Re: Sizes and notation

[Andrei Popescu <andreimpopescu@gmail.com>]

Miles Bader <miles@gnu.org> wrote:

> max@hyre.net writes:
> >    The confusion between 1000 and 1024 has been solved.  Take a
> > look at
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#IEC_standard_prefixes
> > It's a really, REALLY good idea to adopt this.
> 
> No.  They're simply too insufferably ugly.
> 
> In the vast majority of cases it's quite clear from context which is
> meant.
> 
> Disk-Drive advertisements are one notable case where things are
> confusing, but really, you shouldn't be adjusting your language to suit
> marketing!
> 
> -Miles

We are talking about numbers here! Context is IMO not enough. I sure
hope that standard gets widely adopted. For me, this has (almost)
nothing to do with marketing. You just can't use the same symbol for
different things. It's like having the same symbol for miles and
kilometers!

Andrei
-- 
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
(Albert Einstein)