[geeks] Seagate buckles to math ignorant consumers

[der Mouse]

> [...] since many folks think 1K = 1,024 and not 1,000, despite the
> fact that [...non-computer uses of K as 1000...]

1K *is* 1024 rather than 1000, when measuring things that normally come
in powers of two, to use the phrase from the Jargon File.  If you
bought a "512MB" stick of memory that held only 512000000 bytes,
wouldn't you feel cheated?  (I've occasionally toyed with fantasies of
being a memory maker and building a small production run of 1GB sticks
that held only 1e9 bytes, 512MB sticks that held only 512e6, etc, and
setting them aside for orders from Seagate and Maxtor and their ilk.)

Disk makers have in recent years been adding Flyspeck 2 footnotes to
their ads saying things like "based on 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes"; to
me, this can accurately be paraphrased as "we know we're being
deceptive but we're going to continue being deceptive anyway".
Deliberately deceiving your consumers is usually called "fraud", and
I've long wondered why there haven't been fraud prosecutions as a
result.

You may not like it, but that *is* how SI prefixes get used in
computers.

(There is one computer use of SI prefixes as applied to bits that uses
their metric meanings instead of their binary meanings, that being data
communication rates.  For example, a 10Mb Ethernet is 10e6 bits/sec,
not 10<<20.)

> I'm gonna file this under "Why Bother"...

As a matter of pragmatics, it gets you a 7+ percent discount on that
disk you recently bought.  As a matter of principle, it finally slaps
someone down for years of deliberately deceiving their customers.

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