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Gibibyte
Why in hell do we need that? (Just to ruin my remaining day's I Suppose).
Rene |
Ads |
#2
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Gibibyte
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Why in hell do we need that? (Just to ruin my remaining day's I Suppose). Rene They could give you your disk capacity in fathoms or furlongs. Just be glad they selected a useless unit. Paul |
#3
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Gibibyte
On 2019-11-14 7:57 p.m., Paul wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote: Why in hell do we need that? (Just to ruin my remaining day's I Suppose). Rene They could give you your disk capacity in fathoms or furlongs. Just be glad they selected a useless unit. Â*Â* Paul Luckily I may never have to use or calculate it, My abacus just ain't up to the task. :-) Rene |
#4
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Gibibyte
On Thu, 14 Nov 2019 19:22:51 -0600, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Subject: Gibibyte Why in hell do we need that? (Just to ruin my remaining day's I Suppose). Giga = 1,000,000,000 (decimal, a power of 10: 10^9 -- SI units) Gibi = 1,073,741,824 (binary, a power of 2: 2^30 -- IEC units) Gibi is now 21 years old. https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html -- Kind regards Ralph |
#5
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Gibibyte
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
Why in hell do we need that? Marketing Departments, and proper standardization of magnitude prefixes. Using a power of 2, HDDs would look smaller than using a power of 10. Marketing could make HDDs look larger to computer illiterates by describing capacity in, say, megabytes. 2 ^ 20 = â€*1,048,576‬ mebibyte (megabyte misnamed, renamed with new prefix) 10 ^ 6 = 1,000,000 megabyte (properly named) 1.05 megabytes = 1 mebibytes Back then, and with HDDs being much smaller, any incremental increase in size at the same price meant more revenue from customers that thought the same-priced drive gave them a wee bit more capacity. kilo, mega, giga, tera, and so on were defined as powers of 10, not 2. Only until computers showed up which work in binary did those prefixes get misused to represent magnitude. A megabyte should've been 10 ^ 6, but was first defined as 2 ^ 20; i.e., the mega prefix got misused. Back then, there were no magnitude prefixes for binary values. If you are old enough, you would've been around when the naming correction happened. mega is a decimal magnitude. mebi is a binary magnitude. |
#6
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Gibibyte
"Ralph Fox" wrote in message
... On Thu, 14 Nov 2019 19:22:51 -0600, Rene Lamontagne wrote: Subject: Gibibyte Why in hell do we need that? (Just to ruin my remaining day's I Suppose). Giga = 1,000,000,000 (decimal, a power of 10: 10^9 -- SI units) Gibi = 1,073,741,824 (binary, a power of 2: 2^30 -- IEC units) Gibi is now 21 years old. https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html The problem is not with the concept - which is very laudable - but the names. "Mebibyte", "gibibyte" and "tebibyte" sound like someone with a speech impediment (*) trying to say "megabyte", "gigabyte" and "terabyte". (*) Think of Spitting Image's caricature of Roy "Splattersly" Hattersley ;-) |
#7
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Gibibyte
On 2019-11-15 6:55 a.m., NY wrote:
"Ralph Fox" wrote in message ... On Thu, 14 Nov 2019 19:22:51 -0600, Rene Lamontagne wrote: Subject: Gibibyte Why in hell do we need that? (Just to ruin my remaining day's I Suppose). Giga = 1,000,000,000Â*Â* (decimal, a power of 10: 10^9Â* -- SI units) Gibi = 1,073,741,824Â*Â* (binary,Â* a power of 2:Â* 2^30Â* -- IEC units) Gibi is now 21 years old. https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html The problem is not with the concept - which is very laudable - but the names. "Mebibyte", "gibibyte" and "tebibyte" sound like someone with a speech impediment (*) trying to say "megabyte", "gigabyte" and "terabyte". (*) Think of Spitting Image's caricature of Roy "Splattersly" Hattersley ;-) They sound like someone who just came out of the dentists with their mouth still frozen. :-) Rene |
#8
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Gibibyte
On 11/14/2019 11:39 PM, VanguardLH wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote: Why in hell do we need that? Marketing Departments, and proper standardization of magnitude prefixes. Using a power of 2, HDDs would look smaller than using a power of 10. Marketing could make HDDs look larger to computer illiterates by describing capacity in, say, megabytes. 2 ^ 20 = â€*1,048,576‬ mebibyte (megabyte misnamed, renamed with new prefix) 10 ^ 6 = 1,000,000 megabyte (properly named) 1.05 megabytes = 1 mebibytes Back then, and with HDDs being much smaller, any incremental increase in size at the same price meant more revenue from customers that thought the same-priced drive gave them a wee bit more capacity. kilo, mega, giga, tera, and so on were defined as powers of 10, not 2. Only until computers showed up which work in binary did those prefixes get misused to represent magnitude. A megabyte should've been 10 ^ 6, but was first defined as 2 ^ 20; i.e., the mega prefix got misused. Back then, there were no magnitude prefixes for binary values. If you are old enough, you would've been around when the naming correction happened. mega is a decimal magnitude. mebi is a binary magnitude. Everything you say above is correct. But language is not fixed; the meaning of words changes with time, and the prefixes kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera-, etc. are an example of this. Today, they represent binary magnitudes. Should that change have happened? As far as I'm concerned, no. But it did. For all practical purposes the prefixes like mebi-, with "b" inserted, are almost never used, and should be dropped, even though they are international standards. The only real exception to everyone's using the decimal terms in a binary way is disk manufacturers. They use the terms in a decimal way because it makes what offer for sale sound larger. As far as I'm concerned, it's deceptive advertising. It confuses many people and should be prohibited. They should be required to state the sizes of their drives using powers of 2, as everyone else does. -- Ken |
#9
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Gibibyte
Ken Blake wrote:
The only real exception to everyone's using the decimal terms in a binary way is disk manufacturers. And memory (all types) since addressing is binary. |
#10
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Gibibyte
NY wrote:
The problem is not with the concept - which is very laudable - but the names. "Mebibyte", "gibibyte" and "tebibyte" sound like someone with a speech impediment (*) trying to say "megabyte", "gigabyte" and "terabyte". I suspect "bi" was used to denote "binary". It gave a hint to the base. ^^ ^^ Instead of using wholly new magnitude prefixes that everyone would have to learn and for which adoption would be slow, especially in the computer industry where change is the norm, they wanted magnitude prefixes that hinted at the old meanings, so people would instinctively perceive the magnitude based on the old prefixes, but also hint that the magnitude was binary instead of decimal. What would you have come up for magnitude prefixes that represented magnitudes similar to the decimal-based ones but hint it was a binary prefix? |
#11
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Gibibyte
On 2019-11-15 1:44 p.m., VanguardLH wrote:
NY wrote: The problem is not with the concept - which is very laudable - but the names. "Mebibyte", "gibibyte" and "tebibyte" sound like someone with a speech impediment (*) trying to say "megabyte", "gigabyte" and "terabyte". I suspect "bi" was used to denote "binary". It gave a hint to the base. ^^ ^^ Instead of using wholly new magnitude prefixes that everyone would have to learn and for which adoption would be slow, especially in the computer industry where change is the norm, they wanted magnitude prefixes that hinted at the old meanings, so people would instinctively perceive the magnitude based on the old prefixes, but also hint that the magnitude was binary instead of decimal. What would you have come up for magnitude prefixes that represented magnitudes similar to the decimal-based ones but hint it was a binary prefix? I have no idea, just not my forte. Rene |
#12
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Gibibyte
On 15/11/2019 21.39, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-11-15 1:44 p.m., VanguardLH wrote: NY wrote: The problem is not with the concept - which is very laudable - but the names. "Mebibyte", "gibibyte" and "tebibyte" sound like someone with a speech impediment (*) trying to say "megabyte", "gigabyte" and "terabyte". I suspect "bi" was used to denote "binary".Â* It gave a hint to the base. Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* ^^Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â*Â* ^^ Instead of using wholly new magnitude prefixes that everyone would have to learn and for which adoption would be slow, especially in the computer industry where change is the norm, they wanted magnitude prefixes that hinted at the old meanings, so people would instinctively perceive the magnitude based on the old prefixes, but also hint that the magnitude was binary instead of decimal. What would you have come up for magnitude prefixes that represented magnitudes similar to the decimal-based ones but hint it was a binary prefix? I have no idea, just not my forte. Ah, but the industry does have an idea, and the chose Gibibyte. -- Cheers, Carlos. |
#13
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Gibibyte
On 15/11/2019 16.43, Ken Blake wrote:
On 11/14/2019 11:39 PM, VanguardLH wrote: Rene Lamontagne wrote: Why in hell do we need that? Marketing Departments, and proper standardization of magnitude prefixes. Using a power of 2, HDDs would look smaller than using a power of 10. Marketing could make HDDs look larger to computer illiterates by describing capacity in, say, megabytes. Â* 2 ^ 20 = â€*1,048,576‬Â* mebibyte (megabyte misnamed, renamed with new prefix) 10 ^Â* 6 = 1,000,000Â* megabyte (properly named) 1.05 megabytes = 1 mebibytes Back then, and with HDDs being much smaller, any incremental increase in size at the same price meant more revenue from customers that thought the same-priced drive gave them a wee bit more capacity. kilo, mega, giga, tera, and so on were defined as powers of 10, not 2. Only until computers showed up which work in binary did those prefixes get misused to represent magnitude.Â* A megabyte should've been 10 ^ 6, but was first defined as 2 ^ 20; i.e., the mega prefix got misused. Back then, there were no magnitude prefixes for binary values. If you are old enough, you would've been around when the naming correction happened.Â* mega is a decimal magnitude.Â* mebi is a binary magnitude. Everything you say above is correct. But language is not fixed; the meaning of words changes with time, and the prefixes kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera-, etc. are an example of this. Today, they represent binary magnitudes. No, they don't. They represent now decimal magnitudes, as previously. -- Cheers, Carlos. |
#14
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Gibibyte
On 15/11/2019 20.36, VanguardLH wrote:
Ken Blake wrote: The only real exception to everyone's using the decimal terms in a binary way is disk manufacturers. And memory (all types) since addressing is binary. Not on a rotating disk... -- Cheers, Carlos. |
#15
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Gibibyte
On 11/15/2019 2:33 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
On 15/11/2019 16.43, Ken Blake wrote: On 11/14/2019 11:39 PM, VanguardLH wrote: Rene Lamontagne wrote: Why in hell do we need that? Marketing Departments, and proper standardization of magnitude prefixes. Using a power of 2, HDDs would look smaller than using a power of 10. Marketing could make HDDs look larger to computer illiterates by describing capacity in, say, megabytes. Â* 2 ^ 20 = â€*1,048,576‬Â* mebibyte (megabyte misnamed, renamed with new prefix) 10 ^Â* 6 = 1,000,000Â* megabyte (properly named) 1.05 megabytes = 1 mebibytes Back then, and with HDDs being much smaller, any incremental increase in size at the same price meant more revenue from customers that thought the same-priced drive gave them a wee bit more capacity. kilo, mega, giga, tera, and so on were defined as powers of 10, not 2. Only until computers showed up which work in binary did those prefixes get misused to represent magnitude.Â* A megabyte should've been 10 ^ 6, but was first defined as 2 ^ 20; i.e., the mega prefix got misused. Back then, there were no magnitude prefixes for binary values. If you are old enough, you would've been around when the naming correction happened.Â* mega is a decimal magnitude.Â* mebi is a binary magnitude. Everything you say above is correct. But language is not fixed; the meaning of words changes with time, and the prefixes kilo-, mega-, giga-, tera-, etc. are an example of this. Today, they represent binary magnitudes. No, they don't. They represent now decimal magnitudes, as previously. You are free to use words any way you want. I disagree; to me they represent binary magnitudes. If I talk about a kilobyte, I mean 1,024 bytes, and so on. -- Ken |
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