I just made a fool out of that guy. This is what I posted:
You are absolutely correct but you don't have the whole story and you conveniently omitted half of the definition for the word gigabyte. I normally wouldn't devote this much time to a person of your intelligence, but your ignorance absolutely appalls me as does your furious invective against others who are trying to teach you.
Here is a direct quote from Scott Mueller's 13th Edition of "Upgrading and Repairing PCs." If you don't know who Scott Mueller is or doubt his credibility, just google it.
"CAPACITY
Four figures are commonly used in advertising drive capacity:
- Unformatted capacity, in millions of bytes
- Formatted capacity, in millions of bytes
- Unformatted capacity, in megabytes
- Formatted capacity, in megabytes
The term "formatted" in these figures, refers to the low - level (or physical) formatting of the drive. Most manufacturers of ATA/IDE and SCSI drives now report only the formatted capacities because these drives are delivered preformatted. Usually, advertisements and specifications refer to the unformatted or formatted capacity in millions of bytes because these figures are larger than the same capacity expressed in megabytes. This situation generates a great deal of confusion when the user runs FDISK (which reports the total drive capacity in megabytes) and wonders where the missing space is. The question can seem troubling. Fortunately, the answer is easy; it only involves a little math to figure it out.
Perhaps the most common questions I get are concerning "missing" drive capacity. Consider the following example: I just installed a new Seagate ST330630A drive in a system, which is advertised as having 30.6GB capacity. After entering the drive parameters in the BIOS setup (I used the autodetect feature to automate the process), when I went to partition the drive using FDISK, the capacity that was reported by FDISK was less than advertised. "What happened to the other space? The answer is only a few calculations away. By multiplying the drive specification parameters, you get this result:
Total sectors: 59,777,640
Bytes per sector: 512
Total bytes (in decimal megabytes): 30,606
Total bytes (in decimal gigabytes): 30.6
Total bytes (in binary megabytes): 29,188
Total bytes (in binary gigabytes): 28.5
As reported by FDISK: 29,188
All the number in the above table are correct. Drive manfucaturers usually report drive capacity in decimal megabytes (millions of bytes) because they result in larger, more impressive sounding numbers, although your BIOS and especially the FDISK drive partitioning software report the capacity in binary megabytes. One decimal megabyte equals 1,048,576 bytes (or 1,024KB, in which each kilobyte is 1,024 bytes). So the bottom line is that because the same abbreviations are often used for both millions of bytes and megabytes, this 30.6GB drive could also be called a 28.5GB drive, depending on how you look at it!"
Now, let's shed some light on your convenient omission of the rest of the dictionary definition for gigabyte. But first, let's look at megabyte.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=megabyte
For your convenience, I will quote the definition of megabyte as provided by the above link for you:
megabyte:
1. A unit of computer memory or data storage capacity equal to 1,048,576 (2^20) bytes.
2. One million bytes.
As you can cleary see, both definitions of a megabyte are correct, depending on which one you look at.
Below is a link and for the definition of gigabyte:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=gigabyte
gigabyte:
1. (A unit of computer memory or data storage capacity equal to 1,024 megabytes (230 bytes).
2. One billion bytes.
Once again, you can clearly see that both definitions of gigabyte are correct, depending on how you look at it.
Right now, you have two choices. You can admit that you jumped to conclusions because of your lack of knowledge and uderstanding, or you can continue to be belligerent and display your complete and total ignorance about the very basics of the computer industry. If it was me, I would cut my loses and go troll somewhere else. However, I doubt that you will do that.
Just remember that you aren't telling anybody anything that we didn't already know. The computer industry as a whole and the tech savy public in general KNOWS that there is difference between advertised and real world capacity. We have known this for the last 20 years. Just because you just woke up and realized this doesn't mean you have the basis for a lawsuit.
This ends today's lesson. I have exposed your lunacy, made a complete and total ••••••• out of you, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Consider yourself schooled. Go forth and teach others so that they can avoid looking as ignorant as you.
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That is insane.
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