>>>>> "Jan" == Jan Engelhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Jan> For "F"s sake, when you gotta use abbreviations, then just use Jan> k=1000 and K=1024 already, b for bits and B for bytes. Problem Jan> gone. The one-letter abbreviations are identical to SI prefixes, except for "K", which is used interchangeably with "k" (in SI, "K" stands for the kelvin, and only "k" stands for 1,000). [...] BIPM (which maintains SI) expressly prohibits the binary prefix usage, and recommends the use of the IEC prefixes as an alternative (computing units are not included in SI). Some have suggested that "k" be used for 1,000, and "K" for 1,024, but this cannot be extended to the higher order prefixes and has never been widely recognised. -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix So if you continue insisting that "MB" is really 2^20 bytes, you're flouting the SI in at least two ways. I'd expect that from an USAian, not a German. ;-> (To be clear, I *am* a USAian, and I really desperately wish this country were metric...) Some other gems from that article that haven't been covered in this thread: * CD-Rs are generally specified in MiB, but DVD-Rs in GB * CPU clocks are given in decimal (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix#Usage_notes ) It also points out that there are some ongoing lawsuits on exactly this topic, completely analogous to the CRT diagonal cases. >>>>> "Alan" == Alan Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: Alan> K is Kelvin, k is kilo- One nice thing about IEC 60027-2 is that it seems to have fixed the capitalization inconsistency; kibi- really is "Ki". (I never cared for the lower-case "k" for "kilo-"; there are other clashes of symbols in the SI system proper; think "milli-" and "meter".) The standard also specifically states that "B", when used with the binary prefixes, is "byte" not "Bel". Which is nice. t. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/