1) I don't know...

2) It doesn't [censored] matter!

3) It's exactly 4 GiB, or 4096 MiB, how hard is that?

4) I don't use 32 bits pointer anymore anyway.

See, it's very easy: just add a little 'i' in there, and it works exactly like before, just unambiguously.

Over 300 posts and counting, and all because people can't type 'i' to make sure there's no possible mistake... The world is doomed, I tell you, doomed! :-)

Well, not at first, 'cause a megabyte (of whatever size) of memory didn't exist yet.

Second, it was wrong but easy. It's still wrong and for memory, it's still easy. That's what it's still in use for memory, and is being ditched from everywhere else.

The main problem was that the binary prefix came too late. Old habits die hard. But as AA proves, it's possible to ditch a bad habit if you really want to. It's a matter of willpower. Yes we can, if I may so bold as to say so.

And the fact that you're the new kid on the block is important because...?

And this matters because...? The SI prefix are used to denotes quantity. Except for the total size of semi-conductor memory (and sub-elements thereof), those quantities are usually completely unrelated to power of 2.

Disk sizes are not a power of 2. Files stored on them are even more arbitrary in size. Same for memory requirements of various codes. Heck, once upon a time, HPC programs would overallocate arrays to avoid power of 2 allocation (multiple of the page size wrecked havoc on direct-mapped caches)!

Frequency are not power of 2. Your 3 GHz processors runs at 3*1000^3 Hz (well, probably not very precisely :-), not 3.22*1000^3 HZ. Same goes for the (directly related) bandwidth. Latency doesn't even come close.

Heck, these days, even memory buses are moving away from strict power of 2: GTX 275 have a 448 bits-wide memory bus, Core i7's can be described as 192 bits.

And for the few cases where it matters (usually not end-user visible) that's what the freaking/frelling/rutting/smegging/[pick you favorite SciFi show euphemism] binary units are for !

(I'm not going to try to make sense from the rest of your post, because I can't see how the number of bits in a bytes is related to the discussion in any way).

No, it's not. SI uses the metre for length measurement, and nothing else. You can alter it with the various prefixes, and there's is only one thousand meters in a kilometre, not twenty-four more.

The "inch" from the United States customary units is defined as 2.54 centimetres, but it doesn't make it part of the SI..

(sigh).

Your laptop doesn't have 3 Gigabytes. It has 3 Gibibytes. That's 3221225472 bytes, or a bit more than 3.22 Gigabytes. Think of it that way: you got 7.37% more memory than you paid for. You ripped them off! Happy now?

The fact that both the salesdrones and the buyers are ignorant doesn't change the definition of "Giga" and "Gibi".

So far, only the hard drive manufacturers have catched up. When will the "3.22 gigabytes of memory!" advertisements show up?

Actually, people who use the metric system outweigh people using imperial by a wide margin. In my entourage, nobody except for geeks knows how long an inch is. As you can guess, I don't live in the US. As for the marketing: yes, marketdroids will do anything to sell. We all know that. But when "anything" becomes "make use of an established international standard", how can we protest?

And C.S. is at fault there. Why did it hijack prefixes to make them mean something else? It was stupid from the beginning. For Kilo I can understand, the error is small ; but from Mega onward, it was just plain laziness. That's why I try to use binary prefixes these days. Atonement :-)

Obligatory old timer anecdote: remember those "1.2MB" and "1.44MB" floppy disk? Worst of them all: the megabytes here were neither 1024^2 nor 10^6, but 1024*10^3, as in 1200 KiB and 1440 KiB.

The SI prefixes have been around for nearly 5 decades, and have a specific meaning used by everybody. Every scientist uses them in one way or another, and for every last one of of them, they have the same meaning.

Why can't we, the C.S. people, accept that?

Giga is 10^9. It has been 10^9 since it was created. It was never, ever meant to be anything but 10^9.

If you want to talk about 1024^3, then it's Gibi. Gibi is 2^30 since it was created. It was never, ever meant to be anything but 2^30.

Get over it.

(and yes, I try to always use GiB whenever it's appropriate).

> I originally thought this was breaking 18 U.S.C. Chapter 119, 2510 to 2522 (?), but no.

Sorry, completely irrelevant: I didn't notice it's Bell Canada, so U.S. laws don't matter.

I have no doubt there's some US ISP doing the same thing :-(

IANAL.

I originally thought this was breaking 18 U.S.C. Chapter 119, 2510 to 2522 (?), but no.

*IF* they only alter the answer of their own DNS servers to their clients, when the client has made a request to said DNS servers, then they're probably in the clear. There is two communications: one from the client (C) to the Bell server (B), then one from B to the authoritative server (S). S then answer NXDOMAIN to B, which then returns a completely different information to C. So they're not intercepting anything.

OTOH, *IF* they hijack all the port 53 requests to the outside world (which I doubt), then it's very likely 2511(1)(a) and (d) applies. They still could argue under 2511(2)(a)(i) that it's "necessary"...

Then again, IANAL.

OTOH, even if it's legal, it's still absolutely wrong.

Unfortunately no I'm not saying that :-)

First there's a typo ; the basic ML555 is $2200, not $1200.

Someone managed to synthesize a S1 (single-core T1, with multithreads support) for a Virtex 4 LX60. You might be able to squeeze a S1 into the Virtex 5 LX50T of the ML555, but I'm not certain, it mght be a bit short on available slices. Beside, it seems that they didn't go any further than that, and didn't actually try to upload the bitsream, let alone boot an OS. All that is assuming either the synthesized HDL included all required bits beyond the CPU to do so, such as a memory controller to access the on-board SO-DIMM and what-not, or that there's enough room on the FPGA to accomodate said bits. And that you have the IP of those bits, of course.

Then the T2 will probably be larger, even scaled down to an hypothetical single-core S2. I seriously doubt than you'll be able to squeeze a fully bootable S2 system in less than a V4 LX160. A PCI(-e,-X) board with one of those and some memory for your OS & stuff will probably be way over $3000. That's not counting the software tools, as free version of the tools are limited to the smaller devices, and the already mentioned IP that might be necessary...

Plus, you'll need the skills to bolt all the HDL, software and tools parts together.

It's likely doable, but at a very high cost in both money & time.