Gibi-, mebi, and kibibytes?!
While making a post on the rsync list about having it output sizes in human readable units (just like du -h) I couldn’t resist the temptation of writing “mebibytes” and “kibibytes”… :-)
I think this is the first time that I’ve written the units out in full, and I must admit that they sound kind of strange. But the strangeness will wear off after a while, and I still believe that we should adopt them whenever we can since it will clear up some confusion in the long run. Consider it a gift to your children, or maybe even your grandchildren :-)
If this discussion is all new to you, then go here or here for some background information. The discussion in late 2001 on the Linux Kernel mailinglist is also interesting, you’ll find a summary here.
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