Vague Rant

sonictopfan, on 28 April 2012 - 03:05 AM, said:

SanGor, on 27 April 2012 - 09:51 PM, said:

You literally quoted the post in which you were told where to find that information, then asked the same question.

nl255, on 16 April 2012 - 12:39 AM, said:

The latter is the case. NTSC games always start up in 480i, and games will usually assume as much, and just stay in "480i" rather than change to it. There are, of course, exceptions; games which actually do force a switch to 480i. There are also (natively 480p-supporting) games that will simply break when forced to 480p, so forcing should ideally only be used when it's actually necessary.

Yeah, it's not currently covered in most English-language education systems, but it only became dated in Commonwealth nations pretty recently (in the '70s), so it still sees usage in that form today--for the record, I'm not quite that old, and learned the "American style" in school, but was conscious of the original meaning. It's still pretty common to see it defined when used in print, since its meaning can be ambiguous, particularly for older readers.

For the benefit of future readers, my deleted post was basically what Wiimm said, but ruder. The lesson is, only be rude if you're simultaneously uninformed, which is OK. Being rude and correct is against the rules.

Wiimm, the source you provide still acknowledges that the "classic" words are still used with their original definitions, against the SI guideline (which itself acknowledges continued use of the original terms). It's clearly not "wrong" to use them. I understand your preference, but ultimately, it's a standard that's failed to gain traction; usage trumps "standards" that have never become standards, especially where the standards are flexible enough to account for people not using their preferred terms. I'd agree if you said the ambiguous usage was (officially) "deprecated", but "wrong" is, well, wrong.

Not really. The original terms remain ambiguous and are generally better understood in context rather than unilaterally based on a single definition which has never been imposed on all usages. It's clearer to say "512 MiB", but "512 MB" isn't wrong just because it's possible to use the wrong definition. It's like trying to say one or the other definition of "billion" is wrong (one thousand million and one million million are both valid definitions). Throw in lack of interest in/adoption of the new terms, and the situation is far less clear than "megabyte no, mebibyte yes".