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

[Rich Freeman <rich0@gentoo.org>]

On Sun, Mar 30, 2014 at 4:33 AM, Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> wrote:
>
> 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

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...

I'm a bit torn on this.  I'm an American, so I am supposed to do
something ambiguous and arbitrary (can we count bytes in baker's
dozens?).  I'm also a Chemist, and never met an SI unit I didn't like.

We do need to keep in mind that the laws of physics dictate that
boolean states can only be combined in groups of 8.  That's a shame,
because kibibits just rolls off the tongue and helps promote healthy
fur.

Now I need to get back to sleep because I have a 97.7 kibimeter drive
tomorrow...

Rich