Package: e2fsprogs
Version: 1.42
Severity : minor
The resize2fs man pages read in part:
Note: when kilobytes is used above, I mean real, power-of-2 kilobytes,
(i.e., 1024 bytes), which some politically correct folks insist should
be the stupid-sounding ``kibibytes''. The same holds true for
megabytes, also sometimes known as ``mebibytes'', or gigabytes, as the
amazingly silly ``gibibytes''. Makes you want to gibber, doesn't it?
The community of people who hold the exact opposite point of view (that
poorly-educated computer scientists hijacked the pre-existing metric prefixes
and destroyed their usefulness by giving them a second possible meaning,
leading to endless grief and the occasional crashed space probe) is quite
large. Man pages ought to hold a neutral position, and this personal diatribe
on the program's author's part has no place here. To give credit where credit
is due, the offending paragraph does clarify what the K, M, G symbols mean to
resize2fs, which is the only thing a man page needs to do.
The simple fix is to rewrite the paragraph to something like:
Note: when kilobytes is used above, it means power-of-2 multiples,
(i.e., K = 1024 bytes), also unequivocally known as ``kibibytes''. The
same holds true for megabytes (``mebibytes'', M = 1024*1024) and
gigabytes (``gibibytes'', G = 1024*1024*1024).
Daniel U. Thibault
Protection des systèmes et contremesures (PSC) | Systems Protection &
Countermeasures (SPC)
Cyber sécurité pour les missions essentielles (CME) | Mission Critical Cyber
Security (MCCS)
RDDC - Centre de recherches de Valcartier | DRDC - Valcartier Research Centre
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Québec QC G3J 1X5
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Gouvernement du Canada | Government of Canada
<http://www.valcartier.drdc-rddc.gc.ca/>
