Eduard Bloch wrote: > Nah, not having much spare time to post doesn't mean I have to drop > all the good habits. I had nothing in the mailbox for the last year of recent memory. I will call that good enough to be called "a while". > Bob Proulx wrote: > > $ perl -le 'print 5605687296 / (1024*1024*1024)' > > ... > > For anyone who gets upset by the topic I will only offer this > > following treatise as highly recommended reading. > > > > On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace > > http://www.ietf.org/rfc/ien/ien137.txt > > And there is it again :-( Please don't justify pure misuse of > terminology with false analogies like this document about Holy Wars at > absolutely equivalent things (equivalent WRT their application). Please quote my exact words where I misused terminology. I do not see it. I never said GB nor GiB. I used a number. I think you are objecting to me using GB but I never said GB anywhere. Others did. Because of the fervor on this topic I believe the Holy Wars article is very obviously as relevant now as then. It is talking about human nature. As was the original Swift. As proven by this thread human nature hasn't changed any in all of these years. I would much rather be arguing over something that matters. Such as aptitude versus apt-get. Or NetworkManager versus wicd. Or systemd versus upstart. Or C++ versus C. Or Python versus Ruby. Or vim versus emacs. Or the one true brace and indention style. Using a period, point or comma for the decimal mark and thousands separator. Or even which end of an egg to open. :-) > You can prefer whatever you want but the means of reliable > communication are unambiguous terms. EOD. The number 1024 that I used is not ambiguous. It is an exact value. > Some dudes in nineteen-seventies didn't get it and another generation > of dudes is still trying to protect those "values" even perfectly > knowing they are wrong. I used a number 1024 as a divisor for binary data and I don't think I am misinterpreting your words as telling me that I was wrong. But a number is not wrong nor right. It is number. Please use any number you want. When I am working with binary data I use binary numbers. When I am working with decimal data then I use decimal numbers. This is neither right nor wrong. Those are conventions because they are convenient to the data they are describing. Others are of course free to use their own preferences. Many people still prefer octal representations. Such as with chmod. I typically eschew use of octal values with chmod and prefer the modern purely symbolic modes. But I don't declare others wrong for using octal values with chmod. At times it is also convenient to the data it is describing. > In the field of arithmetics the effects of such "misnomers" can become > fatal. For example, see the US speciality called "billion" which has a > custom meaning incompatible to the rest of the world. I do not understand your point with regards to "billion". Please explain further. I am aware that in the old days (prior to the 1970's?) for some countries (primarily the British Commonwealth?) a billion was a million million (10^12) and a trillion was a million million million (10^18). Those derived from "bi" and "tri" meaning million^2 and million^3. Which makes sense. But I believe that now common English communication throughout the US, UK, and Commonwealth it is now considered obsolete usage. Today a billion is 1000000000 (10^9) aka a thousand million and a trillion is 1000000000000 (10^12) aka a thousand thousand million. I am aware that this changeover has happened within living memory for a lot of people and therefore causes colloquial speech to fall back, often intentionally, to the old ways at times. Also any literature prior to this needs to be read within that context. Context is always important. Using full exact numbers in communication can avoid confusion over this issue. If the name may be confused then reading the exact number should clarify it. Is this the meaning you are referring to which is incompatible with the rest of the world? Bob
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