Computer Makers Sued Over Hard-Drive Capacity Claims (1 Viewer)

[Keith Mickunas]

they, defined a gigabyte, after all, even if they did use a completely wrong definition

Can you find a legal definition that the courts will go by to say what a gigabyte is? Giga means a billion, not 2^30. How many people know that the "standard" in computers is to go by powers of 2^10 and not powers of 10?

 

[Keith Mickunas]

Purple is now blue

Define purple and define blue. How would you do it? What happens when you deal with shades of the two? Your color example is horrible, because a girl will call it something completely different. But if you sell a person a blue car, and they pay extra because you told them it was purple and they never looked at the car, then they have a right to get pissed off if that purple color on that car is actually worth more than the blue because it's a limited edition or something.

Look, if there was some type of data that you bought by the gigabyte, and 20GB of this data was worth say $2,000 bucks. Then I come along and offer you a 20GB drive filled with this data for $2,000 plus $20 bucks for the drive, yeah, you'd have a right to pissed off, because you weren't getting your $2,000 dollars worth, only $1860 worth of the data. But we don't deal in data that way so this capacity stuff is really just a guide of what you need.

 

[John_Berger]

But they bastardized the terms giga, mega and kilo. They changed them from being powers of 10 to powers of 2. But notice how they still used 2 raised to a multiple of 10?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO!!! You are NOT looking at this properly!

You're looking at the POWER and not the BASE number!

It doesn't matter one iota what the power is! This whole thing comes down to the BASE notation. In this case the base is 2! Not, 10! TWO! Computers think in ones and zeros - that's all. Therefore, exponential capacities must be expressed in a base of two, not ten.

Sure, they might have bastardized the terms to make it easier for large volumes of numbers. I'll admit that.

But stop associating other words that begin with "GIGA" with "GIGABYTE". They are separate words and have totally separate meanings because we're dealing with totally different numeric bases! "Gigahertz" works because hertz are measured in powers of 10. "Gigawatts" works because watts are measure in powers of 10. "Gigabytes" does not work in your argument because bytes are NOT measured in powers of 10.

They are used to help us to convert from our 10-base notation to a decimal base when using large numbers; however, that does NOT justify converting back to a 10-base notation just to make it seem like the hard drive has more capacity than it does.

If they would simply be honest and advertise an 18.6 GB hard drive as what it is - an 18.6 GB hard drive - this lawsuit would never have happened. But since 20 sounds better than 18.6...

 

[Keith Mickunas]

How can you POSSIBLY think that this is even remotely ethical?!

When does that matter with lawyers. Get real. Ethics don't enter into this one bit. This is about some lawyers who found some naive clients. The lawyers are the only ones likely to benefit from this.

This will barely affect anybody. Computer manufacturers constantly change their adds to reflect the ever dropping prices of hard drives. Now days they put 40GB or 80GB drives. But the adds won't read well if they put 37GB or 75GB. Then you'll have the small companies who aren't being sued still using 40GB and 80GB. So eventually when the big guys move to the next step in hard drives, they'll just underrate them a bit so it's still a nice round number, because marketing types like round numbers.

 

[John_Berger]

When does that matter with lawyers.

Good point.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

From Merrian-Websters definition of giga:

2 : million : multiplied by one million

The terms were modified to fit with powers of 2, but that's not what they officially mean.

 

[RobertR]

I really don't give a sh*t what the dictionary says, frankly. The only reason why it's in the dictionary is because of common usage

So you admit that it IS common usage. Rail against it all you want, John, but the fact is that common usage eventually becomes the de facto understood terminology, whether you like it or not. "Aspirin" used to be a name for a product made by a particular manufacturer, now it's not. The same goes for formica, bandaids, and many other things. If people in general think of a gigabyte as 1,000,000,000 bytes, it seems to me to be a waste of time for a relatively few number of people to expend energy trying to chastize the masses by trying to legally enforce their view of the "correct" terminology.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

I sell the car, then go to deliver it. It's green.

Colors just don't work in this argument. Run it through a color analyzer and see how it falls in any of the color systems. Is it pure blue and nothing else? It won't hold up. If there's the least bit of green then it is a shade of green and you have a case.

Show me a dictionary that can be used as evidence in a court of law that says a gigabyte is 2^30 bytes.

 

[John_Berger]

So eventually when the big guys move to the next step in hard drives, they'll just underrate them a bit so it's still a nice round number, because marketing types like round numbers.

I'm not denying that. Really.

But there is nothing wrong with saying that a drive is actually 18.6 GB. Yes, 20 GB has a better psychological impact than 18.6. I fully admit that. But to find some excuse to artifically inflate your numbers (we'll use 1 billion instead of the real number so that we can change the perception of our capacity) is just wrong. They've been getting awawy with this for a while, and now they're getting their feet held to the fire.

What I've foud odd in all of this is that CD-Rs seem to be accurate. If I put a "700 MB CD-R" in the drive and look at the total space, the software returns with 704 MB available. Now, why would CD-Rs use an accurate capacity listing when hard drive manufacturers don't? I would think that they'd be better off from a marketing and consumer standpoint saying "18 GB" drive yet provide slightly more (18.6) instead of the other way around.

Marketing and politics. Two dishonorable professions.

 

[John_Berger]

Colors just don't work in this argument.

It works completely and you know it. If I try to sell a blue car but put a tiny footnote that it's green (and we'll use pure blue and pure green which are completely distinguishable from each other), someone buys it expecting a blue car, makes the payment, I deliver, they see a green car. You can't tell me that any court will possibly side with me just because I put a footnote saying that as far as I'm concerned blue is really green. It won't happen. No matter how scientific you try to get with spectrum analyzers and so forth, it won't happen.

 

[RobertR]

Colors just don't work in this argument.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It works completely and you know it.

But what if common usage says that blue = green? If that's how people in general think of it, then what's the problem? Since people DON'T commonly think blue = green, your analogy falls apart. You've already admitted that 1,000,000,000 is common usage. All you're really doing is complaining about that common usage.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

If the add says blue = green, you could probably get away with it. Still most states have consumer protection laws that would allow them to back out of the deal once they saw the car. Likewise you could return the PC if you find out your 20GB drive is only 18.6GB. They'd give you your money back and that would be that.
Why do you think the lawyers aren't targetting the hard drive manufacturers? They have the footnote, the computer manufacturers don't.

 

[Christian Behrens]

Guys, you are right in saying that mega means thousand and giga mean billion, nobody denies that.

But you are missing the point. The fact that spoken language was not able to properly distinguish between the two different meanings (one with base 2, one with base 10) does not diminish the fact that marketing all of a sudden decided to use the base 10.

There has been a movement about, oh, 15 years ago to go with "M"Byte and "K"Byte (phonetically pronouncing just the letters) instead of the common megabyte and kilobyte. Guess what? The masses still said "megabyte", while writing just "KB".

But again, this is a relatively new trend to base it on 10 now rather than 2, but ONLY in advertising. I refer to my example with blank CDs again. That was a proper labelling: 700 MB equals, well, 700 MB. 4.7 GB for DVDs is NOT 4.7 GB.

-Christian

 

[John_Berger]

If the add says blue = green, you could probably get away with it.

And that means that I should try?

 

[MarkHastings]

This will barely affect anybody

What do you mean? This WILL affect how companies advertise in the future.

We all may know computers and know how to read the packages as to what is actually going on, but there may be the day when something new comes out that you are not familiar with and YOU may be duped just like consumers are being duped right now.

Just because they are arguing over a few hundred MegaBytes now, doesn't mean that (if not for these law suits) they could start increasing that margin in the future.

 

[nolesrule]

This reminds me of an article I read a year or two ago that proposed changing the software terms to cause less confusion and allow for more accurate measurement.

kilobyte = 10^3 bytes
kibobyte = 2^10 bytes

megabyte = 10^6 bytes
mebabyte = 2^20 bytes

gigabyte = 10^9 bytes
gibabyte = 2^30 bytes

I think you get the idea. Anyway, the 'b' was to denote binary measurement (base-2), since the normal prefixes have been defined as base-10 exclusively except for the last 50+ years.

Hard drive manufacturers have always measured byte counts in base-10. And why shouldn't they be? Base-2 has nothing to do with physical hard drive capacity and usage capacity (what the OS reports) itself varies by OS and file system.

CD/DVD-ROM/R/RW/RAM all do the same thing. They are measured in physical storage space on their packaging as well. Base-2 is meaningless until a file system is in place.

 

[RobertR]

I have no justification that blue is equal to green and we both know very well that common usage will never equate the two.

Then you admit that your blue = green analogy is flawed, since you've admitted that 1,000,000,000 IS commonly used and accepted.

 

[John_Berger]

since you've admitted that 1,000,000,000 IS commonly used and accepted.

Nice try.

Admitting that it's used and admitting that it's acceptable are two totally separate things. I don't accept "ain't" as proper gramar either, although I acknowledge that it's used. Similarly, I will not accept the definition of GB as one billion because it's wrong. The hard drive companies have been facilitating and propagating this lie for a while, and I'm glad that someone is taking them to task for it.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

Admitting that it's used and admitting that it's acceptable are two totally separate things.

True, but is it so unacceptable that it must become essentially illegal through a legal precedent being set in this lawsuit?

 

[RobertR]

I don't accept "ain't" as proper gramar either

So John, when can we anticipate your class action lawsuit against all the parents, dictionary makers, writers of popular fiction, teachers, etc. etc. etc. in this country who have been "facilitating and propagating" the lie that it's ok to use "ain't"? After all, incorrect usage that you find UNACCEPTABLE shouldn't be legally allowed, now should it?

By the way, it's "grammar", not "gramar", so I'll be suing you for propagating incorrect spelling.