> Not
entirely out of our field. Raw hard drive capacity for example is always
> quoted in MiB.
Not so. Raw hard drive capacity is always quoted in
mega = 10^6 or giga = 10^9 bytes. RAM, on the other hand, is almost always quoted in
mibi = 2^20 or gibi = 2^30 bytes.
And the icing on the cake is the famous and now fortunately
almost obsolete 1.44 M?B floppy drive, whose capacity is actually
1.44 x 10^3 x 2^10 bytes, mixing a kilo and a kibi in an ambiguous M (miga?).
Standardising stuff like this might actually make
it easier for the layperson.
Although manufacturers often like to use the biggest
numbers possible, as witness the bizarre convention for monitor sizes which
makes it impossible to compare flat screens with CRTs, and means that a 17"
CRT screen in the US is a 15.7" CRT screen in Canada -- or at least it
used to be -- not because Canadian inches are smaller but because the Canadian
government is (was?) fussier about what you are allowed to measure.