>> The whole idea of accounting for computer storage in units of 1000
>> bytes, or even worse 1000 bits, is so alien, disgusting, and
>> meaningless to me that I'd prefer just to stomp it out!  ;-)

(Me too.)

> We, then, need to teach this to the disk manufacturers who list them
> as "18GB" when they really mean "18,000,000,000 bytes" (which is
> 16.8GB as we (and 'df') know it).

Yes, I agree.  Who wants to spearhead the class-action lawsuit for
fraud, or misleading advertising, or whatever the relevant offense is?
It's not as if they don't *know* they're being misleading; I've even
seen footnotes in some ads recently saying things like "based on 1MB =
1 million bytes", which I take as clear evidence that they *know*
they're being misleading and that people mind.

Less recently, they weren't doing even that; I recall when I first got
my zip drive, I was on the phone to iomega for some other reason and I
decided to play gadfly: I asked them where the other 4MB had gone
(disks are 96MB, iomega calls them 100MB) and they said the 100MB
figure was unformatted capacity.  4% formatting overhead is ludicrously
low, and a bit later I exchanged email with someone who worked for a
company that made the disks for iomega, who confirmed that unformatted
capacity is actually more like 125-130 MB.

If only we could get a sympathetic memory company to make SIMMs holding
exactly (say) 32,000,000 bytes, and whenever they get an order from a
disk maker, send out those instead of the regular sort... >:->

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
		     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B