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

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 7:05 PM, Joshua Kinard <kumba@gentoo.org> wrote:
> Personally, I say make the metric version the default (new prefixes), and
> leave the choice available to switch to the SI (old prefix) form with a
> simple variable switch in a config file some where.

The metric system IS the SI system.  The new prefixes are not yet SI
standards, but they are ISO standards.  However, the new prefixes
pertain to the old way of doing things.

That is...

System 1 (generally used by programmers in the 60s-90s, but less
universally as time moved on, not compatible with SI):
1 kB = 1024 bytes, report everything in kB

System 2 (aligned with SI and the metric system - used sporadically
until heavily adopted by storage manufacturers for marketing reasons)
1 kB = 1000 bytes, report everything in kB

System 3 (the new ISO standard, compatible with SI but adds to it)
1kB = 1000 bytes
1 KiB = 1024 bytes
report things in whatever units you feel like

The main advantage of the ISO standard isn't the use of either base 2
or base 10, but the fact that you can actually distinguish what base
is in use.

Either system 2/3 could be described as metric in nature - the only
one which isn't is System 1.

Rich