Re: [PLUG] Copying files to multiple volumes

[Walt Mankowski via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

On Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 11:55:25AM -0400, Rich Freeman via plug wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 11:24 AM Walt Mankowski via plug
> <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 10:48:57AM -0400, brent timothy saner via plug wrote:
> > > it's not from lack of trying.
> > >
> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix
> > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(data)
> > >
> > > you can thank disk manufacturers for not following proper notation.
> >
> > It's not just them. Binary and decimal are used interchangeably by
> > most people, and hardly anyone uses kibi/mebi/gibi/tebi. As those
> > articles make clear, the differences are going to grow dramatically as
> > storage increases.
> 
> So, disk manufacturers obviously picked a unit that made their numbers
> look bigger.  However, it doesn't change the fact that the CS
> community decided to use SI prefixes without conforming to their
> normal use.
> 
> Kilo means 1000 in every industry and unit of measure in the world,
> EXCEPT CS.  I guess programmers can all do their own thing if they
> want to, but it doesn't change the fact that it is going to cause
> endless confusion.
> 
> IEC issued the Kibi/etc units to try to resolve this.  I certainly use
> them consistently when I mean 1024, but I think programmers avoid them
> almost out of spite.
> 
> As far as I'm concerned Kilo is 1000, and if you use it to mean
> anything else you're wrong, and if you have a problem with it take it
> up with SI, which is the authority basically every government and
> industry on the planet (including the US/UK) follows when it comes to
> units of measure.  Having base-2 prefixes like kibi is certainly
> useful in CS, and they should be used where it makes sense, but they
> should still be written Ki/etc.  Then when you're looking at a number
> you don't have to guess what it means, which is the whole point of
> having standardized units in the first place.  Go ahead and call
> 4,000,588,029,952 bytes 4 tebibytes - everybody will understand what
> they mean, and if they don't they'll use Google and then understand
> what you mean, unambiguously.  :)
> 
> At present, the disk manufacturers ARE following proper notation, at
> least in accordance with SI.  Really they were always in conformance
> with SI, which has never defined kilo to mean anything other than
> 1000.  Funny how standards bodies tend to adhere to their standards...
> :)

Adding to the confusing is that `df -h` and `du -h` just show the
first letter, and can use either 1000 or 1024 depending on which
parameters you use.

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