The google can't do math
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now everyone can be happy
...except folks with a "principled" objection to the "bizarre" GiB unit. Sucks to be them, I guess.
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Who doesn't want to deal with gigglebits?
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Who doesn't want to deal with gigglebits?
People with bad memories of dongle jokes gone wrong?
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Not principled as such. It's more that it is completely at odds to what I grew up with and was taught, even to University level.
From my point of view we had a perfectly workable system that made sense and everyone understood until the storage manufacturers seagulled all over it to inflate their marketing numbers.
It's entirely possible I am on the wrong side here, but base 10 makes no sense (to me) when you're talking about a binary resource. If it was really about the 'correct' units why wouldn't they use kibibytes?
Also this spell-check dictionary corrects kibibyte to kilobyte, I believe that's the burden of proof necessary for an internet argument.
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People with bad memories of dongle jokes gone wrong?
I remember those. One of the few advantages of USB and the unrefined paranoia about data theft in the office attached to USB sticks is that dongles seem to be less common.
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I can't migrate one of the machines at work from Win98 because it needs a parallel-port dongle.
The person using this (critical) software is not overly concerned with this situation. As the machine has issues talking to even the local domain these days I think he might not be that wrong...until it has a catastrophic hardware failure anyway.
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Can Win7+ even recognise a physical parallel port like that anyway?
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I think Win 7 can work with a parallel port although I haven't tried it.
The major problems are that direct-hardware access to parallel ports was removed after Win 98 which stops the program working under XP and there isn't even a 16-bit subsystem on any of the later OSes.
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Can Win7+ even recognise a physical parallel port like that anyway?
I don't see why not.
I've had a couple semi-recent PC builds which had the WTF factor of including parallel and serial ports, but not including PS/2. They're probably geared towards POS systems with old card readers and receipt printers, but I'm much more likely to use a PS/2 keyboard than anything on a parallel port
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Yes, but it's a nonstandard setup that you need a third party piece of software that replaces your parallelport driver with one that handles it. and that software throws BSODs not infrequently (about once every 23 hours for some reason) because it has a date time rollover issue (which is a WTF in itself)
but then that was developed for XP SPII and showhorned up to 7....
after about a week trying to get it work i took a claw hammer to the dongle and told the boss that we needed to upgrade because our only dongle had broken.
for some reason he never asked me to show him the broken dongle. maybe i should have put the hammer away before talking to him about that?
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The use of SI decimal prefixes to specify data transfer speeds is traditional and should be uncontroversial.
This to me is the most bonkers argument ever. Why should 1 MB of storage be 220 bytes but 1MB/s be 106 bytes/sec?"How long will it take to transfer 1 GB of data at 1 GB/s?"
"1.05 sec"(Now I think it's bonkers in the other way, but still...)
Is byte even an SI unit? Does it make sense to go pedantic about SI prefixes on non-SI units?
"Kilo-" long predates SI standardization, and I suspect at least some of the other prefixes do as well. I don't see why "'bytes' isn't an SI base unit" is relevant.
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That depends, is it like the PHP hammer?
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nope. standard 16oz framing hammer (the one where the claw doesn't have all that much curve to it)
It's best not to ask why i had it at my desk.... ;-)
[spoiler]Intimidation mostly.[/spoiler]
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nope. standard 16oz framing hammer (the one where the claw doesn't have all that much curve to it)
It's best not to ask why i had it at my desk.... ;-)
[spoiler]Intimidation mostly.[/spoiler]
I approve of this being desk-side equipment.
I really should get me a PHP hammer someday just for comedy value of owning one.
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From my point of view we had a perfectly workable system that made sense and everyone understood until the storage manufacturers seagulled all over it to inflate their marketing numbers.
Cool story, but it isn't what happened.
The binary sizings are a natural fit only for devices with an actual address bus. Drives don't have that.
And here's the thing: not everybody did or does understand that computer types don't mean a million-of when they say mega and don't mean a billion-of when they say giga. Unless it's megahertz and gigahertz. Then they do.
It wasn't a perfectly workable system. Like 99% of software, it was a bodge that was kind of good enough until it wasn't.
base 10 makes no sense (to me) when you're talking about a binary resource. If it was really about the 'correct' units why wouldn't they use kibibytes?
In fact very few people actually say either "kibibyte" or "kilobyte". Most people just say "Kay". But the idea of a kilobyte as being 1024 bytes is well established by common usage, not likely to go away, and also not likely to cause much trouble - who's going to argue over 24 bytes one way or the other? It's really only the higher-multiple extensions that are troublesome.
I'm in many ways a Luddite - the Everything Is A Phone brain worms give me the shits, I think The Ribbon is stupid, I loathe and detest touch screens and wish they'd all go away - but the GB vs GiB thing strikes me as a clear case of the Way Cool New Paradigm actually being an improvement.
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Why should 1 MB of storage be 220 bytes but 1MB/s be 106 bytes/sec?
It shouldn't. 1MiB of storage should be 220 bytes and 1MB/s should be 106 bytes/sec.
"How long will it take to transfer 1GiB of data at 1GB/s?"
"1.07 sec"FTFY.
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The binary sizings are a natural fit only for devices with an actual address bus. Drives don't have that.
I'm not convinced they even necessarily make sense there. The computer I'm posting this from has 12 GB of memory. One of my desktops at home has 6. When I was a kid, we had a computer with 3 MB of memory. None of those are powers of two.And OK fine, they're all on the same bus and that will support some amount of memory that's a power of two (probably), but that bus size isn't a storage size.
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The computer I'm posting this from has 12 GB of memory.
I'm tipping you'll actually find 12GiB in there if you measure it properly.
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It shouldn't. 1MiB of storage should be 220 bytes and 1MB/s should be 106 bytes/sec.
I agree with that1, but I was just saying that they should correspond. If you're a "base-2" kind of guy (which I disagree with even though I screwed it up in my 12 GiB post :-)), then transfer rates should be base 2 as well.1
alias ll='/bin/ls --color=always --sort=version --si -lA'(note the--si)
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It's really only capacities of addressable-storage devices that have ever been mis-specified in busted megs and gigs. Most of the transfer rates you care about will be related to the size of actual content, not that of the devices that cache it, and there is no reason on God's green earth to misuse mega- and giga- to mean mebi- and gibi- when you're talking about the size or expected transfer times of a 27MB MP3 file over a 100Mbit/s Ethernet link.
Which is, of course, why I find it so intensely irritating that Windows does just that.
Thunar FTW!
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And of course, making something out to seem bigger than it is for such things actually seems like a smart move since that way if things don't take as long or as much space, everyone's a winner.
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I've had a couple semi-recent PC builds which had the WTF factor of including parallel and serial ports, but not including PS/2. They're probably geared towards POS systems with old card readers and receipt printers, but I'm much more likely to use a PS/2 keyboard than anything on a parallel port
Still quite common to find parport headers on the mobo even if the connector isn't there on the back panel. One of these and you're good to go.
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for some reason he never asked me to show him the broken dongle. maybe i should have put the hammer away before talking to him about that?
Proper procedure should have been:
- Backup: (Put dongle in drawer)
- Test: (use hammer to obtain a chip of some plastic material)
- QA: (show boss chip/hammer, "we need to upgrade")
- Then either:
-- Rollback (haha just kidding boss)
-- Rollout (FUN!!! bwhahaha)
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i find the hammer is a one step process....
much more efficient, and i know that if you continuew arguing with me at that point you probably have a real reason for it other than just being a reproductive organ.
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I keep an escrima stick near my front door.
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probably more effective and practical than my Bat'leth...
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i find the hammer is a one step process....
much more efficient, and i know that if you continuew arguing with me at that point you probably have a real reason for it other than just being a reproductive organ.
No, non-repro organ. Known as covering my ass! (if you knew your boss was looking for an excuse to upgrade, then your method is definitely better)
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Practical, probably. Effective may depend on whether it is intended for actual violence or for intimidation, and if intimidation, then of what audience.
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It also has the benefit that pretty much anyone can pick it up and swing it.
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(if you knew your boss was looking for an excuse to upgrade, then your method is definitely better)
wasn't looking but we had money coming out the ears and the users were looking (beancounters wouldn't pay because what we had still worked)
Practical, probably. Effective may depend on whether it is intended for actual violence or for intimidation, and if intimidation, then of what audience.
well the Bat'leth is purely fictional. i just wanted to use fancy geek words too. The hammer though, that's real and sitting on my desk next to me. I actually make a point never to touch it or refer to it when anyone else is in the office.
One of the beancounters asked me about it a couple of weeks ago, i asked "Which hammer?" and was met with a very confused look but the question wasn't brought up again (the other hammer is a tiny plastic moljnir in the hands of a thor figurine)
It also has the benefit that pretty much anyone can pick it up and swing it.
because it's way more real than the bat'leth (see above) :-P
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This is why metric doesn't work, people.
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Edit: How the heck do you escape markdown, I want asterisks not italiacs!
Put a \ in front of one the first *.
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Didn't we already declare kibble bytes and giggle bytes as nonsense units?
Yes, but that doesn't stop some dickweeds from being dickweedy about it.
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tebibyte
I'm with Raymond Chen on this: nobody of consequence uses the stupid ibi infixes.
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I can't migrate one of the machines at work from Win98 because it needs a parallel-port dongle.
WAT. You can still to this day get motherboards with parallel ports on them. You just have to work a little for it, and might have to actually build the computer yourself.
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and there isn't even a 16-bit subsystem on any of the later OSes.
Nonsense. I've got a 32-bit Windows 8 CD 6 feet from me.
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Nonsense. I've got a 32-bit Windows 8 CD 6 feet from me.
I'll ignore the bit where that. AFAIK, still doesn't mean it has a 16-bit subsystem available (got removed with Vista, I think) and call bullshit on the medium.
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Yes, but that doesn't stop some dickweeds from being dickweedy about it.
Which is why I mock them with gigglebits and meagre bits.
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@FrostCat said:
Yes, but that doesn't stop some dickweeds from being dickweedy about it.
Which is why I mock them with gigglebits and meagre bits.
"How big is that file?"
"3.8 GB"
"Hold on... *digs out a 4GB USB drive* There, copy it over onto this"Not enough space left on device
"FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUU"
And that's why I'm a pedantic dickweed about gerbilbytes.
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I'll ignore the bit where that. AFAIK, still doesn't mean it has a 16-bit subsystem available (got removed with Vista, I think) and call bullshit on the medium.
Fine, DVD. But I can tell you 100% you're wrong about the specifics because we have several machines with Win7 32-bit specifically because we need to run a single 16-bit app. I am next to positive it's in 8 as well, except I don't feel like setting up a VM to check.
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Isn't that being sold as a limitation of 64-bit CPU architecture? Which is strange because I'm pretty sure 16-bit windows apps work on 64-bit wine...
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But I can tell you 100% you're wrong about the specifics because we have several machines with Win7 32-bit specifically because we need to run a single 16-bit app.
Huh. I seem to remember installing DOSBox on a machine somewhere, because Win 7 wouldn't run something, and the reason it gave is "cannot run 16bit application".
So either Windows lied, or I don't know how to use it properly. Most likely both.
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WAT. You can still to this day get motherboards with parallel ports on them. You just have to work a little for it, and might have to actually build the computer yourself.
Sure, but the program won't run without direct access to the parallel port. None of the direct-access hacks I tried under XP were stable and most didn't work at all.
Nonsense. I've got a 32-bit Windows 8 CD 6 feet from me.
Interesting, thank you. I thought it had been totally removed in all architectures.
The port access is still the stumbling block though.
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Last I knew, 64-bit Windows could not run 16-bit code, but 32-bit Windows did not have that limitation.
Basically Windows supports going back one generation in bitness.
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So either Windows lied, or I don't know how to use it properly. Most likely both.
Heh. If Windows can't run a 16-bit app, it's because you're on 64-bit Windows. I mean, there's other possibilities but they're all much less likely.
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Sure, but the program won't run without direct access to the parallel port.
Yeah, I meant to mention that but hit Reply too soon. Like someone else said you'd probably need a special device driver for that.
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Pedantry: there isn't a 16 bit subsytstem in 32 bit windows 7. there is a 16 bit emulation layer, which works pretty much like the same thing, except it isn't the same thing.
:-P
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I prefer to think of it as an emulation subsystem, so nyah.
