topic Re: what a difference 24 makes in Plusnet Feedback

what a difference 24 makes

whistler — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:54:55 GMT

For the first time I've come close (according to you) to my 10GB limit and whilst checking out a few things I came accross this cuty on your usage page:

Quote
How we measure data:
1000 Kilobytes = 1MB (Megabyte), 1000 MB = 1 GB (Gigabyte)

Presumably you've also unilaterally decided that 1000 bytes = 1 Kilobyte
So your 10GB limit is actually nearer 9.25 GB -
tsk tsk

Re: what a difference 24 makes

BenTrimble — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:03:24 GMT

This is a historical argument and one that is in line with the industry such as hard drive manufacturers.
To get technical, a gigabyte is 10^9 (1000 x 1000 x 1000) and the symbol is GB whereas a gibibyte (pronounced jibbybyte) is 2^30 (1024 x 1024 x 1024) and the symbol is GiB.
As such, our nomenclature on the page you reference is correct. GiB is virtually never used when referring to powers of 2 / 1024 and GB is incorrectly substituted in it's place.
Edited for clarity

Re: what a difference 24 makes

Anonymous — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:39:31 GMT

There are other thing to consider, such as -
Is the amount of data used for accounting purposes referring to the number of bytes of useful data transferred, or whether it includes the additional traffic overhead representing the total number of bytes sent over ADSL ?
For a perfect 8Mb/s ADSL line the overhead would be 8128Kb/s transferred, but the maximum data you would actually receive would be 7150Kb/s.
Another thing to think about is ADSL packet loss and retries. If you have an imperfect ADSL connection then you would be getting all manner of dropped packets, and retransmissions.
Therefore the true amount of ADSL data may be a lot higher than the file size that was downloaded.

Re: what a difference 24 makes

hulls — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:05:08 GMT

As I understand it, the GiB answer is relatively recent. Computers have always measured data as a power of 2 because of the binary aspect of digital computing. Over the last couple of years, I've managed to come to an acceptance that the terminology has changed, although there is still confusion since Windows continues to use the old definitions in its calculations of disk and memory sizes.
In the same way, I've come to accept that in computing, disc is spelled disk, and a billion is one thousand million, not (as it historically was) one million million.
Pesky Americans, devalue everything.
John

Re: what a difference 24 makes

artificer — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:16:31 GMT

jibbybyte? who dreamed that up? i've gone from bits to bytes to megabytes to gigabytes to terabytes. along the way i've yet to meet this strange creature the jibbybyte, though i might adopt it as a username somewhere.

Re: what a difference 24 makes

BenTrimble — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:18:52 GMT

Gibibyte
There's a whole family...
Kibibyte (KiB) 2^10
Mebibyte (MiB) 2^20
Gibibyte (GiB) 2^30
Tebibyte (TiB) 2^40
Pebibyte (PiB) 2^50
Exbibyte (EiB) 2^60
Zebibyte (ZiB) 2^70
Yobibyte (YiB) 2^80
I wonder what the equivalent of a Googol is... Goobibyte? I do hope so...

Re: what a difference 24 makes

MarkB — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:33:40 GMT

OOoo that's a sneaky thing for the industry to do. It would some sectors of the industry use this new fangled SI definations others still use the binary. To me, and I'm a suspicious git at the best of times, the idea of changing the accepted meaning of the terms GB etc, smacks of saving cash in production etc - I'd like to be wrong on that but since the world revolves around industry making cash.. well that's the cynical in me.

Re: what a difference 24 makes

magnetism2772 — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:15:56 GMT

the difference seems to be how windows(?) interprets size
so if your using a windows computer the GiB as recommended by the
(CEI) is an 'incomplete' size

Re: what a difference 24 makes

Be3G — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 22:48:49 GMT

Quote from: MarkB
the idea of changing the accepted meaning of the terms GB etc, smacks of saving cash in production etc

To be fair, kilo-, mega-, giga- etc. have traditionally meant 10³/⁶/⁹ in science (which is ultimately the root of all units and prefixes really); they are the official SI prefixes. So it's more a case that early computer usage went against the accepted definitions of those terms.

Re: what a difference 24 makes

Luzern — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 06:08:07 GMT

For Rock Computers they're all translated in to Yabbadabbadoobytes.

Re: what a difference 24 makes

MarkB — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 06:24:20 GMT

Aye, at the end of the day it doesn't really matter what they are called as long as the meaning or value behind the word is transparent enough for everyone to understand. The thing is for ages the 'common definition' of GB ( instead of GiB ) worked fine for everyone including hardware folks, then something happened somewhere and it changed. Was it in 2007 that Samsung? admitted some sort of wrong doing in a class action and offered to pay customers or give them free software because of this misunderstanding. Other HHD manufacturers denied anything wrong, but also offered customers similar software deals I think - although my memory ( 1024 in all accepted terms lol ) might be wrong there. Ho Hum.

Yabbadabbadoobytes indeed..

Re: what a difference 24 makes

BenTrimble — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 09:08:38 GMT

In the early days there wasn't so great a % difference between the two, but as we increase the orders of magnitude the difference is compounded
k 98%
M 95%
G 93%
T 91%