A proposal for honest hard drive space disclosure
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 30th Jan 2013 00:38 UTC
Hardware, Embedded Systems Marco Arment: "Everyone should play by the same rules. A proposal: storage capacities referenced or implied in the names or advertisements for personal computers, tablets, and smartphones should not exceed the amount of space available for end-user installation of third-party applications and data, after enough software has been installed to enable all commonly advertised functionality. With today's OSes, iPads could advertise capacities no larger than 12, 28, 60, and 124 GB and the Surface Pros could be named 23 and 83 GB." Wholly agreed. When I buy a box of 100 staples, I expect it to contain ~100 staples - not 50 because the other 50 are holding the box together.
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HappyGod
Member since:
2005-10-19

Hi Brendan,

Congratulations on this years most arrogant and silly post so far. Don't get your hopes up though, the year is young.

Calling people uneducated simply because they dissagree with you makes you sound opinionated. Your reputation doesn't improve when you try to provide an example of why you're right, and only succeed in proving the opposite point.

I asked why anyone would need to know how many bytes there are in a MB/GB/TB.

You gave this silly and contrived example:

Let's try this. If you've got a 2 MB disk and you're downloading data at a rate of 8 KB per second; how long until you run out of space to store received data?

Possible answers include:
a) 2*1024*1024/(8*1024) = 256 seconds
b) 2*1000*1024/(8*1024) = 250 seconds
c) 2*1000*1000/(8*1024) = 244.14 seconds
d) 2*1024*1024/(8*1000) = 262.144 seconds
e) 2*1000*1024/(8*1000) = 256 seconds
f) 2*1000*1000/(8*1000) = 250 seconds


This is beyond laughable. When was the last time you needed to know how many seconds it would be until you ran out of disk space? When or why would anyone need to know this? How would it go: "Geez is it 244.14 seconds until I run out, or is it 250 seconds? I'd better work this out or else ... oh wait."

No. The use of "K = 1024" was always wrong


Why was it always wrong? It never complied with any standard, simply because there wasn't one. That doesn't make it wrong at all.

It did however have a de-facto standard that was in use by 100% of interested parties. That is a standard. It's not codified, but it is a standard.

But yes, some people aren't educated and prefer to remain wrong.


This statement tells a story about you. And it's not pretty.

Reply Parent Score: 3

henderson101 Member since:
2006-05-30

Network speeds are generally quoted in MegaBITS not BYTES and therefore the entire premise he made his comment based on was incorrect. If my Cable modem is providing me a 20Mb connection, that's 20 megabits, not 20 megabytes in old money (or migglebytes or whatever the crappy SI want's us to call it now.) So, 1Mb is 122KB in old money. There you go. I refuse to use the new prefixes based on the fact no one ever discussed it with the greater computer community and fcuked it up for all the software engineers that still deal with real computer hardware, which really does use base 2 and therefore the SI can go fcuk themselves.

Reply Parent Score: 4

HappyGod Member since:
2005-10-19

Amen

Reply Parent Score: 1

Brendan Member since:
2005-11-16

Hi,

Congratulations on this years most arrogant and silly post so far. Don't get your hopes up though, the year is young.


May I assume you're trying to win back the crown?

Calling people uneducated simply because they dissagree with you makes you sound opinionated. Your reputation doesn't improve when you try to provide an example of why you're right, and only succeed in proving the opposite point.


But calling my post arrogant and silly just because it disagrees with you is awesome!

I asked why anyone would need to know how many bytes there are in a MB/GB/TB.


And I made up an example to highlight how things get more confusing once you start mixing different systems.

You gave this silly and contrived example:


And you completely missed the point. I'm still trying to figure out if you've deliberately missed the point, or if you're simply not smart enough to see it.

Why was it always wrong? It never complied with any standard, simply because there wasn't one. That doesn't make it wrong at all.


You can't see the difference between "no standard applies" and "misusing something that is both an established standard and common usage"?

Do you understand that "kilo" comes from the Greek word for "thousand" and was probably in use for centuries before it even became an international standard?

Can you see how this is like taking the word "dozen" and using it to mean "thirteen", then attempting to argue that it's correct to do so?

If your answer to the 3 questions above is "no", then I don't think it's reasonable for you to complain about me calling you uneducated.

- Brendan

Edited 2013-01-30 18:21 UTC

Reply Parent Score: 3

Alfman Member since:
2011-01-28

Brendan,

Most everyone here should know that improper use of units is obviously ambiguous. The inconsistency is appalling when mixing units, but luckily that doesn't happen too often. Binary units crop up like a bad habit..some people can't help it, but as long as manufacturers and venders actually label their products using the correct SI units, I wouldn't make too big a fuss about incorrect usage in conversation.

Reply Parent Score: 3

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HappyGod Member since:
2005-10-19

And I made up an example to highlight how things get more confusing once you start mixing different systems.


Dear, oh dear. There were no different systems before the introduction of the new standard. The whole point of the question you tried to answer was that there was no need for it in the first place. You only proved that it is now confusing, because we have two.

Do you understand that "kilo" comes from the Greek word for "thousand" and was probably in use for centuries before it even became an international standard?

Can you see how this is like taking the word "dozen" and using it to mean "thirteen", then attempting to argue that it's correct to do so?


Yes Brendan, I do. However this kind of thing happens all the time, and is perfectly fine. In fact is specifically happens in the unfortunate example you gave. Maybe look up a "baker's dozen"?

https://www.google.com.au/search?q=bakers+dozen&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq...

Reply Parent Score: 2

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