Weekly Classic Computer Trivia Question (20141205)

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2014-12-06 04:13, Mouse wrote:
>>> Assuming that 1 terabyte is 2 ** 40 bytes [...]
>> It's not, it's 10**12.
>
> You don't get to tell us how we use language any more than anyone else
> does.  Lots of words and phrases have technical meanings in hackish
> English different from the meanings the same words carry in mainstream
> English; this is just one more example.  (For that matter, if you buy a
> "4G" stick of RAM, would you be perfectly happy to get one containing
> no more than 4,000,000,000 bytes?  You make it sound as though you
> would - but I find that doubtful.)

While you have a half point, Mouse, the fact is that for disk 
capacities, the standard is actually to use K to mean 10^3 and not 2^10, 
so Fred is absolutely right.

> Or, of course, you can continue to insist on misunderstanding
> long-established uses.

See above. In this case, that is the long-established rule.

(The reason have been suggested in the past that disk manufacturers 
started this odd practice (odd for computers that is) a long time ago 
since it allowed them to write higher numbers, which looked better for 
marketing purposes...)

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol