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Re: Question: SSD speed

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On Thu, Oct 08, 2020 at 01:27:15PM -0500, Leslie Rhorer wrote:
>	Well, what, really, is wrong with pedantry?

It makes conversation with humans harder with no corresponding benefit.

>	Not only that, but the discrepancy grows exponentially with the order 
>of magnitude.  The difference between 1 KB and 1 KiB is only 24 bytes, 
>or 2.4%.  The difference between 1 TB and 1 TiB is 9.9%, which is 
>getting to be pretty significant.  That, not to mention the fact 93 
>GiB is a pretty good chunk of storage.

And how, exactly, does that matter? If you're on your own system and 
looking at output from the same set of programs the units don't actually 
matter at all--you could look and see that you need one foosbit of space 
and have two foosbits and be fine. Units only really matter if you're 
talking to someone else or otherwise taking information out of its 
original context. But I can't even think of a situation where I needed 
to tell someone on a mailing list that I had n TsomethingBsomething of 
space. Context is important. Within the context we're discussing, rough 
order of magnitude is more than precise enough. For humans a 5.4TB drive 
and a 4.9TiB drive both round to 5T. Relative values are generally much 
more important in this context: what percentage of the drive is used? 
what's the rate of consumption? Can debian 11 fit on a 5T drive? If 
you operate in some domain where you need much more precision then go 
ahead and do you, but it pretty much certainly isn't going to be on 
debian-user. 

At any rate here's the cold hard truth: even if you are exchanging 
information and it needs to be precise, humans being what they are it 
won't help you one bit if you're personally pedantic about MiB vs Mb 
because *you can't assume the other side means the same thing*. You'll 
have to establish a baseline in every situation where it matters. But in 
a situation where it doesn't matter, doing so is just a waste of 
time--it won't change the world or human nature.

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Question: SSD speed Hans <hans.ullrich@loop.de> - 2020-10-07 10:50 +0200
  Re: Question: SSD speed Georgi Naplatanov <gosho@oles.biz> - 2020-10-07 11:40 +0200
  Re: Question: SSD speed Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> - 2020-10-07 12:00 +0200
  Re: Question: SSD speed "Jeremy Nicoll" <jn.ml.dbn.25@letterboxes.org> - 2020-10-07 12:00 +0200
    Re: Question: SSD speed Sven Hartge <sven@svenhartge.de> - 2020-10-07 12:50 +0200
      Re: Question: SSD speed Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2020-10-07 15:10 +0200
        Re: Question: SSD speed Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-10-08 11:00 +0200
          Re: Question: SSD speed "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2020-10-08 12:00 +0200
            [SOLVED] Re: Question: SSD speed Hans <hans.ullrich@loop.de> - 2020-10-08 12:20 +0200
            Re: Question: SSD speed Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2020-10-08 15:20 +0200
              Re: Question: SSD speed "Thomas Schmitt" <scdbackup@gmx.net> - 2020-10-08 16:00 +0200
                Re: Question: SSD speed Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2020-10-08 16:20 +0200
                Re: Question: SSD speed Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2020-10-08 17:40 +0200
                Re: Question: SSD speed Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2020-10-08 17:50 +0200
                Re: Question: SSD speed Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2020-10-08 18:00 +0200
              Re: Question: SSD speed Leslie Rhorer <lesrhorer@att.net> - 2020-10-08 20:30 +0200
                Re: Question: SSD speed Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2020-10-08 20:40 +0200
                Re: Question: SSD speed Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2020-10-08 21:20 +0200
                Re: Question: SSD speed Leslie Rhorer <lesrhorer@att.net> - 2020-10-09 02:00 +0200
                Re: Question: SSD speed Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2020-10-09 02:20 +0200
                Re: Question: SSD speed Leslie Rhorer <lesrhorer@att.net> - 2020-10-09 02:40 +0200
                Re: Question: SSD speed Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2020-10-09 00:20 +0200
                Re: Question: SSD speed Leslie Rhorer <lesrhorer@att.net> - 2020-10-09 02:20 +0200
                Re: Question: SSD speed Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2020-10-09 15:50 +0200
    Re: Question: SSD speed Alberto Sentieri <22t@tripolho.com> - 2020-10-07 13:30 +0200
      Re: Question: SSD speed "Jeremy Nicoll" <jn.ml.dbn.25@letterboxes.org> - 2020-10-07 14:50 +0200
        Re: Question: SSD speed Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-10-08 10:50 +0200
    Re: Question: SSD speed Hans <hans.ullrich@loop.de> - 2020-10-07 18:50 +0200
      Re: Question: SSD speed "Jeremy Nicoll" <jn.ml.dbn.25@letterboxes.org> - 2020-10-07 18:50 +0200
      Re: Question: SSD speed Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> - 2020-10-07 19:50 +0200
        [SOLVED] Re: Question: SSD speed Hans <hans.ullrich@loop.de> - 2020-10-07 20:00 +0200
        [SOLVED] Re: Question: SSD speed Hans <hans.ullrich@loop.de> - 2020-10-08 09:10 +0200
  Re: Question: SSD speed Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> - 2020-10-08 11:00 +0200

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