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Date:      Sun, 14 Mar 2021 04:38:06 -0600
From:      "@lbutlr" <kremels@kreme.com>
To:        FreeBSD <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Standards: IEC Giga [re: FreeBSD image size confusion]
Message-ID:  <7D5A9BF6-290E-4DEE-92CF-DBD3A9BB0D2C@kreme.com>
In-Reply-To: <20210314012327.2bb13206@gumby.homeunix.com>
References:  <CAD2Ti29KTgFTEnJFNa_X61Tv%2BHWx4KSB30vmDdERmYCjx9USEg@mail.gmail.com> <EC50085E-E535-4722-99D5-70712BE39FCB@kreme.com> <20210314012327.2bb13206@gumby.homeunix.com>

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On 13 Mar 2021, at 18:23, RW via freebsd-questions =
<freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 13 Mar 2021 15:52:45 -0700 @lbutlr wrote:
>=20
>> On 13 Mar 2021, at 15:07, grarpamp <grarpamp@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> "giga" =3D "G" =3D decimal prefix, powers of ten, 10^, base 10
>>> underlying "gibi" =3D "Gi" =3D binary prefix, powers of two, 2^, =
base 2
>>> underlying =20
>>=20
>> It will be a decade or three before we know if this shakes out the
>> way that ISO is trying to force on people. The simple fact is that GB
>> has been used for a binary number for decades, just as MB and KB, and
>> the moved from MB =3D 2^20 to MB =3D 1,000,000 was driven by Hard =
drive
>> manufacturers who wanted to market their 100MB drives as 104MB to
>> fool people into thinking the drives were larger than they were.
>=20
> Proper standards based multipliers have long since been preferred by
> hardware engineers wherever feasible. The misuse of decimal =
multipliers
> is limited to a few things where size is related to access by address
> lines, such as RAM, and only there for want of anything better.=20
>=20
> People who think this is driven by marketing

It absolutely was the case when 100MB drives started to becomes common. =
Cheap marketers selling poor quality drives advertised "104MB" and =
everyone else used 100MB; the drive were the same size and the "smaller" =
size pf the usable space on the "104MB" drives was written off to =
"formatting overhead".

(ad hominem nonsense removed)

> The existence of proper binary multipliers is long overdue.=20

We will see how that goes. It may be the "GiB" becomes common for =
computer storage, but 2^10 2^20 2^30 are definitely "proper", and the =
use of "GiB" is still well below the use of "GB", and as much as =
official orgs TRY to force language usage, they have no actual ability =
to change the language people use.

--=20
It was not, it could not be real. But in the roaring air he knew that
	it was, for all who needed to believe, and in a belief so strong
	that truth was not the same as fact... he knew that for now, and
	yesterday, and tomorrow, both the thing, and the whole of the
	thing.




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