Message-Id: <200112220152.fBM1qJSr022347@svr3.applink.net>
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From: Timothy Covell <timothy.covell@ashavan.org>
Reply-To: timothy.covell@ashavan.org
To: "Per Jessen" <per@computer.org>,
        "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Changing KB, MB, and GB to KiB, MiB, and GiB =?iso-8859-1?q?in	Configure=2Ehelp=2E?=
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 19:48:36 -0600
In-Reply-To: <3C234CC100020E25@mta13n.bluewin.ch> (added by     postmaster@bluewin.ch)
In-Reply-To: <3C234CC100020E25@mta13n.bluewin.ch>
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Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org

On Friday 21 December 2001 13:55, Per Jessen wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Dec 2001 11:43:40 -0600, Bob Glamm wrote:
> >On Fri, Dec 21, 2001 at 03:48:22PM +0000, Mike Jagdis wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >> Go look up "SI binary prefix" and "SI prefix" on Google. You might
> >> not _like_ the binary prefixes (I don't either) but they're what's
> >> been standardized and they're unambiguous. It does no good to claim
> >> that it's enough that *you* know what you mean. This isn't Alice in
> >> Wonderland (you can look that reference up in your spare time :-) ).
> >
> >SI standards have been around for years.  Yet many mechanical
> >engineers in the US still use English units.  Convention and
> >economics dictate that they do so; any change in this field is quite
> >slow.
>
> Did the US ever go metric ? Europe (minus the UK of course) did, and rarely
> looked back. AFAIK (please correct me), the US never went metric. Don't
> they still use Fahrenheit and all that weird stuff ?
> Oh, and btw - those non-metric units are not "English units", but "Imperial
> units", if you want to picky :-)
>

No, the US never went metric.  That's why $200M Mars probes crash on
entry due to some idiot using English units as opposed to the NASA standard
of Metrics.  The funny thing is that Thomas Jefferson, an American President,
suggested the Metric system to the French while he was ambassador there.


> >Somehow I expect that the same convention and economics factors will
> >also dominate the argument over prefixes for bits of information
> >in this field for years to come as well.
>
> That I agree with - although I suspect manufacturers increasing will go for
> the IEC standards - I used to work for StorageTek where an argument just
> like this went on about 2 years ago - the IEC side won. Generally the
> hardware people were all for IEC, and the software side less so.
>
>
> rgds,
> Per Jessen, Zurich
>
> regards,
> Per Jessen, Zurich
> http://www.enidan.com - home of the J1 serial console.
>
> Windows 2001: "I'm sorry Dave ...  I'm afraid I can't do that."
>
>
> -
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-- 
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