On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 11:17:03PM +0100, Roger Leigh wrote: > On Mon, Jun 29, 2009 at 09:42:24AM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > > Bill Allombert <bill.allomb...@math.u-bordeaux1.fr> writes: > > > On Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 07:49:40PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: > > > > >> Agreed. At the time Policy was originally written, kilobyte nearly > > >> universally meant kibibyte in the industry. I'll change this to: > > > > >> The disk space is given as the integer value of the installed > > >> size in bytes divided by 1024 and rounded (in other words, the > > >> size in kibibytes). > > > > >> for the next release. (I believe this is an informative change that > > >> doesn't require seconds.) > > > > > I formally object to the part '(in other words, the size in > > > kibibytes)'. > > > > > (I believe this change is not informative and only serve the purpose > > > of endorsing a standard which does not meet consensus in Debian.) > > > > Okay. As previously mentioned, I disagree and would prefer to retain > > it, so I think at this point we need to hear more opinions to see how > > widespread the disagreement is. > > I agree with the use of kibibytes here. > > Standard prefixes and units can and should be endorsed by Policy, or > else we have confusion over what standard prefixes such as "kilo" mean. > The meanings are well defined by both international conventions and > standards, no matter if some people disagree or don't like the names. > > k = 10³ = 1000 > Ki = 2¹⁰ = 1024 > > To do anything else would be plain wrong, and make computer > scientists look like retards for using a prefix to mean something > different than what rest of the *entire planet* understands it to be.
Fortunately, we don't use floppy disks anymore, where the meaning of Mega was even more abused. (for the record, a 1.44MB floppy was 1440KB where 1KB was 1024B, making 1MB 1024000B) Mike -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-policy-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
