On Tue, Jun 12, 2007 at 09:36:34AM +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote: > Le mardi 12 juin 2007 à 03:29 -0400, Roberto C. Sánchez a écrit : > > > It has never been anything but a gross imprecision introduced by people > > > incapable of following rigorous standards. > > > > > It has never been anything more than people defaulting to a close > > approximation. Language is imperfect. People make do. > > You'll tell that to a court if there is such an "approximation" in a > contract. > What are you talking about? We all know that the *precise* meaning of kilo is 1000. The point is that the term was also co-opted, since there was not a better term. If you are talking about a contract, I would expect that the *precise* meanings of words are being used, along with definitions of any words where there could be ambiguity. Why do you think that the marketing materials for most hard drives include the note that 1 GB = 1 000 000 000 bytes? If the SI prefixes only ever held their *precise* meanings, then such clarifications would not be necessary. Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez http://people.connexer.com/~roberto http://www.connexer.com
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