When a user refers to "gigs" it can be also talking about the monthly data cap volume in the cell phone or mobile subscription.
A user is mainly not aware of what can be done with the "gigs". You understand what you get when you get minutes of phone calls or a certain number of SMS, but "gigs" are consumed in a way the user mostly does not understand. Sometimes it is translated to a volume of WhatsApp messages, pictures, videos (in a certain resolution, DVD quality, for example), so people understand a bit what they are paying for. Language is ambiguous. Data rate in bit/s is referred as communication channel capacity by Shannon, not to speed, but speed in km/h is an analogy for information "running" in bit/s that people maybe understand better. Then, there is the people that ask you how much a file "weights" to refer to the amount of bytes it has, as if information has a kind of inertial mass. There is the technical language and then the non-technical people language. Two worlds apart, sometimes. Regards, David > Date: Wed, 4 Jan 2023 19:11:28 -0800 > From: "Dick Roy" <[email protected]> > To: "'Dave Collier-Brown'" <[email protected]> > Cc: <[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [Starlink] [Rpm] the grinch meets cloudflare's christmas > present > Message-ID: <15EBCC5BF2474AAB82C050259229B5FB@SRA6> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > > > > > _____ > > From: Starlink [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of > Dave Collier-Brown via Starlink > Sent: Wednesday, January 4, 2023 6:48 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Starlink] [Rpm] the grinch meets cloudflare's christmas > present > > > > I think using "speed" for "the inverse of delay" is pretty normal English, > if technically erroneous when speaking nerd or physicist. > > [RR] I’ve not heard of that usage before. The units aren’t commensurate > either. > > Using it for volume? Arguably more like fraudulent... > > [RR] I don’t think that was Bob’s intent. I think “load volume” was meant > to be a metaphor for “number of bits/bytes” being transported (“by the > semi”). > > That said, aren’t users these days educated on “gigs” which they intuitively > understand to be Gigabits per second (or Gbps)? Oddly enough, that is an > expression of “data/information/communication rate” in the appropriate units > with the nominal technically correct meaning. > > RR > > --dave > _______________________________________________ Starlink mailing list [email protected] https://lists.bufferbloat.net/listinfo/starlink
