Origin or 1.44 MV FD label [WAS: RE: Weekly Classic Computer Trivia Question (20141205)]

[Fred Cisin]

> > It is NOT a "nice" number. Honest numbers would be either 1.47 or 1.4
> > There is no legitimate way to come up with 1.44 unless you cheat and
> > MIX powers of 10 and powers of 2.

On Sun, 7 Dec 2014, Tom Gardner wrote:
> It comes from a double capacity 720 KB FDD - which in this case are actually
> KiB and not kB
> However, in an incredible bit of marketing stupidity it was labeled 1.44 MB,
> since 2*720 KB/1000 = 1.44 MB

. . . and what justifies a division by 1000, when the existing number is
explicitly a multiple of 1024?
720K is NOT 0.72M

The disk is 1440 K, which is NOT 1.44M, it is 1.40625M,
or simply "1.4M".

Was it an ERROR?  Or the work of cheating assholes?