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Re: Using standardized SI prefixes



Miles Bader wrote:
Magnus Holmgren <holmgren@lysator.liu.se> writes:
No it doesn't.

The "SI binary prefixes" are an abomination.
Why - besides pronunciation?

Well among other things, the end result of this whole mess will likely
be to _increase_ confusion, rather than lessen it:

Until now, in a typical computer app, "900K" had an unambiguous meaning:
900*1024.

How often must we repeat it: it is not unambiguous. When you buy a hard drive 500G does not mean 500 * 1024³ (please note: one context [size], two different meanings for "G").

1Mbit/s usually means 10^6 bits per second in the context of data transfer rates. How is this unambiguous for you?

Now that a bunch of people are all in a misguided frenzy to "correct"
things (which weren't broken), there will almost certainly be cases
where some silly fool will change the _calculation_ but not the label
(e.g., in a case where space is at a premium) -- e.g., they'll keep "K",
but change the calculation to "/ 1000", because that's "correct".

Nope, it's more likely that *if* we take action, we would chose the binary suffix notation to avoid this confusion.


--
Bastian Venthur                                      http://venthur.de
Debian Developer                                 venthur at debian org



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