Talk:Floppy disk/Archive 3

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Re: Drive Letter part of Background

The assigning of drive designators, A:, B:, df0 is an OS function and I question whether it ought to be in the FDD article at all. Furthermore the section is not too accurate, it sort of mixes up DOS and UNIX without being too clear about who does what assignments and what choices there are. Example: in MSDOS the FDD at physical location 0 on the FDD cable is A:, no choice. Other systems do it different ways and change over time. I propose striking the entire paragraph, perhaps just leaving a simple single sentence along the lines that one should look to the specific OS for information has to how a system addresses and accesses a FDD Tom94022 (talk) 08:27, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Just to make the situation more complex, Atari 16-bit computers followed the DOS convention (main internal drive A:, secondary external floppy B:, then any hard discs, ROM cartridges, or ASCI DMA (SCSI-like) storage devices (CDROM, Zip etc) being C: upwards ... in fact carts were lowercase c: and could co-exist with hard disc C:, to make it worse) ... Macintosh clearly went off in it's own direction ... C64 had you accessing the drive hardware address directly ... and I totally don't know what the Amiga and Acorn did, but I bet it's even wierder. Best to leave it out, other than maybe the briefest of footnotes saying that e.g. they're typically A: and B: in PC systems or df0 in Unix, hence hard discs not starting as the lowest-number/letter devices, with other systems using still different arrangements... given that this is supposed to be an article about the media format itself more than anything. 82.46.180.56 (talk) 04:42, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Commodore Amiga used abbreviations: df = disk floppy and dh = disk hard, so you'd have dh0: dh1: df0: df1: as your designations. Other possibilities were ram: for tempory storage of files and prt: to dump a file directly to the printer. ---- Theaveng (talk) 13:22, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

History split

I made a separate article about it and was wondering if i should erase the part of this article that I copied to 8- inch floppy disc. Also, is this plagerism or not because I copied it from this article and made a whole new one. Although the whole thing is just the same; Wikpedia. I only did it because there was a note when I edited this article saying it was 84 KB long and if someone could split it so I did. is this OK?

Tired, --RayquazaDialgaWeird2210 (talk) 17:55, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe there's no problem copying/pasting that stuff into a new 8-inch floppy article and deleting what you copied from the original article, but two notes come to mind:

1. Remember to write a brief entry on the 8-inch where it was originally and include a link to the 8-inch floppy article.
2. I think one of the bigger problems may be notability. Why is the 8-inch so important as to deserve its own article? Personally, sure, I have no problem with it, but other editors may disagree. Casull 23:06, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

It seems strange to make a separate article about the 8" FDD since it was the first in a continuum. Also, as near as I can tell you haven't added much additional material. Finally, I note the whole history section is being considered as a separate section (which I oppose) so copying one section doesn't seem to make much sense. Why did you do it?

If you are trying to simplify the article, it would seem more appropriate to pull the many flexible media devices out to their own articles, for example, all of the so called Floppy replacements were never, close to capable of replacing floppy disks. Tom94022 (talk) 03:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

As the "proposed split" tag suggested, it should really be the entire History section that should be considered for a possible split. I've shifted the tagging accordingly. Feel free to chime in, anyone. If this goes unanswered for another few days I think we can just perform the split. It would really cut down this very long article nicely, I think. Equazcion •✗/C • 03:33, 28 Apr 2008 (UTC)

I oppose splitting history from the article. There are other and better ways to shorten the article, such as, pulling all the non-mainstream material out into separate articles. Tom94022 (talk) 03:59, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Splitting out one particular size/format makes no sense as this is a Floppy disk article, not just a 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 floppy article. I have added some info to the 8" section based on my expereince at Datapoint Corp in an effort to expand the section, if only a bit. Ken (talk) 18:35, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Thickness

I'm missing information on the thickness of e.g the Sony 3.5" disk. This would be useful for comparision. e.g: "storage capacity of a DVD equals a stack of floppies X cm high." EverGreg (talk) 15:04, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

According to ECMA-100, the thickness is 3.3 mm Tom94022 (talk) 19:52, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! :) EverGreg (talk) 19:14, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

And the approx thickness of an 8" or 5.25"? I've been assuming about 2mm, in the absence of raw materials to test, as it seems like a reasonable amount for the materials involved and their properties. That's the disk, in its flexible sheath, at rest with no weight on it. A stack of 20 of them would probably be less than 4cm high because the slightly springy covers would be compressed? 193.63.174.11 (talk) 18:28, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Eclipse

I read note 34 and it didn't seem to say that floppy discs did not offer protection, only that the quality of the image was pretty poor. Change it? --58.104.192.231 (talk) 03:40, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Port

Hi! I have a question: a typical floppy drive connects to what type of port? (Serial, Parallel etc.) If I want to connect it to a serial/parallel port, do I need an adapter?--18jahremädchen (talk) 11:53, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Except for USB and SCSI floppy drives (SUN Microsystems used 1.44M SCSI drives in many of their SparcStation systems), they connect to a floppy port. The signaling and control system used by the PC was the most common, also used by many of the 1980's micro and home computers and still present on almost all PC (x86 CPU) motherboards. Apple's computers always used a proprietary interface with fewer wires than the PC style. Commodore's drives (the 15xx series) didn't use an interface, they used a separate computer in the housing, directly controlling the drive mechanism and communicating with the computer via a serial cable. Amiga drives used their own proprietary system, but there is a simple method to connect an Amiga drive to a PC's parallel port for 'ripping' entire disks to one of the disk image formats. This cannot be used for writing Amiga disks, not without more complex electronics and special software. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bizzybody (talk • contribs) 21:24, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

And the atari ones presumably used yet a different standard again. Though internally their 3.5" drives used much the same connector as the PC ones (with a couple of reversed pins IIRC, just to be awkward), their external 3.5 and 5.25" ones connected via a multi-pin (11? 13? 15?) circular DIN plug. Which doesn't seem like enough, really, but it worked.

Ultimately the best answer would be to say that there's no one main standard, but the de facto one - by dint of being by far the most popular - is an internal 26 (? I think...) line 3-device (host, drive 0, drive 1) unterminated bus using a ribbon cable and HDD-style pin and socket-block connectors. It's not really like anything you'd recognise as a normal peripheral bus as it's meant for permanently mounted equipment. In fact it's almost entirely single-use, unless you count it being put into service for 5.25", 3.5" and some kinds of lower-speed tape backup drives, e.g. QICs (which would run the floppy controller at its maximum speed, far beyond what an average disk could sustain) 193.63.174.11 (talk) 18:34, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

8-inch DSDD vs DSSD Capacity

The Disk formats table says the 8" DSDD capacity was 1.2MB, 20% more than twice the capacity of DSSD. I think the 1.2MB figure refers to MS-DOS 2.11 formatting. I suspect this inconsistency in the table is because DSSD was a short-lived product line whereas DSDD had a long life into the mid-1980s during which MS-DOS became the predominant format. When DSDD was formatted under CP/M-80 (e.g. on the Xerox 820) the DSDD capacity was c. 980 KB). - Pointillist (talk) 01:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

• I've checked this and corrected the Disk formats table. - Pointillist (talk) 01:25, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Tape backups

The article doesn't mention any of the multitude of tape backup drives that used the PC style floppy controller interface. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bizzybody (talk • contribs) 21:25, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

>> why should it? The article is about the floppy, not the many uses for the interface. Would seem more appropriate to include your info on the tape backup drive article.Ken (talk) 18:37, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Yet more formats and software

Microsoft's DMF disks could be copied using a combination of the DOS programs FDFORMAT (to make blank 1.68M disks) and COPYQM to copy the originals. SH-CopyStar (still available here http://lars-schenk.com/history/1994-sh-copystar )could also be used to create the blank disks, as well as even higher capacity disks by adding more than the standard number of tracks and/or sectors. IBM used a 1.72M XDF or Extended Density Format for the distribution disks for OS/2 Warp 3.0. That version of OS/2 included a utility for making backup copies and the user manual strongly urged the user to make backups before installing OS/2. (Totally contrary to Microsoft policy with Windows 95 where you had to buy another copy of the disks should they get damaged.) The utility could be used to create blank XDF disks, which were useless because OS/2 3.0 was incapable of writing to that format. (My personal experience with OS/2 Warp 3.0 installed from floppies.) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bizzybody (talk • contribs) 22:05, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Current availability

Is there any solution for using 5.25" floppies on a modern PC? It seems to me like nearly if not all the 5.25" drives ever built used the old slot-card interface which motherboards have not carried since the time of the 486. It doesn't seem like anyone has manufactured an external solution either. I've seen some people make their own hardware hacks but that's neither here nor there. What options does the average user have if they want to access an old library of 5.25" floppies with their current PC? Ham Pastrami (talk) 02:14, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

5.25" floppy drive will generally work in any system that supports a 3.5" floppy. Motherboard-side connectors are the same and the only difference is the the connector on the drive side - you need a proper cable. That's it. --Aleksandar Šušnjar (talk) 02:43, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you mean. The picture of the cable on this page[1] is pretty self-explanatory. If someone can make a freely licensed equivalent I'd consider adding it to the article. Ham Pastrami (talk) 05:59, 12 July 2008 (UTC)

Yep, just hunt around on eBay. I had a 486 and a Pentium at LEAST which came with 5-connector floppy cables (a "modern" style at the host end, then two pairs of 3.5" and 5.25" connector blocks further up the cable, giving you a choice of combinations), and another with a 1+1 (one 3.5" device block halfway up, and a 5.25" on the distal end, acknowledging that in both tower and desktop cases the 5.25" was more likely to be further away from the motherboard). Nothing so special about them, they just faded away as it was a needless expense to keep providing anything more than a host + single 3.5" block cable when a single 3.5" was all the vast majority of users had. 193.63.174.11 (talk) 18:39, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Error in Measurements? for instance the 3½-inch floppy, which is actually 90 mm) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.104.110.234 (talk) 06:11, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Kibibytes, and so on

• Contended revert: [2]

This editor made an edit which I felt had numerous problems. Attempting to follow best editing practice, I improved upon rather than reverted their edit. This editor has restored their preferred version of the text containing all of the original problems:-

1. The term "kilo-kibibytes" is (as far as I know) original research and has never been published;
2. The revert replaced MoS-compliant multiplication symbols with the * symbol (which only means multiply in certain computer languages) and removed non-breaking spaces from around those symbols;
3. The Manual of Style Wikipedia:MOSNUM#Quantities_of_bytes_and_bits refers to "binary" and "decimal" schemes, not "Base 2" and "Base 10".
4. The edit contained some unsourced editorialising to the effect that non-SI units are "confusing" and "incorrect".
5. The terms "kibibytes" and "mebibytes" have rarely if ever been used to describe floppy disk capacities, and particularly not by disk manufacturers on packaging or disks. The MoS has the following guidelines regarding these terms:

“ The IEC standard prefixes kibi-, mebi-, gibi-, etc. (symbols Ki, Mi, Gi, etc.) are not familiar to most Wikipedia readers, so are not to be used except under the following circumstances:

• when the article is on a topic where the majority of cited sources use the IEC prefixes,
• when directly quoting a source that uses the IEC prefixes,
• in articles specifically about or explicitly discussing the IEC prefixes.

”

In short, I believe the change to have been incorrect in every major respect. Rather than edit-warring, I would like to hear other editors' opinions on the subject. Having established a consensus, hopefully we can move forward with the best version of the text. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 17:47, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

1. Kilo-kibibytes is NOT original research. Kilo is defined by the SI metric system as "1000" and "kibi" is defined as "1024". This is strictly defined, and I am using it in that fashion. A floppy is 1.44 × 1000 × 1024 bytes. That's 1.44 × kilo × kibi × bytes per metric usage. Basic math.

2. I apologize that I erased your multiplication symbols with *. It was not intentional. Honestly I didn't even notice the × symbol had been added, else I would have kept it.

3. "Binary" means base 2. "Decimal" means base 10. This too is a strictly defined mathematical standard, and my usage was correct. As for the manual of style, it's a *guideline* not a strait-jacket and allows authors to adjust usage, especially when referring to math and trying to explain complex ideas to non-mathematical readers.

4. Actually what I said was that "1.44MB is confusing for users" because it is an incorrect label. (The correct capacity is either 1.47 MB or 1.41 MiB, not 1.44.)

5. "Rarely used" is not the same as never. The 1970s and 80s-era floppies are a case where manufacturers DID use kibibytes, sometimes erroneously (see points 4 and 1).

The reason I reverted your edit is because it failed to explain what 1.44 MB means on floppies, and it should be explained in the article. I consider it especially important to point-out to readers that the 1.44 MB imprint is NOT CORRECT. If you can think of a better way to explain it, that's fine with me, but to erase it completely is a mistake IMHO. ---- Theaveng (talk) 23:41, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Why use kilo-kibibytes in preference to, for example, kibi-kilobytes? Does any reliable source use either unit? If not, the term is original research. Similarly, unless a source is provided showing that manufacturers used the term "kibibytes" in labelling floppy disks, it's original research to say that they did. I've rewritten the paragraph to, again, remove the "kibi" units as recommended by the Manual of Style, and I've added a link to Megabyte where the various definitions are documented. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 20:01, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

kibi-kilobytes would be incorrect usage, since the floppy disks do not use kilobytes (1000 bytes). ---- Theaveng (talk) 12:00, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

You seem to have repeatedly missed the point. Let me try to make it clearer.

The terms "kibibytes" and "mebibytes" should not be used.

I've given reasons for this already, based on the Manual of Style and our policy on original research. I have provided several versions of the text that comply with the relevant guidelines and policies. If you wish to attempt to rewrite this section again, please do so in accordance with policy and guidelines - in other words, without using these units. Thank you. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 14:15, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Control your anger. The Manual of Style also reads: "Consistency within each article is desirable, but the need for consistency may be balanced with other considerations." And: Where consistency is not possible, specify wherever there is a deviation from the primary definition," which I have done. In this case, because floppy sectors are divided into base 2 multiples, the use of base 2 terminology like "kibi" or "mebi" is appropriate. ---- Theaveng (talk) 15:52, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

(un-dent)My anger is fully under control, thank you, and has been throughout. My use of bold text was not an attempt to express frustration but to communicate clearly a point which you have, apparently, repeatedly failed to grasp.

• The Manual of Style says: "KB may be used in a decimal or binary sense... do not use kibibyte unless the sources do."
• User Theaveng says: "we should use kibibyte because the unit is being used in a binary sense."

As "other considerations" go, that one looks particularly weak to me. I could continue to revert your changes to attempt to resolve further the problems that your changes have introduced, but will instead await a third opinion on the subject. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 16:49, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence that there is consensus for the wording you quote from WP:MOSNUM? Thunderbird2 (talk) 17:40, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

15:52, 11 August 2008 EdJohnston (Talk | contribs | block) blocked Thunderbird2 (Talk | contribs) (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of 24 hours ‎ (Edit warring: 3RR on Binary prefix) (Unblock) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BlockIP"

That wasn't the neutral third opinion I was hoping for. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 17:47, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Well I'm not going to use "kilobyte" because it's not accurate, and as an engineer, I MUST be accurate. It's part of my job. The term "kibibyte" is the most-accurate measurement for how a 3.5" floppy is divided into sectors and tracks, and you can't replace it with "kilo" just because you don't like the sound of "kibi". As for your style manual, I can not lay my hand on any part that forbids the usage of the kibi, mebi, or gibi SI standard measurements. Can you? ----- ----- I'm just trying to be accurate, whereas you seem to prefer INaccuracy. You can't measure a foot and label it "meter" just because you don't like Old Style English measurements. Neither can you label 64 kibibytes of floppy as 64 kilobytes without notation that you're mixing base 10 and base 2 definitions (as is the case with the improperly labeled 1.44 MB floppies). ----- ----- The other thing I'm trying to do is explain a difficult concept (what 1.44 MB means) to a lay reader, and the only way to do that is to provide consistency of units throughout. "kilo" for 1000 and "kibi" for 1024. Your recent edit "either 1.41 MB or 1.47 MB" indicates a disk could be both 1.41 megabytes and 1.47 megabytes at the same time. Not only is that an impossibility, but it's extremely confusing for our readers. We should try to avoid confusion. ---- Theaveng (talk) 17:52, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:MOSNUM#Quantities_of_bytes_and_bits - as requested, and posted earlier, and quoted from earlier. Please do read it through this time. It is very sensible and practical and offers clear guidance on how to document this issue. Also, please try not to remove other editors' talk page comments, as you did here. Thank you. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 18:08, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I fail to see the relevance of the block. The fact of the matter is there that you have provided no evidence of consensus. And that's because there isn't any consensus that wasn't accompanied by bullying, ridicule and assumptions of bad faith in bucketfuls, all of which continue unabated. There is a case for deprecating IEC prefixes and a case for not doing so. It is time the matter was debated in a constructive manner. Thunderbird2 (talk) 18:31, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm surprised you'd post a link to that MOSNUM debate here. You really don't come out of it looking good. Regardless of all that, the guideline states what it does. Verifiability policy states what it does. We should edit in accordance with guidelines and policies unless there are good reasons to do otherwise. Furthermore, this article is not the place to discuss changes to guidelines or policies; nor is it to be the venue of a guerilla war to reintroduce deprecated units. The fact that the article currently contains the term "kibibyte" proves nothing beyond the fact that User:Theaveng is more willing to revert than I am.

The version of the article after this edit is not inaccurate, ambiguous, misleading or confusing to the reader. It clearly and unambiguously shows the exact capacity of the disk and why it was labelled 1.44MB, it explains that the root of the issue is the unusual definition of the megabyte used, and it illustrates how the disks would have been labelled if the manufacturers had used the other definitions of the megabyte (of course, even if they had used the binary definition, they wouldn't have used the term "MiB" since it hadn't been invented yet). SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 18:59, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

The consensus on WP:MOSNUM is that IEC prefixes are not to be used. The consensus is linked in the guideline text. Any edit to add IEC prefixes to this article is editing against that consensus. The guideline does give examples on how to disambiguate without using IEC prefixes, if anyone feels the need to disambiguate the terms on this article then use those methods such as stating the exact number of bytes or use power notation. Note for Theaveng and Thunderbird2: This means not using IEC prefixes. Fnagaton 05:06, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

• I agree completely with both SHEFFIELDSTEEL and Fnagaton here. It doesn’t matter to me if the quantities are spelled out to the individual byte (1,421,240 bytes) or 1.4 MB, or anything else. What MOSNUM requires is that KiB and MiB shall not be used  because everyone else on this pale blue dot uses the conventional binary prefixes. I am referring to all the computer manufacturers when they communicate to their customer base, all the general-interest computer magazines when they communicate to their readership, and every general-purpose encyclopedia and dictionary.

  We can’t have a bastard mess on Wikipedia where some articles use “MB” to mean one thing, and a different meaning in another. We also can’t have some articles using “MiB” (like “256 MiB of RAM”) and still others using “256 MB of RAM.” Our readership does not recognize the IEC prefixes so they are not to be used here; that is just Wikipedia:Use common sense. The IEC prefixes are to only be used in articles that are about or are directly discussing the IEC prefixes. Please, no edit warring on this issue. If there is ambiguity in what is meant, clarify what is meant in a footnote and use conventional terminology readers recognize. Greg L (talk) 17:58, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't know how to explain the discrepancy of why 1.44 MB is printed on the label, when a floppy's actual size is 1.47 megabytes. Readers will naturally want to know how the error occurred, and I don't know how to explain that error without explaining the differences between Base 10 and Base 2 terminology (kilobytes and kibibytes).

Also: How do we editors explain the discrepancy of having a "1000 megabyte drive" (according to the manufacturer), but it reads as 953 megabytes according to your Windows or Mac PC? Again, I don't know how to explain that to the readers except by using Base 10 and Base 2 terminology (megabytes and mebibytes). ----- Theaveng (talk) 12:21, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

• Being able to point to ambiguity in the magnitudes of units of measure is no excuse to begin using terminology that our readers don’t even recognize. If there is an important mismatch or ambiguity, clarify it using units of measure permitted per MOSNUM please (which requires that editors adhere to the terminology used by everyone else in the real world). You sound sharp enough to figure out how to do that, Theaveng. Greg L (talk) 21:59, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Theaveng, welcome to the passionate discussion of the use of IEC Binary Prefixes. FWIW, the MOSNUM clearly states

Editors should follow it, except where common sense and the occasional exception will improve an article.

The FDD article IMO is an exception that can be improved by such usage - so the MOSNUM argument is without merit. Likewise the arguments that other publications do not use binary prefixes and/or readers are unfamiliar with binary prefixes are without merit for this article given the massive confusion over the meaning of MB. After all, the binary prefix concept is very easy to learn and it really is the purpose of an encyclopedia to educate. Unfortunately Greg L and Fnagaton will voluminously disagree with this opinion and, falsely, IMO, argue that a consensus has been agreed upon to not use Binary Prefixes and then act to suppress any usage herein. So stay with the discussion and lets see if we can bring some sense to back to MOSNUM. Tom94022 (talk) 00:37, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

When a user, like Tom above, tries to misrepresent the positions of other editors instead of providing any valid argument that demonstrates why the consensus for the MOSNUM guideline specifically states that IEC prefixes are not to be used. It is the purpose of an encyclopedia to educate how the world really is and not how a minority point of view (IEC) thinks the world should be. Since guidelines and policies (WP:RS, WP:SOAP, WP:CRYSTAL, WP:UNDUE) tell us that we use the sources that are relevant to the article and those sources mostly don't use IEC then there is no reason compatible with policy to use IEC here. This is consistent with existing policies and guidelines on Wikipedia already mentioned on the MOSNUM talk page. Tom, WP:ILIKEIT is not a valid reason to use IEC prefixes here on Wikipedia. Fnagaton 02:21, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

• Tom94022, your views have been heard on MOSNUM and the majority opinion was that it would be extremely unwise for Wikipedia to begin using terminology that is unused in the real world and which our readership doesn’t even recognize. The most basic of principles of technical writing is to do so with minimal confusion. To argue that Wikipedia should use units of measure that the rest of the real world isn’t using is as logical as my stating that your arguments make about 2 nanouno of sense.

  Further, Wikipedia-wide style guidelines are not to be debated here. If you want to argue whether or not this article is in compliance with current MOSNUM guidelines, fine. If you want to argue that the guideline on MOSNUM is unwise or fatally flawed, MOSNUM has this subpage dedicated for that purpose; take it up there please. Greg L (talk) 04:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I used the terms kibi and kilobyte simply to clarify the point I was making. That's all. If people want to assume I'm an asshole, fine, but my intent was purely professional (I'm an engineer; precision matters). ---- Theaveng (talk) 14:47, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Yr no a-hole. IMO IEC binary prefixes are an excellent way to do what you were trying to do. Please join the discussion on the MOSNUM and see if we can overturn the filibusterer being conducted by GJ, Fnag et al. Tom94022 (talk) 01:02, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Theaveng, we are always on the lookout for productive editors to continue to valid discussion on WP:MOSNUM, however do not follow the example of ad hominem demonstrated by Tom.Fnagaton 16:31, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

I also don't think, that you are an a-hole, but I also don't think, it is necesarry to introduce new words to clarify things, because if it is not clear from content, if you define 1KB as 1000 Bytes or 1024 Bytes, you can still use footnotes or something like this to make it clear. --MrBurns (talk) 11:20, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Minor quibble about false claims

"because everyone else on this pale blue dot uses the conventional binary prefixes."

This statement is completely inaccurate. If I buy a 100 gigabyte hard drive, I'm not going to get 104.9 billion bytes (base 2). Instead I will get 100.0 billion bytes (base 10) therefore the claim "everyone" uses binary is complete and utter..... falsehood. ---- Theaveng (talk) 17:36, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

• Not unlike like Fnag and GL use of 7-3 "consensus" while ignoring real 0 - 11 consensus. Tom94022 (talk) 18:25, 17 November 2008 (UTC)

Since the link Tom has tried to cite above is much older than the newer consensus (with strong arguments that refutes the link Tom posted) linked in the guideline then Tom is misrepresenting the actual consensus. Fnagaton 16:33, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

That's a misunderstanding, I think, rather than a false claim. I read the statement as "everyone else... uses the conventional (as opposed to IEC) binary prefixes", conventional prefixes being kilo-, mega- etc and IEC prefixes being kibi-, mebi- etc. That says nothing about whether the decimal or binary meanings are being used, which was the subject of Theaveng's post. SHEFFIELDSTEEL^TALK 19:57, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

• You know, if all general-interest computer magazines can figure out ways to communicate to their readership on topics such as RAM, cache sizes, and hard drive capacity and do so using only the conventional prefixes, I’m sure we can follow the techniques they employ. We can’t be adopting IEC prefixes, which no computer manufacturers use when communicating to their customer base, nor any general-interest computer magazine when communicating to their readership.

  If we’re all such smart editors who are more experienced and knowledgeable and wiser than professional copy editors at the computer magazines, I’m quite sure we can find ways to communicate to our readership without using terminology that all agreed is not even recognized by our readership. To those editors who state “that’s impossible,” me thinks thou doth protest too much. To those editors who want Wikipedia to lead the way in showing the world the *Path To a New and Brighter Future* and expect that everyone will follow our lead, I think that is just so extraordinarily naïve; we used the IEC prefixes (inconsistently at that) here on Wikipedia for three years and the world is embracing them no better today than ten years ago when the IEC first blew their proposal out their butt.

  The IEC proposal on the binary prefixes is a failed proposal; just like IUPAP’s uno proposal. The only difference here, is that IUPAP had the wisdom to throw in the towel on their proposal; the IEC still apparently hopes their idea will one day catch on with the computer manufacturers. No it won’t and our confusing our readership here won’t make the computer manufacturers see the error of their ways. Greg L (talk) 19:08, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Goddamn, until I started reading the discussion pages on wikipedia, I didn't get how Isrealis and Palestinians couldn't just sit down and talk things out sensibly and rationally. Youse people is quibbling about utter obsolete bullshit, imagine what "discussion pages" of the osloaccordsapedia.org would look like! No wonder people are strapping on explosives or shelling gaza.