SEO

On Sat, Apr 16, 2005 at 02:00:18AM +0000, Thorsten Glaser wrote:
| Tobias Weingartner dixit:
|
| >Why do we have to introduce Ki-
| >whatever?
|
| SI and IEC 60027-2 say:
|
| k = 1000
| M = 1000000
| m = 1/1000
|
| K may so be 1024, but M may not, because M must be 1000000,
| always. SI prefices are the same among all units.

Bullshit.

There's a difference between theory and practice. In theory k = 1000,
M = 1000000 and G = 1000000000. In practice it very much depends on
what you are talking about. A gigabyte of RAM is often 1073741824
bytes. A gigabyte of diskspace is quite often 1000000000 bytes. The
megabyte is probably the worst in this respect, as there's the 1000000
variant (which used to be upheld by diskmanufacturers before >GB disks
became prevalent), the 1048576 one (still used for e.g. filesize or
memory size) and the 1024000 abomination (for 3.5" floppies, 1.44MB).

It's usually easy to determine what is meant from the context,
especially if you're in the IT business for a while. Trying to enforce
SI standards where business practice has long since overruled them is
a futile attempt in what the Dutch sometimes call 'mierenneuken'. Stop
waisting time and just accept that it's not all black and white.
You'll survive.

Cheers,

Paul 'WEiRD' de Weerd

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