The following reply was made to PR kern/32205; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Geoff Wing <gcw@pobox.com>
To: gnats-bugs@netbsd.org
Cc: 
Subject: Re: kern/32205: Use standard units for memory/media sizes
Date: Thu, 1 Dec 2005 23:07:52 +1100

 On Thursday 2005-12-01 20:12 +1100, Martin Husemann output:
 : On Thu, Dec 01, 2005 at 02:16:00AM +0000, Christian Biere wrote:
 :         ~~~~~~
 : > The kernel boot messages use the infamous non-standard units to
 : > display memory and media sizes, so that for example a 120 GB
 : > disk is falsely reported as 111 GB disk. 111 GiB would be correct
 : > but such binary units are only commonly used for chip-based
 : > memory.
 : Your clock is eight months off, isn't it?
 
 What?  April 1st?  This doesn't make sense to me.  Surely it's obvious
 that he's been recently employed by Quantum or Seagate or some other
 harddisk manufacturer?
 
 However, if harddrive manufacturers love base ten so much then they
 should be calculating data as ten bit bytes.
 
 120 * 10^9 * 10  = 1200000000000 bits (what HD manufs should have)
 120 * 2^30 * 2^3 = 1030792151040 bits (what normal people claim)
 120 * 10^9 * 2^3 =  960000000000 bits (what HD manufs currently claim)
 
 Obviously HD manufacturers are ripping us off [(10-8)/8] 25% !
 
 What a rort! (*)
 
 Geoff
 
 PS. (*)  Oh, that's Aussie slang meaning something similar to "scam"
 
 GiB?  Ha ha ha