The following reply was made to PR kern/32205; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Christian Biere <christianbiere@gmx.de>
To: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: kern/32205: Use standard units for memory/media sizes
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 20:19:15 +0100

 [For some reason, I don't get the replies to my mail address
 but read them at news.gmane.org. Maybe I should have set
 the Reply-To: header.]
 
 Martin Husemann: Either you or me might want to file a PR
 against ntpd.
 
 Geoff Wing: Unfortunately, I don't get any money from anyone
 for this. In case you wanted to suggest to share my brokerage,
 I have to disappoint you.
 
 Jonathan Kollasch: I'd prefer the usual base-10 units for
 disks because that's how they're labeled, sold and at
 least my PC BIOS reports a 120 GB disk too, so it's anything
 but uncommon. However, my sole intention is too display
 technically correct values as far as possible, so I wouldn't
 mind a comprise to report the disk as a 111 GiB one.
 
 Elad Efrat: There's other software that uses them in pkgsrc
 e.g., net/gtk-gnutella and net/bittorent. I didn't know about
 lynx but that's nice to know. It's obvious that most software
 doesn't use them because the standard for binary units is from
 late 1998.
 
 Basically, it all boils down to the very simple fact that
 kilo, Mega, Giga always meant 10^3, 10^6, 10^9 ... in
 any technical context. The only unnecessary historical
 exception is a part of computer technology and even here
 it's used inconsequently e.g. consider transfer rates and
 different storage media (CD, DVD, HDD, floppy) and chip-
 based memory (RAM, Flash etc.).
 
 Furthermore, before turning this into a lengthy discussion
 consider looking at Wikipedia or search for "KiB MiB GiB"
 with your favourite search engine. You'll find a lot of
 pro and contra discussions. It's pretty difficult to add
 anything new to this.
 
 -- 
 Christian