But snoopy, the suit isn't about logic...it's about truth. The manufacturers are being accused of lying when they are in fact telling the truth.
I understand. Apparently there is no usage rule that must be followed. Computer people just started using 1024 as the prefix multiplier, it seems, because it makes sense in a binary world. Most everyone followed suit except the drive makers, evidently. The law suit is frivolous, but points up the need to follow common usage within the computer industry to avoid these misunderstandings.
Funny how hard drives have nice round base-10 numbers as their stated value but the actual value is lower - i.e. a 20 GB actually gives you about 18 GB of storage. Whereas with memory, the actual usable amount is a nice round number and the complicated one is not stated. When will RAM makers start advertising their new 512 MB RAM modules that actually are 512 million bytes? Will that even work?
Funny how hard drives have nice round base-10 numbers as their stated value but the actual value is lower - i.e. a 20 GB actually gives you about 18 GB of storage. Whereas with memory, the actual usable amount is a nice round number and the complicated one is not stated. When will RAM makers start advertising their new 512 MB RAM modules that actually are 512 million bytes? Will that even work?
RAM and other binary systems do not blend into our numbering system, which is based on ten. Binary things double in a sequence 1,2,4,8,16, 32, 64 and on and on. The number 10 does not fit into this sequence to make an anchoring point. If early mankind had used, say, 16 as the base of the numbering system we wouldn't be having this discussion. Things would be easy and fall into place.
Why do RAM modules come in sizes like 128, 256, and 512 MB? You never hear about a 200 or 250 MB RAM module. The values we have are the result of doubling. After 512 MB, what is the next size module you can buy? It's 1 GB, which is 1024 MB or twice the size of a 512 MB module. Notice that 1 GB of RAM is 1024 MB, not 1000 MB. If we used 1000, we would have the problems I stated in my earlier posting. 1024 fits nicely into a binary world.
As far as computers are concerned, kilo == 2^10 (and not 10^3 as in the real world). The fact that drive manufacturers do advertise their drives as such (10^3) is blatant lying. Like they don't know the standards used by the computer industry? Give ME a break. I actually hope this lawsuit will change some things. What is it with you guys that you have no problem with bending over and taking it where the sun don't shine, just so you can claim you're no baby? Congratulations! Meanwhile, my 320 GB drive is actually, unformatted, only 297 GB large. A difference larger than the entire internal drive in my computer. But I have no right to complain?
How much is 60 GB? In all practical sense it has one answer and that is relative. Either as "Double as much as 30 GB" or as "much more headroom compared to a 40 GB drive". Its a yardstick and it makes no difference at all for the user if its wrong as long as everybody used the same wrong yardstick.
Lets imagine this was alcohol. Jack Daniels is "94 proof" which is twice as much as anything that is "47 proof". Double as much means you have to drink half as much to get the same effect. Is it really importent to know that you have to divide by two to get the alcohol percent? No because it really doesn´t tell you how hammered you will be.
What if it was suddenly discovered that one pound really was the same as one kilogram? Would you suddenly sue your grocer because he had given cheated you for half your groceries for the last 20 years? No because you had a pretty clear feeling what one pound was and what the grocer gave you when you asked for one pound was excatly that. The same with GB.
As far as computers are concerned, kilo == 2^10 (and not 10^3 as in the real world). The fact that drive manufacturers do advertise their drives as such (10^3) is blatant lying. Like they don't know the standards used by the computer industry? Give ME a break. I actually hope this lawsuit will change some things. What is it with you guys that you have no problem with bending over and taking it where the sun don't shine, just so you can claim you're no baby? Congratulations! Meanwhile, my 320 GB drive is actually, unformatted, only 297 GB large. A difference larger than the entire internal drive in my computer. But I have no right to complain?
The industry isn't limited to one standard. Saying a Gigabyte is one-billion bytes isn't blatant lying...it's the blatant truth. As pointed out earlier, there is actually a vice-versa phenomenon that some companies really are guilty of. Instead of using the NIST / IEC standard abbreviated symbols, companies like Microsoft and Apple are actually displaying GiB as GB in parts of the OS like the Get Info window and System Profiler. In essence, Apple tells me a file is 3.3 GB when in fact it's actually closer to 3.6 GB. That's the closest thing there is to a lie in this whole gray area.
That's not the point, that's a bag of wind floating in mid-air. It's been well-known since the very beginning that all measures (of storage/memory size) in computing are a power of two, because of the binary nature of computing. To come out with this "ow, you know GIGA is one billion of something. That's like, ISO and stuff..." is neither here nor there. We aren't talking liters here, or apples, or onions, or whatever you want. Computer users know this, and computer makers know this. Still they insist on that false advertising, and I for one am happy to see them finally having to answer for it. It's pure terrorism, that's what it is!
Nonetheless, I reiterate my hope that after this suit has finished, things will hopefully change.
It is very much here and there. If common usage is wrong, why should a HDD manufacturer bend to it? If anything it's the Apples and Microsofts that should adopt the use of the right terminology.
And in addition, you mention formatting as if it means something. HDD manufacturers ship drives unformatted. A filesystem format can hypothetically be very efficient with little overhead or it could also be very inefficient and use all the sectors on your HDD. The HDD maker is not responsible for formatted capacities.
That's not the point, that's a bag of wind floating in mid-air. It's been well-known since the very beginning that all measures (of storage/memory size) in computing are a power of two, because of the binary nature of computing. To come out with this "ow, you know GIGA is one billion of something. That's like, ISO and stuff..." is neither here nor there. We aren't talking liters here, or apples, or onions, or whatever you want. Computer users know this, and computer makers know this.
Actually when the SI prefixes were first used incorrectly for computers it was well known they were wrong just nobody had any better options so that's what got used. As it happens though HDs and bandwidth have always been defined by standard SI prefixes anyway because they aren't held to the binary limitations. It's in fact the OS manufacturers, RAM manufacturers and a few other groups that are to blame.
I don't believe that a group of standards people are going to change the common meaning of Giga, Mega, and Kilo when applied to computer memory. It is accepted usage by now in every language in the world that 1 GB is twice as much as 512 MB. If it were just a small group of scientists using these terms, a standards group might be able to make a change, but it has gone too far. The law suit in fact accepts the common usage as proper, and people are suing because drive storage is stated in technically correct terms. To most people, it is the drive makers who are the odd ball.
The law suit in fact accepts the common usage as proper, and people are suing because drive storage is stated in technically correct terms. To most people, it is the drive makers who are the odd ball.
Any person that has been to and passed high school knows what the SI prefixes mean and that constitutes every reasonable person, which is what the law actually takes. Doesn't matter if a group of HS drop outs don't understand and think the computer manufacturers are odd balls legally they are correct to have gone with the standard and their defence will simply be to wave the standards because that is a proper legal argument.
The law suit stands zero chance vs computer manufacturers or HD manufacturers. You could make a case against OS makers but they all list bytes anyway so you know your HD size. Frankly I look forward to seeing the people that raised the suit being forced into paying legal costs of the companies
i think the whole SI vs. binary prefix dealies arguments are really bunk. Most (all?) hdd manufacturers write on their boxen that GB=1 billion bytes (and/or whatever is relavant). They explicitly write it out. If a person doesn't notice this, its their own fault for not looking at the box. Even if they didn't write it out, it should be assumed that the standard SI units are being used.
Also, some of you might be interested to know that there are some progams and computer systems that do use the standard SI units for T, G, M, K. if you get 'ls' from fink (the GNU version of ls), and type '/sw/bin/ls -l --si /' in Terminal (the default apple version of ls, i think, is missing the '--si' command line option), the listing you get is in SI notation for file sizes. They also have a 'human readable' way of printing the sizes, with the '-h' option, which presents the listing in the more common format: '/sw/bin/ls -lh /'.
Actually when the SI prefixes were first used incorrectly for computers it was well known they were wrong just nobody had any better options so that's what got used. . .
That is what my impression has been, that computer folks began using these prefixes in a binary sense because it made things easier for them. Thanks for this confirmation. Until this discussion, however, I did not know there is now a new set of prefixes for 1024 multipliers. Evidently using these SI prefixes as 1024 multipliers troubled the standards committee, as it appears to trouble several of you in this discussion. But why?
It appears people simply ignore the standard. I believe they do not need nor want yet another set of prefixes, since the present ones can work without ambiguity. And it is not just those who produce operating systems and RAM. It is common street usage of these terms that is accepted by nearly everyone. Rather than come up with a new set of prefixes, the committee should have simply blessed what everyone was doing. Each prefix is another multiple of 1000 except when applied to binary bits or bytes, in which case it is 1024. Even the HS drop outs can, and do, understand this. Drive makers should simply get on board and conform to the common, accepted practice of the rest of the computer industry.
That is what my impression has been, that computer folks began using these prefixes in a binary sense because it made things easier for them. Thanks for this confirmation. Until this discussion, however, I did not know there is now a new set of prefixes for 1024 multipliers. Evidently using these SI prefixes as 1024 multipliers troubled the standards committee, as it appears to trouble several of you in this discussion. But why?
It appears people simply ignore the standard. I believe they do not need nor want yet another set of prefixes, since the present ones can work without ambiguity. And it is not just those who produce operating systems and RAM. It is common street usage of these terms that is accepted by nearly everyone. Rather than come up with a new set of prefixes, the committee should have simply blessed what everyone was doing. Each prefix is another multiple of 1000 except when applied to binary bits or bytes, in which case it is 1024. Even the HS drop outs can, and do, understand this. Drive makers should simply get on board and conform to the common, accepted practice of the rest of the computer industry.
well, you see, it is ambiguous, as shown by hdd makers. The intent of the standards was to make the prefixes fixed; K=1000, M=1 million, etc. Commonality doesn't change the fact that it would fvck with the standard.
besides, i don't think the average, retarded computer user knows that 1MB != 1million bytes. i dont think they even know that MB means megabyte. even more advanced computer users don't know about this stupid conversion. everyone learns in school about the si notation. when we see those prefixes we think of the si amounts associated with them.
well, you see, it is ambiguous, as shown by hdd makers. The intent of the standards was to make the prefixes fixed . . .
The standards people had a chance to fix the ambiguity once and for all, but instead they chose a route that will cause it to drag on for a long time. If these common prefixes had been approved to mean a multiplier of 1024 when used with binary bits and bytes, that would have ended it. Drive makers would have converted how they label their products. Now however, with addition of new prefixes for binary applications, they may never change. Why should they? The drive makers can claim to be the only ones who are correct. Everybody else is wrong. I wish I could do than at times.
So, will the rest of the computer world change? First, it is very unlikely that the computer industry would ever start using gigabyte to mean 1,000,000,000 bytes and megabyte to mean 1,000.000 bytes. My guess is that they will keep doing what they do now, and claim common usage and customer expectations as their reason. If they do recognize the binary standard it will likely be in a footnote. Yet, even if the industry switched and began using new binary prefixes, as unlikely as that may be, the ambiguity would still be there. People will simply equate the new 1 GiB memory module with the old 1 GB module, because they are exactly the same. Unfortunately drive makers will still be using GB to mean one billion bytes, and so nothing is accomplished. Drive capacity will be advertised differently than computer memory capacity, and people will still need that explained to them. That's progress?
By making two approved ways to represent large memory or disk storage, the standards committee has ensured that confusion will reign almost forever.
Comments
Originally posted by Eugene
But snoopy, the suit isn't about logic...it's about truth. The manufacturers are being accused of lying when they are in fact telling the truth.
I understand. Apparently there is no usage rule that must be followed. Computer people just started using 1024 as the prefix multiplier, it seems, because it makes sense in a binary world. Most everyone followed suit except the drive makers, evidently. The law suit is frivolous, but points up the need to follow common usage within the computer industry to avoid these misunderstandings.
Originally posted by Luca Rescigno
Funny how hard drives have nice round base-10 numbers as their stated value but the actual value is lower - i.e. a 20 GB actually gives you about 18 GB of storage. Whereas with memory, the actual usable amount is a nice round number and the complicated one is not stated. When will RAM makers start advertising their new 512 MB RAM modules that actually are 512 million bytes? Will that even work?
RAM and other binary systems do not blend into our numbering system, which is based on ten. Binary things double in a sequence 1,2,4,8,16, 32, 64 and on and on. The number 10 does not fit into this sequence to make an anchoring point. If early mankind had used, say, 16 as the base of the numbering system we wouldn't be having this discussion. Things would be easy and fall into place.
Why do RAM modules come in sizes like 128, 256, and 512 MB? You never hear about a 200 or 250 MB RAM module. The values we have are the result of doubling. After 512 MB, what is the next size module you can buy? It's 1 GB, which is 1024 MB or twice the size of a 512 MB module. Notice that 1 GB of RAM is 1024 MB, not 1000 MB. If we used 1000, we would have the problems I stated in my earlier posting. 1024 fits nicely into a binary world.
Besides Apple explains in the fine print how the size works anyway. They're covered.
***read the thread***
Cry me a freaking river.
How much is 60 GB? In all practical sense it has one answer and that is relative. Either as "Double as much as 30 GB" or as "much more headroom compared to a 40 GB drive". Its a yardstick and it makes no difference at all for the user if its wrong as long as everybody used the same wrong yardstick.
Lets imagine this was alcohol. Jack Daniels is "94 proof" which is twice as much as anything that is "47 proof". Double as much means you have to drink half as much to get the same effect. Is it really importent to know that you have to divide by two to get the alcohol percent? No because it really doesn´t tell you how hammered you will be.
What if it was suddenly discovered that one pound really was the same as one kilogram? Would you suddenly sue your grocer because he had given cheated you for half your groceries for the last 20 years? No because you had a pretty clear feeling what one pound was and what the grocer gave you when you asked for one pound was excatly that. The same with GB.
Originally posted by der Kopf
As far as computers are concerned, kilo == 2^10 (and not 10^3 as in the real world). The fact that drive manufacturers do advertise their drives as such (10^3) is blatant lying. Like they don't know the standards used by the computer industry? Give ME a break. I actually hope this lawsuit will change some things. What is it with you guys that you have no problem with bending over and taking it where the sun don't shine, just so you can claim you're no baby? Congratulations! Meanwhile, my 320 GB drive is actually, unformatted, only 297 GB large. A difference larger than the entire internal drive in my computer. But I have no right to complain?
The industry isn't limited to one standard. Saying a Gigabyte is one-billion bytes isn't blatant lying...it's the blatant truth. As pointed out earlier, there is actually a vice-versa phenomenon that some companies really are guilty of. Instead of using the NIST / IEC standard abbreviated symbols, companies like Microsoft and Apple are actually displaying GiB as GB in parts of the OS like the Get Info window and System Profiler. In essence, Apple tells me a file is 3.3 GB when in fact it's actually closer to 3.6 GB. That's the closest thing there is to a lie in this whole gray area.
Nonetheless, I reiterate my hope that after this suit has finished, things will hopefully change.
And in addition, you mention formatting as if it means something. HDD manufacturers ship drives unformatted. A filesystem format can hypothetically be very efficient with little overhead or it could also be very inefficient and use all the sectors on your HDD. The HDD maker is not responsible for formatted capacities.
Originally posted by der Kopf
That's not the point, that's a bag of wind floating in mid-air. It's been well-known since the very beginning that all measures (of storage/memory size) in computing are a power of two, because of the binary nature of computing. To come out with this "ow, you know GIGA is one billion of something. That's like, ISO and stuff..." is neither here nor there. We aren't talking liters here, or apples, or onions, or whatever you want. Computer users know this, and computer makers know this.
Actually when the SI prefixes were first used incorrectly for computers it was well known they were wrong just nobody had any better options so that's what got used. As it happens though HDs and bandwidth have always been defined by standard SI prefixes anyway because they aren't held to the binary limitations. It's in fact the OS manufacturers, RAM manufacturers and a few other groups that are to blame.
Originally posted by snoopy
The law suit in fact accepts the common usage as proper, and people are suing because drive storage is stated in technically correct terms. To most people, it is the drive makers who are the odd ball.
Any person that has been to and passed high school knows what the SI prefixes mean and that constitutes every reasonable person, which is what the law actually takes. Doesn't matter if a group of HS drop outs don't understand and think the computer manufacturers are odd balls legally they are correct to have gone with the standard and their defence will simply be to wave the standards because that is a proper legal argument.
The law suit stands zero chance vs computer manufacturers or HD manufacturers. You could make a case against OS makers but they all list bytes anyway so you know your HD size. Frankly I look forward to seeing the people that raised the suit being forced into paying legal costs of the companies
Also, some of you might be interested to know that there are some progams and computer systems that do use the standard SI units for T, G, M, K. if you get 'ls' from fink (the GNU version of ls), and type '/sw/bin/ls -l --si /' in Terminal (the default apple version of ls, i think, is missing the '--si' command line option), the listing you get is in SI notation for file sizes. They also have a 'human readable' way of printing the sizes, with the '-h' option, which presents the listing in the more common format: '/sw/bin/ls -lh /'.
Originally posted by Telomar
Actually when the SI prefixes were first used incorrectly for computers it was well known they were wrong just nobody had any better options so that's what got used. . .
That is what my impression has been, that computer folks began using these prefixes in a binary sense because it made things easier for them. Thanks for this confirmation. Until this discussion, however, I did not know there is now a new set of prefixes for 1024 multipliers. Evidently using these SI prefixes as 1024 multipliers troubled the standards committee, as it appears to trouble several of you in this discussion. But why?
It appears people simply ignore the standard. I believe they do not need nor want yet another set of prefixes, since the present ones can work without ambiguity. And it is not just those who produce operating systems and RAM. It is common street usage of these terms that is accepted by nearly everyone. Rather than come up with a new set of prefixes, the committee should have simply blessed what everyone was doing. Each prefix is another multiple of 1000 except when applied to binary bits or bytes, in which case it is 1024. Even the HS drop outs can, and do, understand this. Drive makers should simply get on board and conform to the common, accepted practice of the rest of the computer industry.
Originally posted by snoopy
That is what my impression has been, that computer folks began using these prefixes in a binary sense because it made things easier for them. Thanks for this confirmation. Until this discussion, however, I did not know there is now a new set of prefixes for 1024 multipliers. Evidently using these SI prefixes as 1024 multipliers troubled the standards committee, as it appears to trouble several of you in this discussion. But why?
It appears people simply ignore the standard. I believe they do not need nor want yet another set of prefixes, since the present ones can work without ambiguity. And it is not just those who produce operating systems and RAM. It is common street usage of these terms that is accepted by nearly everyone. Rather than come up with a new set of prefixes, the committee should have simply blessed what everyone was doing. Each prefix is another multiple of 1000 except when applied to binary bits or bytes, in which case it is 1024. Even the HS drop outs can, and do, understand this. Drive makers should simply get on board and conform to the common, accepted practice of the rest of the computer industry.
well, you see, it is ambiguous, as shown by hdd makers. The intent of the standards was to make the prefixes fixed; K=1000, M=1 million, etc. Commonality doesn't change the fact that it would fvck with the standard.
besides, i don't think the average, retarded computer user knows that 1MB != 1million bytes. i dont think they even know that MB means megabyte. even more advanced computer users don't know about this stupid conversion. everyone learns in school about the si notation. when we see those prefixes we think of the si amounts associated with them.
Originally posted by applenut
I wonder how many of your stances would shift if Apple were not part of this lawsuit
Apple is more guilty than any of the HDD manufacturers since they are in fact using the the symbols incorrectly.
Originally posted by thuh Freak
well, you see, it is ambiguous, as shown by hdd makers. The intent of the standards was to make the prefixes fixed . . .
The standards people had a chance to fix the ambiguity once and for all, but instead they chose a route that will cause it to drag on for a long time. If these common prefixes had been approved to mean a multiplier of 1024 when used with binary bits and bytes, that would have ended it. Drive makers would have converted how they label their products. Now however, with addition of new prefixes for binary applications, they may never change. Why should they? The drive makers can claim to be the only ones who are correct. Everybody else is wrong. I wish I could do than at times.
So, will the rest of the computer world change? First, it is very unlikely that the computer industry would ever start using gigabyte to mean 1,000,000,000 bytes and megabyte to mean 1,000.000 bytes. My guess is that they will keep doing what they do now, and claim common usage and customer expectations as their reason. If they do recognize the binary standard it will likely be in a footnote. Yet, even if the industry switched and began using new binary prefixes, as unlikely as that may be, the ambiguity would still be there. People will simply equate the new 1 GiB memory module with the old 1 GB module, because they are exactly the same. Unfortunately drive makers will still be using GB to mean one billion bytes, and so nothing is accomplished. Drive capacity will be advertised differently than computer memory capacity, and people will still need that explained to them. That's progress?
By making two approved ways to represent large memory or disk storage, the standards committee has ensured that confusion will reign almost forever.