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Re: ifconfig curiosity



On Thu, Dec 06, 2001 at 04:17:39PM -0800, martin f krafft wrote:
> seamus:~> /sbin/ifconfig | grep MiB
>       RX bytes:614070395 (585.6 MiB)  TX bytes:125545699 (119.7 MiB)
>       RX bytes:34937878 (33.3 MiB)  TX bytes:34937878 (33.3 MiB)
> 
> uhm, what are "MiB"'s?

Looking at the source, they're what sane people would call
"MegaBytes".  Since "mega" is the SI prefix meaning "millions" or
10E6, some anal retentive person figured we needed more prefixes to
make everything "clearer".  Thus the Mega-Binary-Byte, or mebibiyte
(doesn't it just flow off your tongue??)

So, to join the ranks of the learned, see

  http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html (damn you google)

and you too can impress your friends by using such terms as
"kibibyte", "mebibyte", "gibibyte", "tebibyte", "pebibyte", and
"exbibyte" (oh to transfer a exbibyte or two a month).

Thought one: this is retarded.

Thought two: ifconfig needs a "--sane" option that undoes this crap.

Regards,

-- 
Nathan Norman - Staff Engineer | A good plan today is better
Micromuse Ltd.                 | than a perfect plan tomorrow.
mailto:nnorman@micromuse.com   |   -- Patton

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