[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: How to configure konqueror to show KB and MB instead of KiB and
From:       Ian Wadham <ianw2 () optusnet ! com ! au>
Date:       2009-07-09 9:45:46
Message-ID: 200907091945.46141.ianw2 () optusnet ! com ! au
[Download RAW message or body]

On Thu, 9 Jul 2009 3:40:31 pm Michael Pyne wrote:
> On Thursday 09 July 2009 00:53:17 Josh Berry wrote:
> > Except it is NOT a new unit.  It is correcting a mistake that was made
> > decades ago and propagated by lazy software developers.
>
> "decades ago".  I mean, seriously, listen to that.  Right or wrong, the
> definition of these units are backed up by *decades* of actual usage, so
> you're going to have a very hard time convincing a lot of people that their
> values magically changed once some IEC engineers signed a form to issue a
> new standard.
>
Hmmmm ... I weary of all this discussion or "bikeshedding" as someone else 
called it (from one of Parkinson's Laws, "The time spent discussing a subject
is inversely proportional to the cost", as in Parkinson's example: new nuclear
reactor approved in 2 minutes, employee's bike shed [a topic on which everyone
is knowledgeable] takes 2 hours).

But I *do* draw the line at "decades ago" and "lazy software developers".

The use of K came in because computers (for some obscure reason) were
designed by hardware engineers to use binary and to have binary numbers
of resources, chiefly main memory --- or "core" as it was called back then.
This was before there were bytes, except on the IBM 360 series.

In 1966 I worked on a 32K word machine [1] and was paid about $5.5K
per year.  I was under no illusions about what "K" meant in either
case ,,, ;-) ... nor about whether I was paid in Australian, or US or any
other kind of dollars.  If it is necessary to distinguish between dollars,
we write A$, US$, etc..

K was used to mean 1024, because it was a nuisance to keep on saying,
writing and typing 4,096, 8,192, 16,384 or 32,768 ... especially as there were
no word-processors to correct typos.  And in those days, customers were
delighted to discover that, if they were offered a 32K computer, they were
actually getting nearly 33,000 words, characters or whatever.  Only
nowadays has marketing become a meaner pursuit ... :-)

I am with Michael on this, K = 1024 is now hallowed by usage in the
computer industry, right or wrong: just as electric currents flow from
positive to negative, even though we have known since J. J. Thomson
discovered the electron that current is carried by negative electrons
moving from negative to positive; and even though some countries
persist in driving on the right, although horses are mounted on the
left and if you ride on the left, your sword-hand ready to deal with an
approaching highwayman; and even though the Qwerty keyboard is
probably not the best arrangement of keys ...

And please remember that this thread started with a user unhappy
about the columns of "i"s cluttering up the output.  I think I would like
to see the "B"s go, too ... ;-)  Is there any unit of storage other than a
byte nowadays?

Or maybe this whole issue could be made to go away by KDE
simply defining the byte to be 8.192 bits ... :-)

Cheers, Ian W.

[1] A "word" on that 1966 machine was 48 bits or 8 "characters" of
      6 bits each.  Other machines had other word sizes ...

 
>> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to unsubscribe <<
[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]