From owner-freebsd-doc Wed Feb 20 19:44:25 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from bazooka.trit.org (bazooka.trit.org [63.198.170.138]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 17A2437B400 for ; Wed, 20 Feb 2002 19:44:22 -0800 (PST) Received: by bazooka.trit.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id AE58A3E35; Thu, 21 Feb 2002 03:44:21 +0000 (UTC) Received: from bazooka (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by bazooka.trit.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AD08C3C12E; Thu, 21 Feb 2002 03:44:21 +0000 (UTC) From: Dima Dorfman To: Giorgos Keramidas Cc: Michael Wardle , doc@freebsd.org Subject: Re: inconsistent use of data units In-Reply-To: <20020221003116.GA11893@hades.hell.gr>; from keramida@ceid.upatras.gr on "Thu, 21 Feb 2002 02:31:16 +0200" Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2002 03:44:16 +0000 Message-Id: <20020221034421.AE58A3E35@bazooka.trit.org> Sender: owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Giorgos Keramidas wrote: > On 2002-02-21 10:53, Michael Wardle wrote: > > Hi. > > > > There is a standard on how to represent data sizes here: > > http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html > > > > I suggest that the document is updated to consistently use this standard. > > Reading that page, all I have to say is "NO. Good grief, no." > Mebibit ? Kibibit ? Ye gods. I hate to add fuel to the fire, but I think Knuth's proposal on this topic at least deserves mention: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news99.html (scroll down to "What is a kilobyte?"). I think the only down side to this is that it isn't a ratified standard--oh well. I'm not going to fight long and hard (read: at all) for this or any of the other proposals. I'll be content with anything as long as it's used consistently and our rationale for choosing it--regardless of what "it" is, since there's no de facto standard--is documented somewhere. P.S. There was a thread on linux-kernel late last year about this. If you're one who wishes to fight to the death over the issue, please read that thread; the time you save may be your own. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message