Return-Path: <linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org>
Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand
	id <S276424AbRLULCb>; Fri, 21 Dec 2001 06:02:31 -0500
Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org
	id <S277294AbRLULCV>; Fri, 21 Dec 2001 06:02:21 -0500
Received: from euston.inpharmatica.co.uk ([195.102.24.12]:33957 "EHLO
	sunsvr03.inpharmatica.co.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP
	id <S276424AbRLULCR>; Fri, 21 Dec 2001 06:02:17 -0500
Message-ID: <3C2315D6.40105@purplet.demon.co.uk>
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 10:58:30 +0000
From: Mike Jagdis <jaggy@purplet.demon.co.uk>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.4) Gecko/20011019 Netscape6/6.2
X-Accept-Language: en, fr, de
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Mike Eldridge <diz@cafes.net>
CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Changing KB, MB, and GB to KiB, MiB, and GiB in Configure.help.
In-Reply-To: <20011220203223.GO7414@vega.digitel2002.hu> <Pine.LNX.3.95.1011220155155.8609A-100000@chaos.analogic.com> <20011220211422.GS7414@vega.digitel2002.hu> <20011220164948.M23621@mail.cafes.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org

Mike Eldridge wrote:

> i have seen kB instead of KB in many places.  and the only place i've
> ever seen kilo abbreviated as K has been with respect to binary.
> 
>>[however I've never seen 'Kg' instead of 'kg', but 'mB' or 'mb' are ugly
>>when compared with 'Mb' and 'MB', not counting that 'b' is bit and 'B' is
>>byte ... well ... it's confusing sometimes ...]
>>
> 
> i was going to comment about simply using lowercase equivalents, but
> then milli already has 'm', although the concept of a millibyte (or even
> millibit) is absurd.

Why? For instance a millibyte/s might be a hearbeat across a LAN every
hour or so or it might be a control traffic requirement for a deep space
probe. You might not have an immediate use for the term but it has a
specific meaning - and certainly isn't "absurd" (see definition on
http://www.dict.org).

Engineers not (yet) being familiar with the relatively new SI (and IEEE)
binary prefixes is just about acceptable. "Engineers" that misuse k/K
and (worse!) m/M should be in a different field entirely. The SI system
is generally taught as basic science to pre-teenagers. There is no
excuse!

				Mike

P.S. Merry Christmas / Mid winter festival / whatever you choose
to celebrate :-)

-
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/