GiB vs. GB

[Charles Samuels]

Times change, terminologies change. Just as one day, a "billion" meant 
a "million million" in many English-speaking countries.

I often hear of people who don't like the SI binary units because they "sound 
stupid" which is not only very subjective, but also something that's easily 
cured by "getting used to it" - and you will.

Changes, even those that are to the better, won't happen overnight, but 
they'll happen eventually. Let's be better now. You don't like it now, that's 
ok, people don't like change, but you'll get used to it.

Anyway, I thought KDE was here to change the world.

Michael Pyne wrote, on Friday 2007 November 02:
> I agree (and to be clear, I'd prefer the standard abbreviations of
> GB/KB/MB/etc., taken to mean the appropriate power of 1024).  The whole
> GiB, MiB etc. mess came about because hard disk manufacturers decided to
> start misrepresenting what MB meant on their boxes.

No, the mess started because someone realized that 2^10 is pretty similar to 
10^3, so they thought it'd be ok to co-opt a unit used because Napoleon 
thought it was cool.

>
> Plus if we start using MiB/GiB etc. that means we must use it everywhere
> because then GB/MB means the power of 10 version, which is so confusing as
> to be ludicrous.  Imagine the tech support requests.  "How much free memory
> do you have?" "It says 11.2 MB" "Is that decimal MB or binary MB?"  "HUH?"

When that time comes, people will say "11.2 MiB". Maybe even hard-disk 
manufacturers will be pressured to start using logical units (GiB... well, 
TiB by the time it actually happens) as a result. Or maybe it'll take so long 
that we'll be talking about qubits by then.

Aaron J. Seigo wrote, on Friday 2007 November 02:
> the point is that regardless of whether we are measuring using 1000^n or
> 2^N (1024^N if you prefer), using the term GiB in the UI is simply not
> useful. those of us who know the difference understand, and those who don't
> have little idea what a "GiB" is. so by putting GiB there instead of GB,
> regardless of how we actually measure it, we only do a disservice to the
> less technical (the overwhelming majority of people).

How is telling people the size of a file a disservice? People who see GiB will 
think of it as "something like a GB" - and they'd be right, 1073741824 is 
pretty close to an SI GB (1000000000). Most people don't even know the 
difference between a "GB" and an "MB". All they know is that their hard disk 
stores so many MP3s, and that their disk is 60% full.

Have a nice day,

Charles
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