We did agree on what those sizes were. However, the hard drive manufacturers realized that they could make more money by re-defining it, so here we are. The only reason that they’re able to get away with it is that the prefix giga- usually means exactly 10^9.
This is asinine, at least as far as the formatting issue goes. Memory storage devices require an index, and that index takes up memory. But it doesn’t mean that the memory doesn’t exist. It’s like buying a two hundred page book and bitching that 5 of those pages are consumed by the table of contents.
Yeah, I rolled my eyes at that one, too.
Except that troy ounces are heavier than normal ounces, and even if troy measurements are different from American customary measurements, they’re defined according to a set standard that everyone understands.
“No drive has as much space as marked” is always something that has seemed unacceptable to me. Unlike your precious metals comparison, the exact same thing is being measured. And there’s no particular reason why the same measurements should be used for gold and fish - it’s not like you purchase them for the same purposes.
The difference here is that one item is being measured two ways - the standard way, and the dishonest way used by media vendors. The fact that this is common doesn’t make it seem particularly acceptable to me at least; even if more technologically-aware consumers know the difference, not everyone does, and I shouldn’t need a calculator to figure out how much actual storage is in my 1 GB flash card.
When your operating system measures it, it uses the standard 1,024 B = 1 KB, 1,024 KB = 1 MB. It is a false claim to sell a device with less than 1 GB of storage as 1 GB, no matter how common it is. Calling this acceptable boggles my mind - why should a business get away with using a sneaky measurement technique to sell less product than claimed?
Much like megabytes?
Like ounces and ounces?
Why not gold and aluminum foil? Gold and wool? Gold and everything else? Why should there be a different measurement for precious metals?
To me, this is the problem. Mega=1000. 1,024 should be something else.
No false claim. Use a megabyte of 1000 bytes, the very definition of mega found in the dictionary, and you get the storage claimed. Or does a nuke deliver 1,024 tons of TNT per megaton? Does the name of the band mean 1,024 people killed?
Name a business that doesn’t. The law protects nearly all of it as ‘sales puffery’. If you want to sue all businesses, we’ll have to agree to disagree. If you think flash memory stands out as particularly heinous, you have yet to convince me.
I think you mean 1,000,000, not 1,000.
Anyway, this doesn’t apply when you—in this case, the defendants—have specifically stated on your website that you define 1 megabyte as 1,048,576 bytes.
How hard is this to understand? It’s not a matter of exactly what a megabyte is; it’s a matter of companies that specifically chose to define a megabyte one way, and then adhered to a different standard in the production of their products. That is the nature of the claim of false and misleading business practices.
They could have chosen either standard; where they fucked up was in claiming to use one, and then actually using another.
There was no confusion about the number of bytes in a megabyte until the hard drive manufacturers re-defined the term.
I agree, but the term “kilobyte” was coined to mean 1024 bytes a long time ago. The name is unfortunate, but I don’t see what’s to be done about it now. Trying to change the name of 1024 bytes would just confuse way too many people.
No, exactly unlike megabytes, if you’d been paying attention.
No, like customary ounces and Troy ounces. Perhaps you’re unaware that traditionally, a great many different measurement systems were used concurrently - the Troy system of weights is just one of those systems. You might as well ask why dry gallons and liquid gallons are different, and why those are different from wine gallons, and why wine gallons aren’t the same as beer and ale gallons.
It’s quite traditional to have different standards for different objects; the reason why this is completely irrelevant to the present discussion is that in this case, the same object is being measured by two different standards.
Why is a hogshead of wine different from a hogshead of ale? And how many rundlets are there in a tierce? What’s your point?
Too damn bad. The standard is, and has been for a long time, that the 1,000 factor in metric units is 1,024 when measuring data. 1,000 bytes is a fairly useless measurement given that hard drives are divided up into units of 512 bytes and so forth. The 1,024 factor is far more useful when examining data storage.
Because that’s the agreed-upon standard. It was chosen because it was more useful; that is what your operating system measures when it tells you the size of a file or the amount of free space left on your hard drive. And there is a reason that a megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes. Because that’s what’s useful when calculating hard drive space.
Which doesn’t matter, as the court has already been convinced. If you think this is comparable to the conduct of every other business, then it’s up to you to demonstrate that every other business conducts itself in the same way. So far, you haven’t demonstrated that any other business does this.
I’d be satisfied if they just started labeling their products correctly - giving a few pennies back seems sort of silly to me. But they shouldn’t be allowed to make false claims unchecked.
No, they couldn’t have. There is one standard that is used on computers; there is a completely different and artificial standard used in selling storage media. Requiring consumers to convert between “hard drive megabytes” and “real megabytes” is stupid and deceptive. The companies you mention are even more deceptive, it’s true - but companies shouldn’t be able to label their products falsely by using a standard for “megabyte” and “gigabyte” that is not used elsewhere, which in this case they’ve been doing.
I agree, this is asinine. The industry has define a megabyte as 1,000,000 bytes forever. If anything the assumption that a megabyte is 1,024,000 bytes is incorrect. Computers are binary. Binary uses bits – 0s and 1s. One byte is made up of 8 bits. 1,024 of those bytes make up one kilobyte. But wait – kilo is 1,000! Yes, it is, but for the sake of simplicity, some liberty is taken with the definition of kilo because 1,024 is close enough to 1,000 to make it the closest conventional fit. It follows then that the same liberty is taken with subsequent groupings – kilo, mega, giga, tera, etc. The hard disk and flash memory industry, however, are simply taking the definition of mega and giga at face value. Is it a little shady when the traditional definitions as they pertain to computing aren’t being used? Sure it is. But it’s not like this is the first time assumptions have been made that ended up being different in practise. Network bandwidth, in being referred to as “megs” is actually measured in “megabits,” not “megabytes.” The 90s video game industry played the same game when referring to the capacity of the game cartridges (and therefore ostensibly the quality of the game, being so large and all). They would refer to a game as being “8 megs” or “32 megs” without bothering to point out the difference between bits and bytes.
Why is this suddenly any difference?
Because they said on all their sales material that they were calculating based on the 1,024 system.