Hallo,
* Bob Proulx [Sat, Feb 16 2013, 01:54:44PM]:
> 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.
Yeah. A number as answer to something about "GB". Have you ever been on
the Jeopardy show?
> 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.
What is so unclear in what I have written before? In Gulliver's travels,
as in most holy wars, the outcome is absolutely identical, so choosing
any method doesn't make a difference. This analogy does NOT apply here.
Following your logics means that it's ok to use "pint" for business
communication because it's a soo well defined unit and anyone
understands how much it is. Now tell that to a globally operating
company...
> > 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.
Sure. But please, never use it to refer to any unit name using a SI
prefix.
> > 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
Responding to someone asking for "GB".
> 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
And when exactly does the data stop being decimal and becomes binary?
When it's read from the the PHY buffer and written to the 2nd level
cache of your CPU? Sorry, that kind of hairsplitting is just
ridiculous.
> Others are of course free to use their own preferences. Many people
> still prefer octal representations. Such as with chmod. I typically
Yet another false analogy. You keep presenting more and more of them,
always implying that somebody ...
> 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.
... revealing them as not applicable here is "declaring others wrong".
A better analogy would be like telling compiler makers to watch
out for the special word "chmod". If present and the programmer writes
chmod(..., 755) they should not handle it like chmod(..., 0755) because
that's what looks convinient for many people. Oh, and please, the
compiler should guess the meaning based on the count of *.c files in the
home directory because that's a good indication for being used by an
expert or newbie.
> > 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.
There is a long story ("short and long scales") where different
mathematics started using the same words for different counts. The
result is the mess we currently have (i.e. billion is still 10^12 in
most of the Europe and Trillion is 10^18, not 10^12), and we have a
chance to avoid this with binary-style SI prefixes.
> 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.
And therefore, the proper answer to the original question should have
been "If you mean GiB aka binary-GB, you could use this command: ...".
Regards,
Eduard.
--
Alles altert, selbst die Achtung, wenn man sich nicht in Acht nimmt.
-- Joseph Joubert (Gedanken, Versuche und Maximen)