From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 42E7C1387FD for ; Sun, 30 Mar 2014 16:27:38 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 6E35CE0B15; Sun, 30 Mar 2014 16:27:36 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-vc0-f172.google.com (mail-vc0-f172.google.com [209.85.220.172]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id C9456E0B14 for ; Sun, 30 Mar 2014 16:27:35 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-vc0-f172.google.com with SMTP id la4so7672838vcb.3 for ; Sun, 30 Mar 2014 09:27:34 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:sender:in-reply-to:references:date:message-id:subject :from:to:content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=fRjH8Z0VClwEK/q1NMpK7Usuv+TQQFPR/GObdWcgOSY=; b=nb12vIM/pf7qZZp29ML10p0Y5G4gLdUArZd0GfdD8+/aO1Xzu4zUk3kdc08SdTqS8Z tGIZaJLnWp/oscLGZlb5UgF5hQoE8aE4/PvgjQiWDWeG32Q1etwsuy8ockgDXC80GwT3 GJxXGLFp+dLpJLZLIv/te7Vobr5O2JIKRsIs3UNzXQROXgJO78AxAJkRyhP1/zyA87PW rzmAk87pWC8SciRmp2MRpJQdtwyhvfRon18n+4npbpZG3GsJcg3+Bry0j8syO/6+vR6r yIrQWLGLLsAmy/gQAgwgXXGLDYs6+8EPmICQiQ4rffNnkmsplx7JUfUv2nGx36lTE7ER qBgA== Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Project discussion list X-BeenThere: gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org Reply-To: gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Received: by 10.221.27.8 with SMTP id ro8mr14490vcb.30.1396196854927; Sun, 30 Mar 2014 09:27:34 -0700 (PDT) Sender: freemanrich@gmail.com Received: by 10.52.29.142 with HTTP; Sun, 30 Mar 2014 09:27:34 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <20140330163513.3e4cab1a@googlemail.com> References: <53342A5F.70903@gentoo.org> <20140330103342.76108bfb@pomiot.lan> <20140330163513.3e4cab1a@googlemail.com> Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 12:27:34 -0400 X-Google-Sender-Auth: Ol235x4-__R2oeMY6y1dOKdmZfY Message-ID: Subject: Re: [gentoo-project] Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2014-04-08 From: Rich Freeman To: gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-7 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Archives-Salt: 971f01ff-cc07-403d-b1ef-682a6378211a X-Archives-Hash: b421a42ae213d3ecd9fa33d08f27c3f9 On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 11:35 AM, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: > On Sun, 30 Mar 2014 05:23:08 -0400 > Rich Freeman wrote: >> To think that counting is the one situation where it is actually >> possible to have perfect precision, and we still manage to mess up the >> units... > > Because the difference between 1000 and 1024 in this context is > completely irrelevant. This is the ultimate bikeshed, and ISO/IEC is a > rather unpleasant shade of mauve. The whole point of SI is that it works beautifully when you start mixing units. Storage density could be expressed in GB/mm^2 or GiB/mm^2. The former is FAR more useful. 1 GB/mm^2 =3D 1PB/m^2 =3D 1 kB/=ECm^2. 1 GiB/mm^2 ~=3D 0.95 PiB/m^2 ~=3D 1.05 KiB/=ECm^2 And heaven forbid you just use GB to mean 2^30 bytes - lots of opportunity for error. However, even with unambiguous units the fact that different elements of the compound units end up converting with different bases makes the math not work out cleanly. As long as you stay trapped in your nicely-discrete world of the computer unit complexity doesn't matter so much as long as you stay consistent (which isn't made easy by the fact that there are warring factions over the definition of the kB). As soon as you start getting into anything that involves the real world and engineering you can't avoid the units used to measure things in the real world. If you don't care about the math coming out cleanly then we might as well go back to using short tons, inches, and torrs. Rich