Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Tue, 17 Dec 1996 14:09:09 -0500 (EST) | From | "Richard B. Johnson" <> | Subject | Re: GB vs MB - a proposal |
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On 17 Dec 1996, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > Folks, > I've had to deal with GB == power of 2 or 10 quite a bit in > government contracts and with lmbench result reporting. There are a > bunch of good arguments on both sides of the issue. I've come up with > the following "standard" which I use in the new lmbench: > > mb = 2^20 > MB = 1,000,000 > > and so on. It seems to cause the least pain. I can still say > > lmdd if=/dev/rsda0 bs=5k > > and get 5*1024, which is a 512 byte block aligned request, which is what > a lot of unix systems want. > > MB and mb don't conflict with the commonly used Mb which typically means > Mbits. > But according to "Reference Data for Engineers", Capital letters are to be used only for proper names, i.e., us is microsconds, uS is microseimens. There is a reference to "grandfarthered" usage such as mA is milliamperes and MA is mega-amperes. This is because mega and milli start with "m", but the allowance goes away with everything but "m". Note that mHz and MHz and very different, i.e., MHz is megahertz (1000 cycles per second) and mHz is millihertz (1/1000th of a cycle per second). Note that MB won't hack it unless "B" stands for Mr. Bell, i.e., dB (decibels).
I am afraid that the Disc Drive vendors are just going to have to deal with the truth. If brand 1.2gb is really 0.9gb they should be exposed.
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