Standards: IEC Giga [re: FreeBSD image size confusion]

[@lbutlr]

On 13 Mar 2021, at 15:07, grarpamp <grarpamp at gmail.com> wrote:
> "giga" = "G" = decimal prefix, powers of ten, 10^, base 10 underlying
> "gibi" = "Gi" = binary prefix, powers of two, 2^, base 2 underlying

It will be a decade or three before we know if this shakes out the way that ISO is trying to force on people. The simple fact is that GB has been used for a binary number for decades, just as MB and KB, and the moved from MB = 2^20 to MB = 1,000,000 was driven by Hard drive manufacturers who wanted to market their 100MB drives as 104MB to fool people into thinking the drives were larger than they were.

2^30 is a far more useful number when dealing with computers than 1,000,000,000, which is why many MANY people still used 'GB' to mean 2^30.

But yes, you are technically correct, but that is the worst type of correct.

-- 
"Patience has its limits. Take it too far, and it's cowardice." -
	George Jackson