[mythtv-users] seagate giving refunds out

Nick Morrott knowledgejunkie at gmail.com
Sat Nov 3 04:14:29 UTC 2007


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.

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), but how can it be unreasonable to have
computer-related storage products use consistent terminology?

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

> > 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.

Frivolous lawsuits aside, all I am saying is that no matter what
storage media someone purchases, surely they should be able to compare
capacities without requiring prior knowledge that one type of media
uses one method, and another type of media another. They are *all*
sold with their headline capacities measured in the same unit (GB).
Sadly that is what Joe Public pays attention to.

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.

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.

-- 
Nick Morrott

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