La Fête du Génie CCXI (September 18, 2003)
1000? 1024?
As anyone who reads Slashdot has probably seen by now, a group of computer users are suing a collection of computer companies for deceptive advertising.
The problem? They're advertising hard drives where one gigabyte is 109 bytes, and not 230. (The story is here.)
Now, besides the fact that I think there's better things they could do with their time, I'm really torn on this one. On one hand, I can see where their confusion comes from. RAM is measured in the 210 = 1 K system, but there's a really good reason for that. When you're building circuits for a binary system, it's a lot easier to build storage in powers of two than it is to build in powers of ten.
Now, I can see where they're getting the idea that 1 GB has to equal 1024 MB from. But at the same time 1 Giga = 1000 Mega is a SI standard. When you deal with anything else (even network transmission speeds) you're dealing in base 10.
So who's wrong here? The vendors for using base 2 prefixes in combination with base 10? Or the consumers who expect 1 M in computer terms to mean 1024 K?*
I'd go on but I can't even seem to form a coherent rant tonight. To come to the point I was trying to reach: 1 GB = 1000 MB, 1 GiB = 1000 MiB. Sure, the latter isn't a SI standard, but it's a lot easier than trying to explain to someone that their hard drive uses base 10, their network is measured using base 10, and their RAM is measured using base 2.
That's it, I'm going back to bed.
* To take this to the extreme, I've seen someone who thought that a 3 GHz processor meant 3072 MHz. This is of course the exception, rather than the rule (I hope…), but it still makes me want to scream "No! That's wrong! Stop doing that! Stop it!"
While I'm swiping links from Slashdot, I may as well mention that I want one of these. If someone's willing to cough up the 100 Euros for me, I'll gladly dig my Commodore out of storage.
I think the super-script needs a little work. Or maybe just Gecko's rendering of it. But it pretty clearly says 109 bytes, not 10 to the power of 9 bytes.
I think that hard drives should be measured in base two. However, I guess that's not an informed opinion, because I don't know enough about hard drive technology to know whether hard drives are build on a base two system. I just like the idea of things being in base two, mostly.
The file systems are quite obviously built around base 2, and the operating systems measure size in base two. The hard drive themseleves don't have to be. It's really a matter of preference as to which is 'correct', and I'm just a stickler for established standards (which could be taken each way in this case...)
As for the superscript, I noticed that. Not sure what to do to tweak it. I may have to experiment with different font families or something.
Posted by g026r at La Fête du Travail CCXI 08:11 (2003/09/19)
Ok, let me know how the superscript works now.
I couldn't find another font family I liked for the main text, so I just tweaked the stylesheet to put all <sup> tags in a different font.
Posted by g026r at La Fête du Travail CCXI 16:50 (2003/09/19)
It looks better, but it would be nice if the font was a slightly smaller size, just to make it a bit clearer.
On the superscript you mean? I'll take a look at that.
Posted by g026r at La Fête du Travail CCXI 18:29 (2003/09/19)
The terms kilo, mega and giga were invented long before the computer was even thought of. Does one kilometer equal 1024 meters? kilo simply means 1000n as in 2 kilometers = 2*1000 meters. It's just that 1024 fits better in base 2. However, people arent going to let go of '1024' any time soon, and it might be useless to even try.
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