base 2 or base 10.

[Chris Jones]

Hi,

> Switching it to base 10 was just a marketing ploy in the first place,
> it makes drives look bigger. We are counting bits so base 2 is the
> correct way to go. Problem is that base 10 has been marketed so long
> now that most people think it IS standard and correct.

Actually drive manufacturers have always done this and arguably are 
correct in this.

The reason why base 2 came into common usage is it is how system memory 
is accessed. Which is my RAM is always measured in units of 1024. Hard 
drives however are not accessed in the same binary way, and in fact this 
means their sizes are not constrained to be multiples of 1024. So they 
choose to use the more human-nature base 1000. They never *switched* to 
base 10, they have always used it.

The main problem was the same units (GB) have commonly been used in both 
places, which is where most of the confusion comes from IMO. This though 
was clarified a few years back (2000) and now the SI units of GB, MB TB 
etc should only be used when using the base 10 system. If an application 
wishes to report sizes in base 2, they should use the GiB, MiB instead. 
Anything that still uses GB for base 10 is wrong.

So if ubuntu wishes to use the SI units when reporting sizes, it *has* 
to switch to base 10. The other alternative would be to stay at base 2 
and use GiB instead, to to use the SI units for base 2 is just plain wrong.

Chris