Does Leopard handle computer units correctly?

If it had changed, you would have heard about it by now, so although I haven't used Leopard yet, it's powers of 2 as always.

I seriously doubt this will change any time soon--is there ANY OS currently in use that uses base-10?

 

Okay, here is the problem...

Leopard just as all computers keep track of their units following standards.
That is a 1024 Byte Kilobyte, 1024 Kilobyte Megabyte and so on.

The drive manufacturers use creative marketing math to make it seem like you are getting more.

They do this by saying that 1000 bytes equals 1 kilobyte.

The problem is that this is in no way accurate according to those nasty standards organizations who came up with the measurements.

Blame your USB Thumbdrive and Harddrive Manufacturers.

 

Correct, Hard drives can be any size they feel like, however FILESYSTEMS, those things that let you use those hard drives do have those pesky binary limitations. That is based off of 8 bits per byte. 1024 bytes per kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes per megabyte, and so on.

Filesystems and all other kinds of DataIO systems are 100% dependent on the International Standards Organization's definition of a Bit, Byte, Kilobyte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte and so on.

 

Those "standards" (1000) were created for people who can't do the 1024 conversions. I totally 100% refuse to use MiB or anything else silly like that.

 

Nothing except one of those "standards" things.
Add to that one of those "Interoperability" things, you know, so that you can actually read things that were created on other computers.

Or, god forbid one of those "backwards compatibility" things, that actually lets you access your OLD data?

Sorry, but your own personal preference is not going to win out here.

I understand that "it just doesn't make sense for you", however it is the way that the technology itself that everything sits on top of is designed.

If you want to invent your very own Base-10 processors and then your very own Base-10 memory, interface controllers, circuits and pretty much everything else... be my guest.

Adding an additional interpretation wrapper onto a calculation lowers overall efficiency of the function.

So, a simple counter like, "What is the size of a file" that would normally take one cycle to complete all of the sudden takes 3, possibly 4 depending on how efficiently you can write it.

The reason being that it needs to perform the calculation, then read the answer back into a buffer, run your conversion on it, and then write it back into your buffer.

It sucks, I know. I think that you would have better luck trying to convince the rest of the world to come up with a completely new name for computer measurements so that it does not conflict with your limited ability to comprehend variable base mathematics.

Just pick up a programming book there is any doubt in your mind that I am not 100% accurate.

 

As discussed ad nauseum above...

Every hard drive manufacturer consistently uses powers of ten.

Every operating system I have ever encountered consistently uses powers of two.

I'm not saying this will ever change. But if Leopard were to go and start using powers of ten, it would just frack everything up. No good would come of it. Right now, everyone understands what everyone else means except for newbies.

 

Duplicate post.

 

Okay, let's back up for one moment...

All computer measurements are based off of the measurements provided by the International Standards Organization.

It is one of those English Language Screw-ups that says that Kilobyte means 1000 instead of 1024.

It sucks, but suck it up. You just have to memorize it.

Your professor does not know what he is talking about, because he does not realize that in math, variable bases causes changes to what an equation means.

OSes handle this PERFECTLY CORRECT because they FOLLOW STANDARDS.
Your professor does not handle this PERFECTLY CORRECT because he does NOT FOLLOW STANDARDS.

Hard drive manufacturers choose to use the math that makes them look most favorable, just as all other corporations use. This is no different than accounting fraud.

They are choosing to ignore the standards that apply to their field and are instead doing whatever they feel like.

 

Wait... if they follow standards, then why do we have the Binary prefixes (mebi, kibi...)? And which part of the SI Prefix standard states where are those prefixes valid? Because I'm very sure, the standard hold for all branches of science.

 

Regardless of what the standards body in its ivory tower may say, for us in the real world, "kilobyte" means kibibyte. Fullstop.

In designing its software had a choice, in that it could

A) Be technically correct, or
B) Do what virtually all of its customers expect

It chose B.

Looks like Snow Leopard will cause all sorts of confusion.

 

Yes, in Snow Leopard, if your hard drive say 500Gb, you literally get 500Gb.

it uses 10 base conversion so 1Kb = 1000bytes, so if you have 500 billions bytes, you have 500 Gb.

 

oops wrong thread