Internet in a rural area

[aimeeandbeatles]

Companys also advertise their speed in kiloBITS, whereas your downloads will be measured in kiloBYTES. IIRC bits are 8 times smaller than bytes so they can post bigger numbers. Bits is acronymed in lowercase and bytes use uppcasre (so Kb and KB respectively).

Like the HDD is smaller than advertised, because to the manufacturer it's 1000x1000x1000, while the OS is 1024x1024x1024. Something to do with the IEC (whatever that stands for) saying it's a billion bytes.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

The HDD isn't smaller than advertised, its the exact size it's advertised. If they say its a Terabyte, that means that the HDD is 10^12 bytes which is in fact 1000x1000x1000x1000 bytes. If you want 1024^4 bytes, thats a TiB, or Tebibyte. We have just come to accept kilo, mega, giga, tera and etc as binary prefixes when they are in fact, SI and therefore powers of 10, not 2.

Just fyi:
The real prefixes for binary are kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, pebi and so forth.

 

[remake20]

Yeah. Still hoping to find something though. Guess I'll just have to wait.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

The real prefixes for binary are kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, pebi and so forth.

I forgot about that part

 

[Maniacal]

Due to the fact that only the packaging and advertising seems to actually use those systems of measurement (since the computer, the user and software all measure it in 1024s or bytes) it is still rather false advertising.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Due to the fact that only the packaging and advertising seems to actually use those systems of measurement (since the computer, the user and software all measure it in 1024s or bytes) it is still rather false advertising.

No. False advertising was if they advertised one thing and gave you another. In this case, you get what they advertised. Up to x Mbps. Its not really their fault you or your computer chooses to measure that speed in MBps giving you seemingly lower numbers. The fact is, you still get up to the same speed, just measured differently.

In other words I could tell you to go walk a mile or go walk 1.609km. Either way, they're the same distance.

As for HDD's, they too technically give you exactly what they advertise. Like I said, 1 GB is 1000x1000x1000 bytes. One GiB is 1024x1024x1024 bytes. The problem here then isnt really with the manufacturers, but the fact that it has become commonly accepted that the SI prefixes kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta and etc can be used for powers of 2 when in fact they cannot, at least not correctly.

I believe retail hard drives also specify on the packages (albeit in tiny font) that 1 GB == 1,000,000,000 bytes. It's still not false advertising though.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I wonder why they do that, though. I know I read that the IEC said one billion bytes, but I wonder why. I don't see much a point.

 

[Maniacal]

No. False advertising was if they advertised one thing and gave you another. In this case, you get what they advertised. Up to x Mbps. Its not really their fault you or your computer chooses to measure that speed in MBps giving you seemingly lower numbers. The fact is, you still get up to the same speed, just measured differently.

In other words I could tell you to go walk a mile or go walk 1.609km. Either way, they're the same distance.

As for HDD's, they too technically give you exactly what they advertise. Like I said, 1 GB is 1000x1000x1000 bytes. One GiB is 1024x1024x1024 bytes. The problem here then isnt really with the manufacturers, but the fact that it has become commonly accepted that the SI prefixes kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta and etc can be used for powers of 2 when in fact they cannot, at least not correctly.

I believe retail hard drives also specify on the packages (albeit in tiny font) that 1 GB == 1,000,000,000 bytes. It's still not false advertising though.

True, but it is still misleading. And is it possible to get my computer and all of its programs to start measuring in bits instead of bytes so I can get an accurate measurement without having to convert? It just seems utterly ridiculous to use two different systems for stuff!