GiB vs. GB

[Peter Penz]

On Saturday, 3. November 2007 01:32, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Friday 02 November 2007, Jerome Yuzyk wrote:
> > Well, in the kilobyte and megabyte days I would have agreed, but now that
> > we're into giga and now tera, doesn't the difference increase (1000^n vs
>
> 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).
>
> interestingly, wikipedia says[1]:
>
> "However, since there are no other uses for the term 'Gigabyte' apart from
> refering to memory, file sizes, storage capacity, amounts of network
> traffic, the standards bodies' recommendations are frequently ignored
> amongst computer professionals, and 'Gigabyte' is used by them as if it
> were 1024³ bytes."
>
> we can measure using the binary definition (GiB) but i'd really prefer to
> see use the *commonly* understood unit abbreviation of GB(KB/MB/TB/etc)
>
> [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigabyte

I think I woke up a sleeping dog with my question, this has already been 
discussed since 2003 at https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=57240

Even if I'd write a patch for making this configurable, the whole discussion 
will start again which of the 2 options will be default -> whoever writes a 
patch for this, needs asbestos undies... Is there any brave volunteer out 
there?

;-)

Peter