[mythtv-users] seagate giving refunds out

[Steve Hodge]

On 11/3/07, Nick Morrott <knowledgejunkie at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 03/11/2007, Steve Hodge <stevehodge at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > If Joe Public don't know the difference they would surely assume that
> "giga" and "mega"
> > would have the standard (decimal) meanings, would they not?
>
> Ask Joe Public what the giga- prefix means. Carry on until you find
> someone who can answer. Ask Joe Public if they think all computer
> products should measure storage capacity in the same way. Carry on
> until you find someone who says no.


Giga and mega a pretty widely understood. And consistency is certainly
desirable. But it's not the harddisk manufacturers who are being
inconsistent.


> Computers use base 2. Hard drive manufacturers used to use base 2, but
> now use base 10. I'm probably missing the point entirely ( the thread
> on /. at http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/01/231250
> echoes my points though),


An appeal to Slashdot is hardly convincing I'm afraid :-)

Suppose I have 8GB of RAM in my computer, and want to hibernate using
> an available 8GB drive - can I do it? Why not?


Because an "8 GB" RAM stick (or combo of sticks) does not hold 8GB. It holds
8GiB or 8.6 GB. The RAM manufacturer has inaccurately stated the size.
And you can 't hibernate that amount of RAM to an 8GB drive whether drive
manufacturers use GB or GiB because there is filesystem overhead to be taken
into account.

> > I think it's reasonable that Joe Public should be able to compare
> > > apples with apples, and not have to worry about GiBs. I understand the
> > > difference. I doubt my grandad does.
> >
> > GHz, Km. Your granddad would most likely expect 500GB to mean 500
> billion
> > bytes. The only people who have a complaint here are people who are
> already
>
> I fail to see the connection between your two fundamentally different
> units of measurement which are always base 10, and the topic of this
> thread, which is using 2 different methods of quantitative measurement
> (using base 2 and base 10) to represent the same fundamental quantity.


500GB is not a base 2 number, however you define "giga-". It's a base 10
number. No product I've ever seen has ever quoted anything in base 2. What's
your point?

My point is that giga-, mega-, kilo-, etc, have well know standard meanings.
I don't see how you can dispute that. If you want to argue that it's
bad/wrong/illegal for computer vendors to misuse those terms, fine. But it's
not the drive manufacturers who are abusing the terminology.

IANAL, I don't live in the land of the class action, and can only
> admire its comedic legal system from afar, but I was under the
> (obviously false) impression that a case still needed a valid reason
> to go forward, where merit is in the hands of the judiciary, not the
> plaintiff.


The fact that a lawsuit has proceeded or even come to a particular
conclusion is hardly proof that the right decision was made. In this case
Seagate have settled so we can draw no conclusions as to their legal guilt
or innocence.

I'm sure my Octogenarian granddad would just like to be able to buy a
> hard drive and have its reported capacity in the OS agree with the
> label on the disk. I'm guessing there's a fair bunch of other users
> (geek and non-geek) who would agree.


I don't disagree, but again, the drive manufacturer has used the appropriate
terminology correctly. Besides, the OS available capacity is never going to
match what's on the drive. Even before you format and lose a bunch of space
to the file system you've lost the some space to partition tables.

Cheers,
Steve
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