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Mebibyte
Posted: Sat 09 Aug, 2008 15.11
by Pete
I noticed something in the admin panel, our database has a size of "105 MiB". Apparently this means a Mebibyte, which is 1024² bytes. Megabyte is now apparently meant to mean 1000² bytes (the hard disk selling capacity).
Is anyone else aware of this? It's certainly news to me.
Re: Mebibyte
Posted: Sat 09 Aug, 2008 15.15
by marksi
Never heard of such a thing. Silly name.
Now I'm going back to watching the gymnasts. Sorry, gymnastics.
Re: Mebibyte
Posted: Sat 09 Aug, 2008 15.19
by Sput
Ah, it all makes sense now. Technically mega is a million so it's right, and I assume the Bi in mebibite refers to the base 2 thing that gets us to 2^20. Didn't realise that hard drive makers were marketing in base 10 though. How poor.
Re: Mebibyte
Posted: Sat 09 Aug, 2008 15.57
by Nini
Isn't the whole set of *bi-byte units actually referred incorrectly to as the more common units in use? I know that 1,024 bytes != 1 Mb but Windows tells me otherwise, the dink.
Re: Mebibyte
Posted: Sat 09 Aug, 2008 17.01
by Sput
M
B 
Re: Mebibyte
Posted: Sat 09 Aug, 2008 18.34
by Nini
My fault, obviously 1,024 kilobytes and not bytes. MB's a whole different kettle of bits which is smaller by a factor of 10.
Re: Mebibyte
Posted: Sat 09 Aug, 2008 18.55
by Sput
Chalk that up as a double fail then: I was correcting you from b to B!
Re: Mebibyte
Posted: Sat 09 Aug, 2008 19.27
by Nini
See why MiB is much simpler?!
Re: Mebibyte
Posted: Sat 09 Aug, 2008 19.35
by Sput
That depends, VIrgin claim their connections are 10Mb but are in fact 10Mib!

Re: Mebibyte
Posted: Sat 09 Aug, 2008 19.52
by Nini
Not surprised, all this guff about "it's a stupid name" shouldn't decide the display of the correct amount of data a given product delivers.
That and Microsoft, it's always Microsoft.