[mythtv-users] seagate giving refunds out

[Michael T. Dean]

On 12/10/2007 12:28 PM, David Brodbeck wrote:
> On Dec 10, 2007, at 8:13 AM, Michael T. Dean wrote:
>> On 12/10/2007 09:50 AM, Fred Squires wrote:
>>     
>>>> They all are--because there's a difference between GB and GiB,  
>>>> and the
>>>> manufacturers know what it is.  Unfortunately, they're selling to an
>>>> uneducated public.
>>> It seems to me that the manufacturers probably made up the GiB so  
>>> they
>>> could sell 466 GB drives as 500 GB and not technically lie.
>>> When was the GiB made up anyway, I've only seen it over the course of
>>> that last few years.
>>>       
>> If, in fact, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has
>> begun making hard drives, perhaps.
>>
>> http://physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Info/Units/binary.html
> I suspect they came up with that scheme to justify and rationalize  
> the confusion that the marketing drones had already wrought.

I don't understand what confusion you all are talking about.  If every
hard drive manufacturer in the world is using the exact same terminology
to specify the disk drive sizes, there's no opportunity for confusion
when comparing drives.  The only confusion comes in when the OS lies
about the capacity of the drive, making the consumer feel he was cheated.

How many of you have taken your Raisin Bran cereal and extracted all the
raisins to see if they fill up 2 scoops (not even going considering that
"scoop" is a non-standard measure)?  How many of you have unrolled a
roll of plastic wrap/aluminum foil/wax paper/parchment/... to see if it
is in fact the length/width specified on the box?  How many have counted
the number of squares in a roll of toilet tissue?  How many have
measured how far one can drive on a single gallon of gas in a particular
car?  Come on folk, I'm sure there are some other good class actions out
there...  Get busy measuring.  Oh, wait.  In these cases, if there were
found a discrepancy, it would actually be mislabeled--as opposed to the
accurately labeled hard drive capacities.

Since people don't seem to understand the concept of units, it's no
wonder that NASA lost a Martian probe to a units mistake...

The worst part is that every single hard drive covered under the refund
settlement was sold at least 2 years or so /after/ the *international*
standard specifying the meaning of a gigabyte (and a gibibyte) was
finalized.

Since when is the vendor responsible for misinterpretations of fact
caused by the consumer's ignorance?

Mike