What do they call floppy disks where the Metric system's used?

[microsoft windows]

I've always wondered. In Europe and other nations where the Metric system is in common use, what do you guys call floppy disks, which are measured by their size (3.5 inches, 5.25 inches, 8 inches, etc.)?

[PAINKILLER]

The same.

[AndrewZorn]

i was hoping this would be an intellectual debate over the marketing scam that is kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte being metric increments of 1000 when it comes to selling you ****

[msiegel]

i'm pretty sure marketing won.

now excuse me while i warm up my new 10 J.Lo-byte hard drive...

[AndrewZorn]

For some reason a lot of SSDs are doing it right.  My OCZ Agility was advertised as 60gb.  I thought that was weird... until I realized it was '64gb'.

Even though it has nothing to do with solid state vs disks, they found a way to make it work.
I guess they just needed some sort of change to induce a reset in peoples' minds.

I hope it sticks.
It won't though, as whoever advertises more GIGGGGS will win.

[RickyJ]

For some reason a lot of SSDs are doing it right.  My OCZ Agility was advertised as 60gb.  I thought that was weird... until I realized it was '64gb'.

Even though it has nothing to do with solid state vs disks, they found a way to make it work.
I guess they just needed some sort of change to induce a reset in peoples' minds.

I hope it sticks.
It won't though, as whoever advertises more GIGGGGS will win.

Does it show up in Windows as 64GB?  The difference between the advertised space and the physical storage offered by the flash chips is actually reserved as spare, and is used when other cells reach their write limits.

And on topic, drives/discs are sold with imperial measurements.  I also buy beers by the pint in pubs and restaurants.  You should go bug the Brits and the Irish about using "stone" as a unit of measurement for a person's weight, it's part of the imperial measurement system but only they use it.

[AndrewZorn]

it actually shows 59.6 or something in windows, i understand the fomatting space, but im saying this time they advertised properly.

[PAINKILLER]

i was hoping this would be an intellectual debate over the marketing scam that is kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte being metric increments of 1000 when it comes to selling you ****

It's pretty neat for marketers because the difference between the metric (power of 1000) and power of 1024 actually increases as the unit of storage increases. While in gigabytes they scammed us with just 7%, now in terabytes it goes to 10% difference. So they will be scamming us with storage devices of just HALF the expected size by the year 2509, according to Moore's law.

[bpiphany]

Everyone should just quit fussing around and use the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix

[Half-Saint]

We called them "three-and-a-half" and "five-twentyfive".

[db_Iodine]

Hmmm. MW thread without a poll?

Do people still use floppy drives for something?

[Findecanor]

People and people ... There many ancient systems in use for critical tasks, decades after they were supposed to have been shut down.

I also buy beers by the pint in pubs and restaurants.

Speaking of drinks... Over here in Sweden (and I guess, in Norway and Finland as well), alcohol is heavily taxed, so cocktails are sold by how many centilitres (cl) of spirits they contain... Because of this, bartenders sometimes mix the drinks wrong. You might get one that has proportions 2+2 instead of 3+2, just because you had paid for 4 cl and not 5 cl.

[Zen]

We call them 'Flintstone-disks'..

[bpiphany]

An inch is a "tum" in swedish from the word "tumme" (thumb). An inch is the width of my (and others i guess) thumb at the outermost joint. This makes it sort of easy to approximate how much say 3.5 inches is.

We also have quarter pounders at mcdonalds. Not royals as in france (if they got that correct in the movie...)

I think all units in swedish have the same form in singular and plural, except for almost all the time units. Something that just crossed my mind.

[Zen]

Yes, but a Swedish "mil" (mile) is 10 km ?
In Denmark we used to use (!!) "pund" (pound), but a
Danish "pund" is exactly half a kilo (500 grams) ....
We also used "thumbs" (tommer) once, but a Danish inch is
0,0261545 meters whereas a Imperialist inch is 0,0254 meters (25.4 mm)_...

Thank God, I'm not British !!!

In these days of decimalisation of currency, it is difficult to understand the currency used in Britain before that country 'went decimal' in 1971.  The following chart may help to explain it.

Money was divided into pounds (£) shillings (s. or /-) and pennies (d.).
Thus, 4 pounds, eight shillings and fourpence would be written as £4/8/4d. or £4-8-4d.
There were       
    20 shillings in £1 - a shilling was often called 'bob', so 'ten bob' was 10/-
   12 pennies in1 shilling    
   240 pennies in £1    
Pennies were broken down into other coins:    
    a farthing (a fourth- thing) was ¼ of a penny    
    a halfpenny (hay-p'ny) was ½ of a penny    
   three farthings was ¾ of a penny    
Other coins of a value less than 1/- were    
   a half-groat (2d)    6 x 2d = 1/-
   a threepenny bit (3d) made of silver    4 x 3d. = 1/-
   a groat (4d)    3 x 4d = 1/-
   sixpence (silver) - often called a 'tanner'    2 x 6d = 1/-
Coins of more than 1/- but less than £1 in value were    
   a two shilling piece (called a florin)    10 x 2/- = £1
   a half-crown ( 2/6d)    8 x 2/6d = £1
   a crown (5/-)    4 x 5/- = £1
   ten shillings (a half-sovereign)    2 x 10/- = £1
   a half-guinea (10/6d)    2 x 10/6d = £1/1/-
A £1 coin was called a Sovereign and was made of gold.  A paper pound often was called a 'quid'.
Coins of more than £1 were     
   a guinea (£1/1/-)    
   a £5 coin

[itlnstln]

I prefer flacid disks.

[woody]

I've always wondered what do you guys call floppy disks?

We don't call them, because they never respond.

[woody]

Everyone should just quit fussing around and use the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix

Kibi, mebi, gibi and their brethren are the tools of the metrosexuals.

[keyb_gr]

The irony about 3.5" floppies is that they are actually metric, as they were developed in Japan (by Sony I think?). The drives are 10 cm wide. But since the things came in US-made computers which called them 3.5", everyone else started to do this, too.

Kibi, mebi, gibi and their brethren are the tools of the metrosexuals.

The binary prefixes may be lacking a bit in elegance, but anything helping to avoid confusion is a good idea in my book.

Speaking of which, floppies are some of the worst offenders. Usual 3.5" ones take "1.44 megs" = 1440K = 1440 KiB = 1474560 bytes (minus some file system overhead).

[woody]

The binary prefixes may be lacking a bit in elegance, but anything helping to avoid confusion is a good idea in my book.

I agree, but what they choose isn't good IMNSHO.

Speaking of which, floppies are some of the worst offenders. Usual 3.5" ones take "1.44 megs" = 1440K = 1440 KiB = 1474560 bytes (minus some file system overhead).

Tagging floppy disks with numbers is tied to a specific format, which is kinda wrong, but widely accepted. The real information is number of sides (SS/DS) and media density (SD/DD/QD/HD), the rest is specific to platform and software.

[nathanscribe]

Yes, but a Swedish "mil" (mile) is 10 km ?
In Denmark we used to use (!!) "pund" (pound), but a
Danish "pund" is exactly half a kilo (500 grams) ....
We also used "thumbs" (tommer) once, but a Danish inch is
0,0261545 meters whereas a Imperialist inch is 0,0254 meters (25.4 mm)_...

Thank God, I'm not British !!!

I post-date decimalisation by a couple of years, but i do remember half pennies.  You could go in to a sweet shop and buy 1/2p chews, and plenty of goods were priced at 99 1/2p... they abandoned that a few years ago, along with the pound note.  We have £2 coins now as well.

It's funny, I can buy cheese by the pound (in weight) and can easily visualise that, but 1kg?  No idea.  A pound is 454g I think.  A pint is 568ml, and while pint of beer are actual pints, (not the nearest rounded metric value) bottles and cans tend to be 330ml.  Whisky comes in 70cl bottles.  Milk is sold in pints and is labelled in ml.  It's all a bit mad really.

Distance for me is yards and miles, weight is grams and stones and pounds (but not ounces, ecxept in my mis-spent youth), height is feet, and I have no idea what time it is no matter what it's measured in...

[quadibloc]

Kibi, mebi, gibi and their brethren are the tools of the metrosexuals.

On the other hand, Nidi, Fili, Kili, and Vili were all good members of Durin's folk...

[Hak Foo]

Yes, but a Swedish "mil" (mile) is 10 km ?
In Denmark we used to use (!!) "pund" (pound), but a
Danish "pund" is exactly half a kilo (500 grams) ....
We also used "thumbs" (tommer) once, but a Danish inch is
0,0261545 meters whereas a Imperialist inch is 0,0254 meters (25.4 mm)_...

Thank God, I'm not British !!!

Adding more trivia:

The guinea and fractions were primarily issued prior to 1816 or so.

There was also a two-pound double sovereign, and during Victoria's time, a double-florin (4 shillings = 20p decimalized).   After Victoria, the crown, two pounds, and five pounds were rarely produced in quantity; notable exceptions being issues for the first year of a new monarch and the 1935 silver-jubilee crown.

From Edward VIII onwards (or more practically George VI), the larger, twelve-sided brass 3d replaced the silver 3d almost completely (it didn't survive the 1940s as a circulation piece)

Of course, us Yanks are a riot too.

We introduced:

* Two flavours of three cent coin nobody wanted-- tiny and silver and marginally larger and base metal.
* A 20-cent silver coin, almost identical in size and design to the 25-cent coin much more used.
* $3 coins, as well as trials of a $4 coin.
* A complete unwillingness to redesign our 50-cent coin so it's been driven completely out of circulation (it's the size of an old UK 2/- or 10p)
* Not to mention the mess of labelling our 10c coin 'One Dime'

[WhiteRice]

[NewbieOneKenobi]

The same.

Yup, here too. Or by capacity.

Note: I have some 1-2 shilling coins. And half-pennies and a farthing (quarter penny).