On 3/16/2010 8:29 PM, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
On 3/16/2010 17:45, Erik Trimble wrote:
David Dyer-Bennet wrote:
On Tue, March 16, 2010 14:59, Erik Trimble wrote:
Has there been a consideration by anyone to do a class-action lawsuit
for false advertising on this? I know they now have to include the
"1GB
= 1,000,000,000 bytes" thing in their specs and somewhere on the box,
but just because I say "1 L = 0.9 metric liters" somewhere on the box,
it shouldn't mean that I should be able to avertise in huge letters
"2 L
bottle of Coke" on the outside of the package...
I think "giga" is formally defined as a prefix meaning 10^9; that
is, the
definition the disk manufacturers are using is the standard metric
one and
very probably the one most people expect. There are international
standards for these things.
I'm well aware of the history of power-of-two block and disk sizes in
computers (the first computers I worked with pre-dated that period);
but I
think we need to recognize that this is our own weird local usage of
terminology, and that we can't expect the rest of the world to
change to
our way of doing things.
That's RetConn-ing. The only reason the stupid GiB / GB thing came
around in the past couple of years is that the disk drive
manufacturers pushed SI to do it.
Up until 5 years ago (or so), GigaByte meant a power of 2 to
EVERYONE, not just us techies. I would hardly call 40+ years of
using the various giga/mega/kilo prefixes as a power of 2 in
computer science as non-authoritative. In fact, I would argue that
the HD manufacturers don't have a leg to stand on - it's not like
they were "outside" the field and used to the "standard" SI notation
of powers of 10. Nope. They're inside the industry, used the
powers-of-2 for decades, then suddenly decided to "modify" that
meaning, as it served their marketing purposes.
The SI meaning was first proposed in the 1920s, so far as I can tell.
Our entire history of special usage took place while the SI definition
was in place. We simply mis-used it. There was at the time no prefix
for what we actually wanted (not giga then, but mega), so we borrowed
and repurposed mega.
Doesn't matter whether the "original" meaning of K/M/G was a
power-of-10. What matters is internal usage in the industry. And that
has been consistent with powers-of-2 for 40+ years. There has been NO
outside understanding that GB = 1 billion bytes until the Storage
Industry decided it wanted it that way. That's pretty much the
definition of distorted advertising.
The issue here is getting what you paid for. Changing the meaning of a
well-understood term to be something that NO ONE else has used in that
context is pretty much the definition of false advertising.
Put it another way: for all those folks in the UK, how would you like
to buy a Hundredweight (cwt) of something, but only get 100 lbs actually
delivered? The UK (Imperial) cwt = 112 lbs, while the US cwt = 100
lbs. Having some fine print on the package that said cwt=100lbs isn't
going to fly with the British Advertising Board. So why should we allow
the fine print of 1
GB = 1 billion bytes? It's the same redefinition of a common term to
confuse and distort.
I know what you mean about the disk manufacturers changing. And I'm
sure they did it because it made their disks sound bigger for free,
and that's clearly a marketing choice, and yes, it creates the problem
that when the software reports the size it often doesn't agree with
the manufacturer size. I just can't get up a good head of steam about
this when they're using the prefix correctly and we're not, though.
Problem is, they're NOT using it correctly. Language is domain-specific
- that is, terms have context. A word can mean completely different
things in different contexts, and it's not correct to say X = true
meaning for a given word. In this case, historical usage PLUS /actual/
implementation usage indicates that K/M/G/T are powers of 2. In our
context of computing, they've meant powers-of-2. It's also disingenuous
for them to argue that "consumers" (i.e. non-technical people) didn't
understand the usage of powers-of-2. To effectively argue that, they've
have to have made the switch around the time that mass-consumer
usage/retailing of computing was happening, which was (at best) 1990.
Oops. 15 years later it isn't rational to argue that consumers don't
understand the "technical" usage of the term.
Bottom line is that it's a advertising scam. Promising one thing, and
delivering another. That's what the truth-in-advertising laws are for.
--
Erik Trimble
Java System Support
Mailstop: usca22-123
Phone: x17195
Santa Clara, CA
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