[Deepsycher]

Like the problem I had last year with thinking of returning a Western Digital 320 gigabyte drive because it only had around 290 gigabyte, I have a new problem, an unsuspecting problem, a deliberate problem for DVD's discs!

A CD I have here states 700 megabytes on the packaging and is reported as 703 megabytes.

This Verbatim DVD that states 4.7 gigabyte only has 4,489. Not even close 4,700 megabytes.

I'd expected it to be the same; actually I don't expect the media to be larger than what the label states.

What I do expect is it to have a common measuring scale. That means that if they are going to use decimal for measuring space for whatever reason they should at least state that and the previous measurement for binary - That way people can think about that quicker before it causes a lot of confusion and high hopes won't be wasted.

Possible reasons I can think of stating space into a unit that exaggerates space:

(1) Without any thought for buyer's implications companies have decided to standardize units to 100... to make it look pretty like other similar measurements.

(2) Companies assume that not everybody will be using all of 4.7 gigabyte in binary space.
"Hello will this fit a 4.7 gigabyte movie, 4,700 megabytes on the dot?"
"Yes it certainly will."

"Erm... I have a problem I can only get 4,489 megabytes of space out of 4,700."
"Stupiiid! that is because it is in decimal."
"Why wasn't it like the..."
"Because the mass majority won't notice and most won't even get up to that space. Sorry we can't help you, you are not the mass majority"

(3) To boast to majorities out there how big their discs are and make the customers feel secure at the same time of imposing their ideas of how full a disc could get.
"Here we manufacturer our leading brand that achieves up to four! thousand! megabytes!"
"4,700 megabytes? Wow!"
"Yes that is a lot of space."
Are they missing the point, which measurements of the two?


They made matters worse by introducing that without stating the previous measurement on the CD. Why? Is it because of an attitude adopted by some business to demean home users?

Here are some facts:

Mobile phones:

Two years ago I witnessed that mobile phone companies can sign contracts to businesses so workers can have unlimited phone calls to other worker's mobiles. I phoned up and ask about that but they said it was only for businesses and not for home users, the lady even refused to give me a price and hanged up. The majority has to pay for it.

Cable connection:
My ISP refused to give me a static IP address even if I paid for one because I am a “home user.” I don’t know if this is a national standard but why is the upload speed not in the same ratio as the download speed?


Similar principles with power supply units:

Power supplies units and mostly cheap ones. Some think that their units won't get utilized to the full and if it does it will only be for a short amount of time. So lets install a cheaper transformer that can give out 75% less than stated and use capacitors that can shortly store that extra 25%. Then we'll only label the peak wattage (on some this is exaggerated as the real wattage) to make the consumer feel confident assuming they will never use it to the full. - This is could be known as the process of working around to round up sheep before they complain.


Generally some things have a catch to it but this doesn't state that.
Another kind of measurement written in the same unit?

Like a kitchen scale if another kind of measurement is introduced behind grams and kilograms but is not stated on the food packaging that is mislabelling and deception especially if the quantity was less. Here they are not giving what is stated in full to the buyer. They are giving people what they want by deception.

Now if these are true in respect they not making IT to suit the mass majority as I was repeatedly told. They ARE controlling the mass majority by deception on their way of one type measurement against another on a measurement that calculates less. - This could be known as controlling the sheep.

Simple it may seem, to have low expectations, and easier it is to make something appear the same when it isn’t, the person using it bares the brunt when it comes to heavily depending on a specified quantity they didn't get. I wonder if they would do the same to electrical appliances so the performance of lets say an electrical mower would be exaggerated to a higher number in watts.

What is next. Will they or have they started measuring bandwidth in decimal instead of binary too? Yep they seem to have done as I see in megabits. I am unsure about the names kilobits (kbps?) and kilobytes(kbs?).


On Wikipedia legal disputes:
http://en.wikipedia....#Legal_disputes
As they market media space in decimal that can confuse about anybody reading that label who might be using it for software that reads space in binary (I disagree with non technical people) why do they do it? Is it double standards? What was wrong with decimal measurements?

So I put it: How was I meant know that a 4,700 megabyte DVD is not measured the same as a CD if the units MB or GB are written exactly the same with no information to state this on the packaging such as GBD? That number is almost meaningless if something out of my control is going to state the space in binary. 4,489 megabytes is very useful to what I need to know.

Yet I thought those people were too good at over packaging and decoration.
Sorry about how long this is but I feel insulted by the inconvenience of what this decimal measurement has caused me. I only develop serious plans from non promises.


Any thoughts?

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 17 November 2006 - 10:30 PM

[Despondent]

Yes. You don't get what you paid for.


I ordered a sandwich and fries at McDonalds recently (the drive-thru specifically). I didn't buy a drink, because I was headed home and everything in this part of town has an automatic 10% tax anyway. Why pay a tax on an overpriced drink I don't even want to buy. "Buying a combo saves you money" the sign implies.

I get home and find there are no fries. Grr, I'm pissed, and Their telephone with the constant busy signal is (no surprise here) not helping.

So on my way back to work, I swing by the McDonalds and wait to approach the counter. I tell the girl about my no-fries incident, and she talks to someone, returns, and asks what size? I explain to her I'm not hungry now, thanks. I'd like my $1.10 back please. May I speak with your supervisor?

She confers with another dolt (insensitive term) and tells me "I can't do that. I can give you your fries". So I tell her, "If I don't get my dollar and ten cents, I'll never come to a McDonalds again."

She goes and gets some bothered woman who took my money an hour ago. As this person approaches the counter she digs into her pocket and pulls out some change and a dollar bill. "I'll pay him myself", she blurts out in resignation.

I motor away with the satisfaction one finds all-too-rare these days.

I'm actually Glad they forgot my fries!!!!

[Deepsycher]

Now I think that was an accident or incompetence of the staff there to forget about the fries compared to selling something and mislabelling the quantity against another commonly used measurement that does not suit "the mass majority" in every way knowing that it is confusing as the units are identical, I say is deliberate. Why go to all that bother? As it shows most are even willing to go to court rather than to revert back to the previous measurements.

Now if they were to say combo meals saves you money and you get a large amount of 100 fries, but they cut the fries in half (100 small fries) and didn't tell you then that is mislabeling and deceptive if they don't declare the differences between the two on the advertisment or menu.


An old problem I noticed in the past is a lack of communication between motherboard makers and case designers. They made the dimensions so stiff on some cases that when the board was put in over time it would bend and cause cracks.

An example I saw at a work place years ago is that when I pushed a faulty board down in a certain area of the board, it would turn on and work normally. If it was turned off, left for a while and turned on without anything pushing down, it won't boot at all, not even beeps. When I removed board from the casing I could hear crackling noises. The screws were so stiff not by how they were put in but by the angle and on the card slots. So I say the crack was near the bios chip.


Does this miscommunication exist between the software developers that calculates in binary and the hard disk makers that calculates in decimal?

If it is this is a new one.
I remember some hard disks having less space than stated in 2001. More and more companies are doing it. Now some flash memory and DVD's? I'd say it is deliberate as this wasn't a problem before.

Change in standards.
They talk about standardizing everything but the standards here don't match. Now I am going to see if there is a patch or tweak to report all drives and media in decimal form. I have an old Maxtor hard disk utility somewhere that reports the drive in binary form, now I got to see if their new utilities report them as decimal, then I think they all got together to plan this out.

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 18 November 2006 - 12:50 PM

[Dr Lecter]

It's probably got something to do with the way we mere humans expect the size to be. I suppose you know about how what you might call 1 GB isn't actually 1,000 MB, its 1,024 megabytes. Hence, these companies have a little either way, since for easy to understand stuff like "1GB MP3 Player!", rather than 1,024 megabytes. Hell, if they wanted to be really exact, they would have to say 1,073,741,824 bytes. Now, you try explaining to your random Joe on the street what he can do with 1,073,741,824 bytes. And of course, since they allow this kind of leeway (sp?) companies try to exploit it by saying that they just rounded it up and you have the good companies that give the lower on the label, but have higher in reality.

If you don't understand why all this stuff is true, then read up about storage sizes, it all derives from that computers use base 2, not base 10 like us. 1,024 is easier in base 2 because its just 2 to the power 10, but in base 10, there is no easy shorthand for 1,024. So we simply round.

But other than that, it just sounds like that company wants to make easy cash from a memory problem that they can just confuse a layman with to make him believe its not their fault, when the memory should never be lower than their estimate, if anything it should always be more.

This post has been edited by Dr Lecter: 20 November 2006 - 05:08 AM

[Deepsycher]

I already know it was done in base 2 and wasn't a problem for me but rounding it up to another base?

For a figure small enough like for a 40 gigabyte drive that reported 39.9 GB in drive utilities and 38.16 GB which can make a small difference then but that won't last when the gap there increases as space increases which has made a noticeable difference. I have checked and actually on a 320 gigabyte and I loose a bit over 20 gigabyte.


Creating an easy world by inaccurate, deceptive knowledge and methods?

If it was profitable I wonder if they would do that to something that uses hexidecimal if the quantity was even less. That is like them saying 2 cm is equal to 1 inch without indicating of it being rounded in the first place because it would be easier to understand for the average joe.

A random joe out there might be questioning why he has a 4.7 gigabyte DVD that only holds 4,489 megabytes. Like they might ask why they have chocolate milkshakes without any chocolate inside, tomato soups without any tomatoes inside, or even a strawberry jam cakes without any strawberries and jam inside. What they might fail to read, realize or to be told is that it is made up from chemicals that make it appear to taste that way. Like for railway lines. For example if they say danger 40,000 volts someone said that is useless. It is the amps that kill but that is all the average joes need to know.

If the average joe was to ask why he has less, I would expect them to be told that it uses another measurement called base 2.

Is it a fact that they are trying to make things simpler than they really ought to be?

The average joe might have lots to learn but that is going to a point where this could be meaningless as companies are making adaptions to the joe's lowest level of understanding that what we say, is what there is. So it could be the joe's duty to never know about the real facts but only keeping as much as possible to base 10 or averaged to a common unit. (Rounding up the sheep?)

It is as if they want to keep all the joes to that level of understanding which can cause further confusion as they move on to the next if these differences in knowledge are revealed at a later date and proven wrong. To me it is just a waste of time.

Just like branded or unbranded batteries with unbranded amps. They don't put how much quantity I am getting. Here we go again, "the majority or the joe doesn't need to know." So how are they to know how long a torch is to last for a critical event when using those batteries without a tester? Or to make predictions on how long something is going to last per hour.


They want to round these things up as to make it easy for the average joe but:

How come they were willing to introduce a 99 pence coin?
Ah on this one it might be motivated onto customers by shop's pricing habbits.

Why was or is gas nine tenth's of a cent?

Now how complicated would this be for the average joe?


Could this be the traits of Capitalism?

I have one good solution:

GBD Gigabyte Decimal 1,000,000,000
GBB Gigabyte Binary 1,073,741,824

Shortened on a DVD disc:
4,7 GBD
4,489 GBB

On the packaging they can state the differences somewhere and that could solve a lot of problems so that the average joe can learn something new and can't complain. It would make sense because they can see either measurement used.

Unlikely I think: It might be a bad idea because any manipulators in control of this would no longer have nothing manipulate and customers would be able to make meaningful demands.

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 20 November 2006 - 08:09 AM

[Gobbler]

I don't know what you guys are talking about, we're already distinguishing between Gigabyte and Gibibyte. Where's the problem? You get what you're paying for.

[Deepsycher]

I don't know what you guys are talking about, we're already distinguishing between Gigabyte and Gibibyte. Where's the problem? You get what you're paying for.

Thank you. I didn't see Gibibyte unit before.

Well here is the problem:





See?

It says 1 gigabyte so 1000 megabytes is literally on the flash memory.
So if it is 1024 megabytes technically shouldn't it be a gibibyte or short for GiB?




Now the units here are conflicting. Shouldn't it be GiB?


Now as above here the units are reported as GB and not GiB.





Here this drive was sold to me AS a 4 gigabyte drive. The space is stated a little over and shown in the narrow picture above as disk 1 4.00 GB. So shouldn't the right unit 4 GiB?

In fact it is 4.26 gigabyte on the Seagate site.
http://www.seagate.c...i/st15150w.html

Go and look up and some state it as 4 GB.
For example:
Look for this on the "ST1510W GB" raidtex site and they mention 1510N AND W as 4 GB:
http://www.raidtec.c...csi_drives.html


My next task now is to see if Linux reports drives in binary or in decimal.

Correct me if I am wrong, I have been caught up in this confusion but I literally think of quantities near the stated value. I didn't know this all went back from punch cards.

This post has been edited by Deepsycher: 20 November 2006 - 12:53 PM