[Ffmpeg-devel] [PATCH] Print KB for 1024 bytes

[Uoti Urpala]

On Fri, 2007-02-16 at 07:37 -0500, The Wanderer wrote: 
> Uoti Urpala wrote:
> > No, the Ki prefix does not "attempt to say" such a thing. People who
> > try to get you to understand why the Ki prefix should be used might
> > say that, though they probably wouldn't say "has been established as
> > a standard" either. But whether people say that or not, it's an
> > obvious logical fallacy to use that as a justification for the claim
> > that the Ki prefix itself "is an ugly abomination".
> 
> ...I don't recognize the fallacy involved offhand...

What people say about the standard is not a valid argument against the
contents of the standard.

> >> attempting to force it out is Really Really Bad Form at best.
> > 
> > Attempting to make the existing units which are much more established
> > ambiguous is much worse form.
> 
> But that attempt is not being made. Those units *have already become*
> ambiguous; at most, those who oppose the imposition of "kibi" and its
> like are attempting to prevent them from becoming unambiguous again.

As if that "at most" would be any better.

> > It became a "de-facto standard" for some people, but most people have
> > never accepted a change in the meaning of k, M etc. As the usage
> > spread it also became obvious that it was a bad idea.
> 
> "Most people" also do not appear to have been working routinely with the
> units in context of which the "1024" meaning was used - that being,
> units of data, specifically bytes.

Such context dependence is a negative thing. What you say may be true
but is in no way an argument supporting ambiguous usage of M etc.


> And no, I wouldn't consider it an abomination if I'd learned it from the
> start, that's true - much the same way as people who learn it without
> having known the previous usage, and hence not knowing any better, will
> find people who consider it an abomination incomprehensible. But I
> *didn't* learn it from the start, because *it didn't exist* from the
> start - so that's not really a workable argument.

Why should your opinion be determined by when you learned about it? By
contrast I also learned about Ki/Mi after seeing the ambiguous use, but
I can still evaluate both based on their merits, not based on the order
I learned about them.

> (I've been reminded irresistibly for quite some time now in this
> conversation of the fight to introduce the metric system in America...

I also thought metric vs imperial units are a good comparison. "Natural"
language evolution does not produce good unit systems, it produces crap
like the imperial system. The metric system was explicitly designed and
is much better.

> and even though there I agree that the metric system makes a lot more
> sense, and I do not have the immediate revulsion for it which I do have
> for the terminology at hand here, I still don't automatically think in
> terms of it.)

Getting used to a change in the basic units of the measurement system is
harder as most people remember lots of reference sizes in the system
they're used to. I've seen several Americans confuse that with intrinsic
properties of the measurement system, claiming nonsense like "imperial
system being more intuitive" etc.

> > Yes, the ambiguous usage wasn't really designed or actively spread by
> > anyone (which is natural given that it's not such a good idea).
> > Noting that it had become widespread enough to cause problems (which
> > can happen even for bad ideas if there's no obvious alternative) and
> > then designing a better alternative did take conscious effort from
> > someone. That's not a reason to oppose it.
> 
> But it also involved that someone saying "I get to decide for everyone
> else" - which is incredibly arrogant at best. (And, again, the

Any version had to be originally designed by someone. Just what degree
of conscious attempt to spread the usage would you have accepted? You're
yourself trying to argue for the ambiguous usage of units.