Weekly Classic Computer Trivia Question (20141205)

[Mouse]

>>>> Assuming that 1 terabyte is 2 ** 40 bytes [...]
>>> It's not, it's 10**12.
>> You don't get to tell us how we use language any more than anyone
>> else does.  [...]
> While you have a half point, Mouse, the fact is that for disk
> capacities, the standard is actually to use K to mean 10^3 and not
> 2^10, so Fred is absolutely right.

"The standard"?  That disagrees with my experience.  I have numerous
disks from the days when capacities were several tens of megabytes, or
low hundreds of megabytes; they are all labeled accurately.  Somewhere
around the time of single-digit gigabyte capacities, disk manufacturers
started mislabeling their disks.  That they were doing so knowing it
was an actively misleading practice is evidenced by the notes in ads
from that era (and even on some drives), saying things like "based on
1GB = 1 billion bytes", which, if the metric meanings were indeed the
standard you seem to be claiming they were, would not have been worth
mentioning.

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