Re: Re: Disk drives are accurately sold...
Words don't mean what some guy in an ivory tower says they mean. They mean what the consensus agrees that they mean. So in this case, in practical terms, the world is right and the SI is wrong.
If you want to refer to 2^30 bytes by a word that is meaningless to the vast majority of humanity and that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like baby-talk, then be my guest. When you do, though, be prepared to launch into your explanation of how everybody else uses the term incorrectly because some French dude says so. And be prepared to be scoffed at in return.
Never forget: the purpose of language is to communicate. When you deliberately choose to use a vocabulary that is different from, and semantically incompatible with, the vocabulary of the person or people you're trying to communicate with, you're not communicating. You're actively hindering communication.
Sorry, but I have to take issue with this one. As has already been mentioned elsewhere on this board, the prefixes refer either to powers of two or powers of ten depending on the context. (I'm not talking about what the SI says they mean. I'm talking about how they're actually used in practice.) The fact that some random, unelected somebody came along, for reasons unknown, and decided to arbitrarily decide that giga, which previously meant either 10^9 or 2^30 depending on context, should mean only 10^9, and that using giga to mean 2^30 should suddenly be wrong, is irrelevant. What matters is how the terms are actually used in the real world, for that's from whence they derive their meanings.
Words don't mean what some guy in an ivory tower says they mean. They mean what the consensus agrees that they mean. So in this case, in practical terms, the world is right and the SI is wrong.
If you want to refer to 2^30 bytes by a word that is meaningless to the vast majority of humanity and that, when pronounced correctly, sounds like baby-talk, then be my guest. When you do, though, be prepared to launch into your explanation of how everybody else uses the term incorrectly because some French dude says so. And be prepared to be scoffed at in return.
Never forget: the purpose of language is to communicate. When you deliberately choose to use a vocabulary that is different from, and semantically incompatible with, the vocabulary of the person or people you're trying to communicate with, you're not communicating. You're actively hindering communication.
