh. Except for storage, base 1024 was used for almost everything I remember. 4 MB memory meant 4096 KB, and that's still the case today. Most likely the same for transfer rates. It's just that storage vendors broke the computer rule and went with 1000. Just teach all the exceptions. No life is without. -`J' -- - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Eduard Bloch wrote: * Bodo Eggert [Sun, Jan 21 2007, 11:40:40AM]: 2) No sane person would say kibibyte as required by the standard. You'd need a sppech defect in order to do this, and a mental defect in order to try. So why should anybody adhere to the rest of this bullshit? You talk for everybody, or is it just your (and only your) mind refusing to accept new terms? I'd say it is the refusal to accept new *dumb* terms. -- Stefan Richter -=-=-=== ---= =-=-= http://arcgraph.de/sr/ - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
RE: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Talk about a cure worse than the disease! So you're saying that 256MB flash cards could be advertised as having 268.4MB? A 512MB RAM stick is mislabelled and could correctly say 536.8MB? That's just plain craziness. No, I meant to advertise it as a 256 MiB flash device and a 512 MiB flash device, as the Mi prefix has a single interpretation, that is 2 to the power of 20, as per IEC 60027-2, whereas M has not if used outside SI units. If it actually has 256*2^20 bytes, why advertise it as 256 MiB when 268.4 MB is equally valid and looks better? It really comes down to this: is it your position that 256 MB can only correctly mean 256 million bytes? If you are right, a 512MB RAM stick is mislabelled and is more correctly labelled as 536.8MB. (With 512MiB being equally correct.) Isn't that obviously not just wrong but borderline crazy? Yes, your position has some nice consequences, but that doesn't allow you to ignore the bad ones. Unfortunately, we're not writing on a clean slate here. DS - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Jan Engelhardt [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Bleh. Except for storage, base 1024 was used for almost everything I remember. 4 MB memory meant 4096 KB, and that's still the case today. Most likely the same for transfer rates. Nope, transfer rates were initially 1000-based: 9.6 kbps = 9600 bps, 28.8 kbps = 28800 bps, 64 kbps = 64000 bps. Then it went 128, 256, 512 kbps = 512000 bps and 1 Mbps = 2 * 512 kbps = 1024000 bps. But it's limited mostly to serial interfaces. Other networks use 10, 1000 etc. because they have nothing natural in (powers of) 2 so 1 Mbps may be 100 bps as well. It's just that storage vendors broke the computer rule and went with 1000. 1024 etc. is (should be) natural to disks because the sector size is 512 B, 2048 B or something like that. -- Krzysztof Halasa - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Tony == Tony Foiani [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Tony How fast is your Ethernet port? 100Mbps or 95.37Mbps? Jan == Jan Engelhardt [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Jan Same lie like with harddrives. It's around 80, not 100. But it Jan depends on how you look at it. 80 for Layer3, possibly a little Jan more for Layer2/1. No, it's not the same lie. The physical media -- as presented to the next higher layer -- really has 100Mbps capability. Likewise, the physical media of a hard drive (as seen outside the controller on the disk) really is 500GB/465GiB (or whatever). [1] The overhead caused by Ethernet frames (level 2) and then IP packets (level 3) and then TCP or UDP (level 4) are more closely related to the losses you get on filesystem overhead (superblock, inodes, directories) and slack in block-allocated systems (having to round sizes up to the next 512 or whatever). [2] The problem is that a drive labelled 500GB on its packaging is displayed as 465GB on the computer. The fix is to have the computer display either 500GB or 465GiB. t. [1] SFAIK, what's really on hard drive platters anymore is something much closer to symbols, not just 1s and 0s. In the same way that baud is symbols per second, the actual thingies on the platters are symbols, and it's up to the drive electronics to make sense of them. [2] Level numbers from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_model - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
David Schwartz wrote: Talk about a cure worse than the disease! So you're saying that 256MB flash cards could be advertised as having 268.4MB? A 512MB RAM stick is mislabelled and could correctly say 536.8MB? That's just plain craziness. Adopting IEC 60027-2 just replaces a set of well-understood problems with all new problems. Except that you're wrong above. Most 512 MB flash cards are less than 512 MiB; most of them are, in fact, around 512 MB! RAM, of course, is consistently 512 MiB. This little tidbit discovered in the process of working on an application which required powers-of-two flash cards, and finding that one does have to use one size larger... -hpa - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
> "David" == David Schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: David> The way RAM and flash are measured is correct. In my experience, RAM and flash *drives* are measured differently. I understand that individual flash chips come in powers of 2, but by the time they're packaged as a "flash drive", some of that has been used up -- yet they're still sold as the full capacity, and the manufacturers use the confusion between MiB and MB to defend the practice. This "16Mb" drive doesn't really have 16 megabytes of capacity - it's really got 15.5. But that's just standard operating procedure for storage manufacturers. Non-volatile storage manufacturers, including hard drive companies, like to define a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes. They're actually two-to-the-power-of-20 and two-to-the-power-of-30 bytes, which is 1,048,576 and 1,073,741,824 bytes respectively. This is the main reason why a "20Gb" hard drive won't actually give you 20Gb of capacity. In flash RAM devices, things can get a bit more complex again, thanks to the small amount of memory which may be used by the device itself for housekeeping. That can vary between device families; a CompactFlash card with a given nominal capacity may actually have a bit less space than a SmartMedia card with the same number on the label. And manufacturers may throw in some more memory to push the real capacity up closer to the stated one, which is what they've done with the USBDrive. It's still about three per cent shy of its claimed capacity, though. -- http://www.dansdata.com/flashcomp.htm (E.g., my "512MB" CF card shows up as "487MB" in the camera -- a difference of exactly 5%, as would be expected by the MB-vs-MiB scam. I'd be happier if the camera said "487MiB", but we're looking at OSes we do have control over, not others.) And this cheat is getting better (for the seller) with every expansion: 1 MiB is 5% bigger than 1 MB 1 GiB is 7% bigger than 1 GB 1 TiB is 10% bigger than 1 TB So when you go out to buy your 1TB drive this year, you're really only buying 0.9TiB or so. Since all the manufacturers do the same thing, it's possible to consider it "fair", at least for comparisons -- but when the customer gets home and formats their drive, I think they'd be happier if the number was the same as on the carton. Just last night I formatted some new "500GB" drives, and they eventually came back with 465GB as the displayed capacity. Wouldn't it make more sense to display that as "465GiB"? David> Talk about a cure worse than the disease! So you're saying that David> 256MB flash cards could be advertised as having 268.4MB? A David> 512MB RAM stick is mislabelled and could correctly say 536.8MB? David> That's just plain craziness. No, it sounds like he wants them advertised as 256MB and 512MiB, respectively -- packaged flash cards tend to use the 1000 multiples, while DRAM uses the 1024. One extra letter doesn't sound all that crazy. How fast is your Ethernet port? 100Mbps or 95.37Mbps? Somewhat archaic now, but how big was your common 3.5" floppy disk (PC "HD" format)? It actually used a basis of 1,024,000: And if two definitions of the megabyte are not enough, a third megabyte of 1 024 000 bytes is the megabyte used to format the familiar 90 mm (3 1/2 inch), "1.44 MB" diskette. -- http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html What's likely is that the flash and drive manufacturers will either mark their products honestly, or they'll increase the capacity of their product to meet the given label. (Think about the CRT "diagonal" measurements -- it took a few lawsuits, but they eventually switched from measuring bezel-to-bezel, or total tube diagonal, to "viewable". Sure, everyone in technology "knew" that you had to chop off an inch or two from the advertised value to get the viewable; but that's not enough to meet the standard of truth in advertising.) David> Adopting IEC 60027-2 just replaces a set of well-understood David> problems with all new problems. Which are clearly solved in the standards document, and remove any ambiguity. Is one extra character really that painful to you? t. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
RE: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
> Nice observation, however, it still leaves quite an amount of internal > inconsistencies in the kernel output. I agree with the majority view that using the term 'MB' or 'GB' to mean a million or a billion bytes is inaccurate. The way RAM and flash are measured is correct. The way disk manufacturers advertise disk capacity is simply *wrong*. There is no word for a million bytes. There is no word for a billion bytes. > One way of getting rid of those inconsistencies would be to follow IEC > 60027-2 for those cases where SI is inappropriate. Talk about a cure worse than the disease! So you're saying that 256MB flash cards could be advertised as having 268.4MB? A 512MB RAM stick is mislabelled and could correctly say 536.8MB? That's just plain craziness. Adopting IEC 60027-2 just replaces a set of well-understood problems with all new problems. DS - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Hello, On 1/20/07, David Schwartz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [1.] One line summary of the problem: > KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2 Letter symbols to be used in > electrical > technology – Part 2) > Should be everywere KiB, MiB, GiB, ... according to IEC 60027-2 Bytes are not an SI unit. A "megabyte" doesn't have to be a million bytes any more than a "megaphone" has to be a million phones. A "megabyte" is 1,048,576 bytes. The "mega" in there is not an SI prefix. "Mega" is only an SI prefix when it appears before an SI unit. Nice observation, however, it still leaves quite an amount of internal inconsistencies in the kernel output. One way of getting rid of those inconsistencies would be to follow IEC 60027-2 for those cases where SI is inappropriate. Leon. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
RE: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
> [1.] One line summary of the problem: > KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2 Letter symbols to be used in > electrical > technology – Part 2) > Should be everywere KiB, MiB, GiB, ... according to IEC 60027-2 Bytes are not an SI unit. A "megabyte" doesn't have to be a million bytes any more than a "megaphone" has to be a million phones. A "megabyte" is 1,048,576 bytes. The "mega" in there is not an SI prefix. "Mega" is only an SI prefix when it appears before an SI unit. DS - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Hello, according to http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/lkml/reporting-bugs.html [1.] One line summary of the problem: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2 Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology – Part 2) [2.] Full description of the problem/report: kernel: 2.6.19 linux: gentoo after #dmesg I find somethings like it Memory: 515992k/524224k available (1909k kernel code, 7684k reserved, 768k data, 172k init, 0k highmem) virtual kernel memory layout: fixmap : 0xfffb7000 - 0xf000 ( 288 kB) vmalloc : 0xe080 - 0xfffb5000 ( 503 MB) lowmem : 0xc000 - 0xdfff ( 511 MB) .init : 0xc03a - 0xc03cb000 ( 172 kB) .data : 0xc02dd6d6 - 0xc039d8f4 ( 768 kB) .text : 0xc010 - 0xc02dd6d6 (1909 kB) ... hdb: max request size: 512KiB hdb: 488397168 sectors (250059 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=30401/255/63, UDMA(100) hdb: cache flushes supported hdb: hdb1 hdb2 hdb3 hdc: ATAPI 40X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 2000kB Cache, UDMA(66) Should be everywere KiB, MiB, GiB, ... according to IEC 60027-2 http://www.iec.ch/zone/si/si_bytes.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte [3.] Keywords (i.e., modules, networking, kernel): modules, networking, kernel,... everywere [4.] Kernel version (from /proc/version): Linux version 2.6.19-gentoo-r4 ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) (gcc version 4.1.1 (Gentoo 4.1.1-r3)) #1 Fri Jan 19 22:22:39 CET 2007 [5.] Output of Oops.. message (if applicable) with symbolic information resolved (see Documentation/oops-tracing.txt) none [6.] A small shell script or example program which triggers the problem (if possible) dmesg | grep -E '(KB)|(KiB)|(MB)' [7.] Environment linux [7.1.] Software (add the output of the ver_linux script here) [7.2.] Processor information (from /proc/cpuinfo): cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 6 model : 8 model name : AMD Athlon(tm) XP stepping: 1 cpu MHz : 1666.742 cache size : 256 KB fdiv_bug: no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug: no coma_bug: no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow ts bogomips: 3335.02 [7.3.] Module information (from /proc/modules): not important [7.4.] Loaded driver and hardware information (/proc/ioports, /proc/iomem) not important [7.5.] PCI information ('lspci -vvv' as root) not important [7.6.] SCSI information (from /proc/scsi/scsi) not important [7.7.] Other information that might be relevant to the problem (please look in /proc and include all information that you think to be relevant): not important [X.] Other notes, patches, fixes, workarounds: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” - Neil Armstrong - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Hello, according to http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/lkml/reporting-bugs.html [1.] One line summary of the problem: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2 Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology – Part 2) [2.] Full description of the problem/report: kernel: 2.6.19 linux: gentoo after #dmesg I find somethings like it Memory: 515992k/524224k available (1909k kernel code, 7684k reserved, 768k data, 172k init, 0k highmem) virtual kernel memory layout: fixmap : 0xfffb7000 - 0xf000 ( 288 kB) vmalloc : 0xe080 - 0xfffb5000 ( 503 MB) lowmem : 0xc000 - 0xdfff ( 511 MB) .init : 0xc03a - 0xc03cb000 ( 172 kB) .data : 0xc02dd6d6 - 0xc039d8f4 ( 768 kB) .text : 0xc010 - 0xc02dd6d6 (1909 kB) ... hdb: max request size: 512KiB hdb: 488397168 sectors (250059 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=30401/255/63, UDMA(100) hdb: cache flushes supported hdb: hdb1 hdb2 hdb3 hdc: ATAPI 40X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 2000kB Cache, UDMA(66) Should be everywere KiB, MiB, GiB, ... according to IEC 60027-2 http://www.iec.ch/zone/si/si_bytes.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibibyte [3.] Keywords (i.e., modules, networking, kernel): modules, networking, kernel,... everywere [4.] Kernel version (from /proc/version): Linux version 2.6.19-gentoo-r4 ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) (gcc version 4.1.1 (Gentoo 4.1.1-r3)) #1 Fri Jan 19 22:22:39 CET 2007 [5.] Output of Oops.. message (if applicable) with symbolic information resolved (see Documentation/oops-tracing.txt) none [6.] A small shell script or example program which triggers the problem (if possible) dmesg | grep -E '(KB)|(KiB)|(MB)' [7.] Environment linux [7.1.] Software (add the output of the ver_linux script here) [7.2.] Processor information (from /proc/cpuinfo): cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 6 model : 8 model name : AMD Athlon(tm) XP stepping: 1 cpu MHz : 1666.742 cache size : 256 KB fdiv_bug: no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug: no coma_bug: no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow ts bogomips: 3335.02 [7.3.] Module information (from /proc/modules): not important [7.4.] Loaded driver and hardware information (/proc/ioports, /proc/iomem) not important [7.5.] PCI information ('lspci -vvv' as root) not important [7.6.] SCSI information (from /proc/scsi/scsi) not important [7.7.] Other information that might be relevant to the problem (please look in /proc and include all information that you think to be relevant): not important [X.] Other notes, patches, fixes, workarounds: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” - Neil Armstrong - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
RE: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
[1.] One line summary of the problem: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2 Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology – Part 2) Should be everywere KiB, MiB, GiB, ... according to IEC 60027-2 Bytes are not an SI unit. A megabyte doesn't have to be a million bytes any more than a megaphone has to be a million phones. A megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes. The mega in there is not an SI prefix. Mega is only an SI prefix when it appears before an SI unit. DS - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Hello, On 1/20/07, David Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [1.] One line summary of the problem: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2 Letter symbols to be used in electrical technology – Part 2) Should be everywere KiB, MiB, GiB, ... according to IEC 60027-2 Bytes are not an SI unit. A megabyte doesn't have to be a million bytes any more than a megaphone has to be a million phones. A megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes. The mega in there is not an SI prefix. Mega is only an SI prefix when it appears before an SI unit. Nice observation, however, it still leaves quite an amount of internal inconsistencies in the kernel output. One way of getting rid of those inconsistencies would be to follow IEC 60027-2 for those cases where SI is inappropriate. Leon. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
RE: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
Nice observation, however, it still leaves quite an amount of internal inconsistencies in the kernel output. I agree with the majority view that using the term 'MB' or 'GB' to mean a million or a billion bytes is inaccurate. The way RAM and flash are measured is correct. The way disk manufacturers advertise disk capacity is simply *wrong*. There is no word for a million bytes. There is no word for a billion bytes. One way of getting rid of those inconsistencies would be to follow IEC 60027-2 for those cases where SI is inappropriate. Talk about a cure worse than the disease! So you're saying that 256MB flash cards could be advertised as having 268.4MB? A 512MB RAM stick is mislabelled and could correctly say 536.8MB? That's just plain craziness. Adopting IEC 60027-2 just replaces a set of well-understood problems with all new problems. DS - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
David == David Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: David The way RAM and flash are measured is correct. In my experience, RAM and flash *drives* are measured differently. I understand that individual flash chips come in powers of 2, but by the time they're packaged as a flash drive, some of that has been used up -- yet they're still sold as the full capacity, and the manufacturers use the confusion between MiB and MB to defend the practice. This 16Mb drive doesn't really have 16 megabytes of capacity - it's really got 15.5. But that's just standard operating procedure for storage manufacturers. Non-volatile storage manufacturers, including hard drive companies, like to define a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes and a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes. They're actually two-to-the-power-of-20 and two-to-the-power-of-30 bytes, which is 1,048,576 and 1,073,741,824 bytes respectively. This is the main reason why a 20Gb hard drive won't actually give you 20Gb of capacity. In flash RAM devices, things can get a bit more complex again, thanks to the small amount of memory which may be used by the device itself for housekeeping. That can vary between device families; a CompactFlash card with a given nominal capacity may actually have a bit less space than a SmartMedia card with the same number on the label. And manufacturers may throw in some more memory to push the real capacity up closer to the stated one, which is what they've done with the USBDrive. It's still about three per cent shy of its claimed capacity, though. -- http://www.dansdata.com/flashcomp.htm (E.g., my 512MB CF card shows up as 487MB in the camera -- a difference of exactly 5%, as would be expected by the MB-vs-MiB scam. I'd be happier if the camera said 487MiB, but we're looking at OSes we do have control over, not others.) And this cheat is getting better (for the seller) with every expansion: 1 MiB is 5% bigger than 1 MB 1 GiB is 7% bigger than 1 GB 1 TiB is 10% bigger than 1 TB So when you go out to buy your 1TB drive this year, you're really only buying 0.9TiB or so. Since all the manufacturers do the same thing, it's possible to consider it fair, at least for comparisons -- but when the customer gets home and formats their drive, I think they'd be happier if the number was the same as on the carton. Just last night I formatted some new 500GB drives, and they eventually came back with 465GB as the displayed capacity. Wouldn't it make more sense to display that as 465GiB? David Talk about a cure worse than the disease! So you're saying that David 256MB flash cards could be advertised as having 268.4MB? A David 512MB RAM stick is mislabelled and could correctly say 536.8MB? David That's just plain craziness. No, it sounds like he wants them advertised as 256MB and 512MiB, respectively -- packaged flash cards tend to use the 1000 multiples, while DRAM uses the 1024. One extra letter doesn't sound all that crazy. How fast is your Ethernet port? 100Mbps or 95.37Mbps? Somewhat archaic now, but how big was your common 3.5 floppy disk (PC HD format)? It actually used a basis of 1,024,000: And if two definitions of the megabyte are not enough, a third megabyte of 1 024 000 bytes is the megabyte used to format the familiar 90 mm (3 1/2 inch), 1.44 MB diskette. -- http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html What's likely is that the flash and drive manufacturers will either mark their products honestly, or they'll increase the capacity of their product to meet the given label. (Think about the CRT diagonal measurements -- it took a few lawsuits, but they eventually switched from measuring bezel-to-bezel, or total tube diagonal, to viewable. Sure, everyone in technology knew that you had to chop off an inch or two from the advertised value to get the viewable; but that's not enough to meet the standard of truth in advertising.) David Adopting IEC 60027-2 just replaces a set of well-understood David problems with all new problems. Which are clearly solved in the standards document, and remove any ambiguity. Is one extra character really that painful to you? t. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Re: PROBLEM: KB-KiB, MB - MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2)
David Schwartz wrote: Talk about a cure worse than the disease! So you're saying that 256MB flash cards could be advertised as having 268.4MB? A 512MB RAM stick is mislabelled and could correctly say 536.8MB? That's just plain craziness. Adopting IEC 60027-2 just replaces a set of well-understood problems with all new problems. Except that you're wrong above. Most 512 MB flash cards are less than 512 MiB; most of them are, in fact, around 512 MB! RAM, of course, is consistently 512 MiB. This little tidbit discovered in the process of working on an application which required powers-of-two flash cards, and finding that one does have to use one size larger... -hpa - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line unsubscribe linux-kernel in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/