Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Fri, 21 Dec 2001 20:53:00 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Fri, 21 Dec 2001 20:52:51 -0500 Received: from svr3.applink.net ([206.50.88.3]:63761 "EHLO svr3.applink.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Fri, 21 Dec 2001 20:52:36 -0500 Message-Id: <200112220152.fBM1qJSr022347@svr3.applink.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII From: Timothy Covell Reply-To: timothy.covell@ashavan.org To: "Per Jessen" , "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 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.3.2] In-Reply-To: <3C234CC100020E25@mta13n.bluewin.ch> (added by postmaster@bluewin.ch) In-Reply-To: <3C234CC100020E25@mta13n.bluewin.ch> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@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." > > > - > 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/ -- timothy.covell@ashavan.org. - 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/