[geeks] Seagate buckles to math ignorant consumers

[Mark]

On 2 Nov 2007, at 13:30, Lionel Peterson wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> Seagate is going to offer cash rebates to buyers of retail Seagate  
> HDs, accoridng to an article in COmputerWorld [0]. The crux seems to  
> be that since many folks think 1K = 1,024 and not 1,000, despite the  
> fact that they do silly things like quote their salary as $63K/year,  
> their car lease allows them 15K miles/year, and in europe distances  
> are measured in Kilometers, and weight in Kilograms (and in all  
> cases mean 1K = 1,000, not 1,024), it seems Seagate is being held to  
> a higher standard.

I think it's on the money that someone has finally kicked up a stink  
about this. After all 1 Gigabyte is defined as 1024 Megabtyes,  
1Megabtye is defined as 1024Kilobytes and 1Kilobyte is defined as 1024  
Bytes. It's always been this way and has to be for fall into the way  
math works on computer processors at the lowest level. What's so wrong  
with holding hard drive companies to rights because the claim  
incorrect figures? It's been obvious for years hard drives are not as  
large as the labels say they are because hard drive vendors use this  
silly clause to duck out of defining the size of the drives in  
standard computer terms, they are after all computer devices, not  
finance calculators, car odometers or road signs in France! In  
computing terms "1k = 1000" bytes = FALSE!

> To claim your cash reward for mathematical ignorance, you simply  
> need to *prove* you bought a retail drive (receipt and serial  
> number) from an authorized retailer, and submit individual claims  
> *per drive*.

That bit is kinda asinine, tho. Really Seagate should start making  
drives the right size or labeling them correctly :P

> I'm gonna file this under "Why Bother"...
>
> BTW, Seagate is not agreeing with any claims, it is just cheaper to  
> settle... Maybe they could make a donation to the school system to  
> improve math education.

Maybe they could raise some money to send the article's author on a  
computer science course instead ;)

-- 
Mark Benson

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