2009-10-18 17:59:00
I try to help out people with computer/network questions on various online fora, like Tweakers and One more thing. One of the things that frequently leads to both confusion and frustration is the divide between the parlance of true geeks and normal users.
For example, take this thread where people discuss the ins and outs of the UPC broadband service. Many, many times will one see frustration arise between the lesser experienced members and the veritable geeks regarding the usage of m/M and bit/byte.
As in:
* m versus M = mili versus mega = 10^-3 versus 10^6
* bit versus byte = 1 bit versus 8 bits
Normal folks will happily mix their m's and their M's and their bits and their bytes, not caring about the meaning of either. They reason according to the famous adage "Do what I mean, not what I say". So you'll frequently see things like:
Until two days ago I could happily download at a well-deserved 30mbits, which today fell to a miserable 5mbits. Then I rebooted the modem and now it's back up to 3.5mbits, so I R happy.
Does that sound confusing to you? Because to every true IT geek out there it does! So now there's dozens of folks like me berating the folks who keep mixing stuff up to "get it right because you're not making sense". Of course we are then in turn labeled as nitpicks (or "comma fornicators" as the dutch term would translate). The thing is, even though SI units are piecemeal to every (IT) geek, it seems that most "normal" people don't know all of them.
Sure, they know their milis from their centis and their kilos from their decas, but I don't think anyone in primary or high school usually deals with megas or anything bigger. Pretty odd, since you'd imagine that science class will cover stuff like megaWatts etc. A quick poll with Marli (who is otherwise a very intelligent AND computer-savy person) supports this idea: she knows "m", but not "M" and doesn't know the difference between a bit and a byte.
Ah, what're you going to do? I don't think this is a divide we'll quickly bridge, unless we unify to a completely new unit for measuring network speeds :) Might I suggest the "fruble"?
EDIT:
Mind you, I didn't write this just to rant. As an aspiring teacher I actually -do- wonder how one would best work around such a problem. Verbally there isn't any ambiguity because one would always say "mbit" or "megabit" in full. But in writing there's much room for laziness and confusion, as discussed above. So, what do you do as a teacher? Do you keep on hammering your students to adhere to the proper standards? To me, that does make much sense.
EDIT 2:
*sigh* Then again, if even the supposed "professionals" can't get it right, who are we to complain. Right? =_=;
kilala.nl tags: work, sysadmin, geeky,
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Posted by Menno
It all has to do with what people think is important. To you, the difference between mBit and MBit may seem important but I think most people don't even know what a bit is to begin with. :). They probably just look at the numbers. High is good, low is bad.
If you want to know how you can convey the importance of correct usage of SI units etc I think you have to forget for a moment what you know and put yourself in students (or normal users) positition.
Understand your enemy before you fight him haha.
Posted by Thomas
Of course that's true Menno. And as someone else noted, in most discussions the m-versus-M doesn't matter so much. It's the b-versus-B / bit-versus-byte that makes the big difference because both figures will look perfectly plausible even if there's a factor 8 difference.
With regards to m-versus-M is also think there's a bit of a disconnect between the various units being used. People are very much used to discussing mili-liters, centi-liters, kilo-meters and such. However mega-, giga- and tera- they only use in computer parlance. I think that to them mega- and mili- are completely unrelated because they never use them for the same unit of measurement. So "m" or "M", who cares?
Posted by Menno
Well I'm just glad your multimeter registered mVolts instead of MVolts when I put the electrodes to my tongue =)
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2009-10-19 06:00:00
Posted by Kaijuu (website)
Correction; the marketing department can't get it right, which is no surprise. :)