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Date: Sat, 22 Dec 2001 09:57:11 +1300
From: Chris Wedgwood <cw@f00f.org>
To: Benjamin LaHaise <bcrl@redhat.com>
Cc: "Eric S. Raymond" <esr@thyrsus.com>,
        David Garfield <garfield@irving.iisd.sra.com>,
        Linux Kernel List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Configure.help editorial policy
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On Fri, Dec 21, 2001 at 03:31:36PM -0500, Benjamin LaHaise wrote:

    If you think GB == 1000^3, then please go "correct" all the DRAM
    manufacturers out in the world.  They just sent me 1GB of ram and
    it's coming up as 1073741824 bytes.  Please help!  They have no
    option for GiB!!!

I don't want to get dragged into this silly debate; the point I was
making is that we already have considerable inconsistency and choosing
STANDARDS BASED tokens might not be a bad thing.

The nomenclature in use here is bigger than Linux (yes, believe it or
not such a thing is possible!), and like it or not people should just
get over it.

Standards exist to make peoples lives easier, the fact the hard drive
and memory vendors currently don't use these phrases right now doesn't
make the standard wrong --- this world is full of clue-less marketing
people and nothing will change this.

Accept that KB and GB are *wrong* (this isn't a statement of opinion
but rather of fact [1]) and then choose whether or not Linux
documentation should be wrong or right.



  --cw

[1] IMO anyhow :)
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