Bill, I've got to take issue with a lot of what you said the past few emails (although not the one to Michael).
You said, "A bit is a bit is a bit. The fact that there can only be an integral number is a simple mathematical fact and is implicit, not specifiable, in the definition." Nope. There are nuances of the term "bit" that can allow for fractions. Try reading up on information theory. You said, "If a specification is actually gibibytes (but incorrectly labeled as gigabytes)..." Just because you think that we should use these different prefixes doesn't make it incorrect to use different prefixes. In computer science (in which I just got a degree), no one uses "kibi" gibi" or anything like that, that I have ever seen. Maybe some Linux people do that, but that is hardly a representative sample of the industry as a whole. We have a pretty standard way of communicating. When referring to bytes, "giga" is generally understood to mean 2^30. Perhaps a lot of hard drive manufacturers are not following that, but the hard drive I bought two years ago was indeed labeled that way. Try looking at the properties of a folder in Windows Explorer and you will see an example of the traditional terminology. We have millions of people using a particular terminology, and a handful that think it should be changed. The terminology of the millions doesn't become wrong simply because the handful has a "better" idea. Likewise, I see nothing wrong with using "b" as the symbol for "bar". I seriously doubt anyone will get it confused with a "barn". Pragmatically, "mb" is a convenient symbol for "millibar". (Personally, I tend to use the symbol hPa, but I don't get religious about it). Carl Sorenson
