Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2014-04-08

[Michał Górny]

Dnia 2014-03-30, o godz. 16:43:20
Patrick Lauer <patrick@g.o> napisał(a):

> On Sunday 30 March 2014 10:33:42 Michał Górny wrote:
> > Dnia 2014-03-27, o godz. 09:40:47
> >
> > "Anthony G. Basile" <blueness@g.o> napisał(a):
> > > The council will be meeing on April 8, 2014 at 1900 UTC.  Please bring
> > > forward any agenda items you would like discussed.
> >
> > Before we get into another revert war from patrick, I'd like to raise
> > the following item:
> >
> > - use of ISO/IEC binary prefixes vs ambiguous 'mega' prefixes
> >
> > Quick explanation:
> >
> > ISO/IEC prefixes [1,2]: KiB (kibibyte), MiB (mebi-), GiB (gibi-)
> >   -- unambiguously 2^10, 2^20, 2^30
> >
> > 'old' prefixes: kB (kilobyte), MB (mega-), GB (giga-)
> >   -- can mean 10^3 or 2^10 etc. depending on author's intention
> >   -- SI people tend to use 10^N for consistency with other units
> >
>
> base-10 bytes make no sense.

Sorry to disappoint you but most people in the world use base 10
as their natural system. Not that they've chosen to, it's just what you
get teached in schools, and then what you meet in shops, government
agencies, random companies and -- guess what -- even most of those
computer programs output in base 10 unconditionally.

Why would base-1024 prefixes make any sense when the numbers are
base 10?

Sorry to say that, but when I see 10-digit number, I'd rather shift
the decimal comma and use base-10 gigabytes. Dividing by power of 1024
don't come easy in base 10, and most of the people don't waste time
using a calculator just to use some fancy base-1024 unit that makes
some sense in internal computer design issues. Though 1024 there is
pretty arbitrary and makes real sense only in some contexts.

-- 
Best regards,
Michał Górny