Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751826AbXAVTYm (ORCPT ); Mon, 22 Jan 2007 14:24:42 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751963AbXAVTYm (ORCPT ); Mon, 22 Jan 2007 14:24:42 -0500 Received: from scrye.com ([216.17.180.1]:54476 "EHLO mail.scrye.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751850AbXAVTYl (ORCPT ); Mon, 22 Jan 2007 14:24:41 -0500 Subject: Re: PROBLEM: KB->KiB, MB -> MiB, ... (IEC 60027-2) From: Tony Foiani Reply-To: Tony Foiani X-Attribution: Tony To: Jan Engelhardt , Alan Cox CC: Eduard Bloch , Bodo Eggert <7eggert@gmx.de>, David Schwartz , Leon Woestenberg , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <7FsPf-51s-9@gated-at.bofh.it> <7FxlV-3sb-1@gated-at.bofh.it> <7FyUF-5XD-21@gated-at.bofh.it> <20070121111000.GA6679@rotes76.wohnheim.uni-kl.de> <20070122155354.GB25916@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> <20070122183619.2db6538e@localhost.localdomain> Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 12:24:40 -0700 In-Reply-To: <20070122183619.2db6538e@localhost.localdomain> (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk's message of "Mon, 22 Jan 2007 18:36:19 +0000") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.1007 (Gnus v5.10.7) XEmacs/21.5-b27 (linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2153 Lines: 57 >>>>> "Jan" == Jan Engelhardt writes: Jan> For "F"s sake, when you gotta use abbreviations, then just use Jan> k=1000 and K=1024 already, b for bits and B for bytes. Problem Jan> gone. The one-letter abbreviations are identical to SI prefixes, except for "K", which is used interchangeably with "k" (in SI, "K" stands for the kelvin, and only "k" stands for 1,000). [...] BIPM (which maintains SI) expressly prohibits the binary prefix usage, and recommends the use of the IEC prefixes as an alternative (computing units are not included in SI). Some have suggested that "k" be used for 1,000, and "K" for 1,024, but this cannot be extended to the higher order prefixes and has never been widely recognised. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix So if you continue insisting that "MB" is really 2^20 bytes, you're flouting the SI in at least two ways. I'd expect that from an USAian, not a German. ;-> (To be clear, I *am* a USAian, and I really desperately wish this country were metric...) Some other gems from that article that haven't been covered in this thread: * CD-Rs are generally specified in MiB, but DVD-Rs in GB * CPU clocks are given in decimal (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#Usage_notes ) It also points out that there are some ongoing lawsuits on exactly this topic, completely analogous to the CRT diagonal cases. >>>>> "Alan" == Alan Cox writes: Alan> K is Kelvin, k is kilo- One nice thing about IEC 60027-2 is that it seems to have fixed the capitalization inconsistency; kibi- really is "Ki". (I never cared for the lower-case "k" for "kilo-"; there are other clashes of symbols in the SI system proper; think "milli-" and "meter".) The standard also specifically states that "B", when used with the binary prefixes, is "byte" not "Bel". Which is nice. t. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/