I try not to delve too deeply into this. I enjoy using computers too much!
Just accept that there's two different ways to measure hard drive capacities,
along with other computer-related numbers. If you buy a 160Gb HD, you'll know
that it'll format closer to 158.3 or something. This makes life much easier. :)
-Elliott Price
Mac Computer Repair - Santa Barbara
Graphic Design - Artwork Setup
Websites - Low Cost Custom Websites
On Dec 7, 2009, at 12:27 PM, Dan wrote:
> At 1:52 PM -0700 12/3/2009, Doug McNutt wrote:
>> At 10:24 -0500 12/3/09, Britt Dodd wrote:
>>> I think its more of a 'dumbing down' for the general public.
>>> Personally, I prefer the 1024 nomenclature to be called megabyte
>>> (or gigabyte, etc) rather than mebibytes, etc...
>
> How does one undo Jobs' damage; switch OS X back to using real math?
>
>> The problem is that we scientists, as opposed to "computer
>> scientists", have serious difficulty figuring out which usage is in
>> vogue when the context is not clear.
>
> There are only 10 types of people in the world - those who understand
> binary and those who don't.
>
>> Even within the programmer's world mega means 10^6 when applied to a
>> frequency or bit rate but 2^20 when applied to memory. What does it
>> mean when calling out how many memory references per second a bus
>> can handle?
>
> Isn't it interesting that engineers and scientists can do more than
> just count on their fingers! I was taught *in grade school* to
> always use the units *and* base appropriate for the task at hand.
> Period. When you throw in marketing BS, you end up with satellites
> falling out of orbit because of metric vs engrish issues.
>
> And worse - this means that the Mac to my left is giving different
> size numbers than the Mac to my right. The result: That new Mac is
> banned from all laboratory work. Way to go Apple.
>
>> Do computer types call a bit a decibyte because [snip]
>
> Love what you wrote here but now my brain hurts.
>
> Should I mention that I like to measure time in microfortnights?
>
>
> At 4:28 PM -0500 12/3/2009, J. Alexander Jacocks wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 4:24 PM, Scott Holder wrote:
>>>> Which is why all storage should be declared in bytes.
>>>
>>> But how many bits is it? The 8-bits-to-a-byte thing isn't really an
>>> established standard, it's just been used so long as to be assumed
>>> [snip] Some stuff used 4 and 6 bit bytes in the early days, IIRC.
>>
>> Anyone know of an extant computer that uses non-8-bit bytes? I
>> certainly can't think of one newer than the 1970s.
>
> Sure. My old PDP-8 used a 12-bit word, 3 bit bytes (read in octal),
> and used 6-bit characters. DECsystem-10 (PDP-10) used 36-bit words,
> 6-bit bytes. DECsystem-20 was a KL-10 processor (36-bit) with a
> PDP-11 (32-bit) front-end.
>
> Then there are the modern bit-slice processors, with variable length
> bytes and words... Who needs 64-bit processors when you can use a
> 4096-bit one. Note that's 4096 not 4000!
>
> Nap time.
> - Dan.
> --
> - Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth.
>
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