From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 14 08:00:19 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 90A65106564A for ; Thu, 14 Jun 2012 08:00:19 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Received: from mx01.qsc.de (mx01.qsc.de [213.148.129.14]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 36DCB8FC12 for ; Thu, 14 Jun 2012 08:00:19 +0000 (UTC) Received: from r56.edvax.de (port-92-195-40-10.dynamic.qsc.de [92.195.40.10]) by mx01.qsc.de (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2F2203D30F; Thu, 14 Jun 2012 10:00:18 +0200 (CEST) Received: from r56.edvax.de (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by r56.edvax.de (8.14.5/8.14.5) with SMTP id q5E80HVH002547; Thu, 14 Jun 2012 10:00:17 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from freebsd@edvax.de) Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2012 10:00:17 +0200 From: Polytropon To: Matthew Seaman Message-Id: <20120614100017.f636fc8d.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <4FD9956B.2010501@infracaninophile.co.uk> References: <20120614081107.c0439718.freebsd@edvax.de> <4FD9956B.2010501@infracaninophile.co.uk> Organization: EDVAX X-Mailer: Sylpheed 3.1.1 (GTK+ 2.24.5; i386-portbld-freebsd8.2) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: `ls -l` shows size of file other than of the folder? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: Polytropon List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 14 Jun 2012 08:00:19 -0000 On Thu, 14 Jun 2012 08:40:27 +0100, Matthew Seaman wrote: > On 14/06/2012 07:11, Polytropon wrote: > > Even school taught that in the 80's: When dealing with > > computers, 1 kB != 1000 B, but 1 kB = 1024 B. That is > > considered basic knowledge. > > Schools teach a lot of things that are so glossed over or so > over-simplified as to be basically wrong. They have been known to teach > things that were common knowledge at the time and were later shown to be > simply incorrect[*]. That's why you never can stop learning in IT, and fighting bad habits in all imaginable areas. :-) > > Every IT person should be aware of this. It's common to "abuse" > > the SI units with the (known!) deviant interpretation. > > Really? If I said the bandwidth usage was 10Mb/s would you immediately > understand that was 10,000,000,000 bits per second? Yes, bandwidth is > always denoted in strict SI powers-of-1000 scale modifiers, always has > been, but the corrosive effect of muddling 2^10 vs 10^3 in computing > just leads to confusion and error. In that case, it's simple: The base unit is b (bit), not B (byte), so M = *1000*1000 as the normal SI interpretation. The abuse of M as in *1024*1024 (SI: Mi) only happens to bytes. :-) > > Sometimes, you find hardware vendors "forgetting" the factor > > mismatch 1024 vs. 1000 when they tell you how many GB the new > > shiny hard disk has. :-) > > Oh dear. It is so galling to realise that the sales people were > actually right all along isn't it? Does one's geek credibility no good > at all to realise that we've been out pedanted by some suits... And it becomes even more funny when an "IT aware" advertising manager says: "Hey, there's this cool Gi prefix, why not just say the disk is 800 GiB instead of 800 GB? Then more geeks will buy our products!" :-) (No, I won't try to even mention the fun of usable file system capacity vs. gross disk "hardware-only" capacity.) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...