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[Aklyon]

Well, now I'm just confused. So I have this old logitech k120 us usb keyboard and windows 7. The grave key works fine, as does shift. But the tilde does not, and the internet is particularly useless about this. So I cannot figure out why this specific part is not working when the rest is, and I'd rather have it working to leave my teamspeak shortcuts as they are, along with other uses for tilde.

Teamspeak will still recognize the shortcut via shift+alt+grave or shift+ctrl+grave, and pale moon will change tab groups on shift+ctrl+grave (which I didn't know was a command, actually), and it worked in the search bar of the start menu when I tested it right after restarting, now it does not. Yesterday shift+alt+grave worked to produce the character, now it does not. It worked fine previously until now, and it worked without a problem when I tried using it on a second account. Is there something very specific broken in my windows user profile, or is my keyboard just really old?

[flabort]

That is confusing. I didn't know that the apostrophe looking key ('`' the one between the apostrophes, right?) was called a grave, though, so that's cool.
I should either be asleep or getting ready for my trip right now. And that reminds me I have to shut my computer down now. Arg, but at least booting up isn't a pain like it used to be 5 years ago.

[Bohandas]

I just realized that my computer is displaying the sizes of files and drives incorrectly. It claims to list the sizes in gigabytes (the unit "GB" is displayed), but the actual numbers displayed are actually in Gibibytes ("GiB". An abortion of science based on multiples of 1024). Is there any way to get it to correctly count gigabytes and megabytes (I don't want to change the displayed symbol, I want it to count things correctly in units of exactly one billion bytes)?

[Bohandas]

I also have a more pressing problem. I think my laptop may have an overheating problem. I think there's a broken fan or something, but I don't know how to do a proper diagnostic check on that. What I do know is that the front left corner (to the left of the trackpad) of my HP Probook 4540s tends to feel significantly warmer to the touch than the rest of my laptop and that my laptop occasionally crashes seemingly for no reason. Does anybody know how to do a diagnostic check to see if my cooling fans are all working properly?

EDIT:
I downloaded something called "Open Hardware Monitor" and it says that my CPU is running around 60 degrees celcius/140something farenheit. That's kind of high, right?

[Rose]

I just realized that my computer is displaying the sizes of files and drives incorrectly. It claims to list the sizes in gigabytes (the unit "GB" is displayed), but the actual numbers displayed are actually in Gibibytes ("GiB". An abortion of science based on multiples of 1024). Is there any way to get it to correctly count gigabytes and megabytes (I don't want to change the displayed symbol, I want it to count things correctly in units of exactly one billion bytes)?

Any time gigabytes are used in computing, it's /always/ based on multiples of 1024.

[Bohandas]

I just realized that my computer is displaying the sizes of files and drives incorrectly. It claims to list the sizes in gigabytes (the unit "GB" is displayed), but the actual numbers displayed are actually in Gibibytes ("GiB". An abortion of science based on multiples of 1024). Is there any way to get it to correctly count gigabytes and megabytes (I don't want to change the displayed symbol, I want it to count things correctly in units of exactly one billion bytes)?

Any time gigabytes are used in computing, it's /always/ based on multiples of 1024.

No it's not. It's inconsistent. For example, The flash drives in question are labeled (on their casings and packaging) correctly as "64 gigabyte", but Windows displays them as the lower number based on powers of 1024. Furthermore, it is an incorrect usage regardless of induatry standards because "giga-" means one billion; if the industry standard is to use it to mean something else that just proves that whoever set the standards were illiterate morons. And there should be legislation to force them to change the standard. Either way, is here some kind of setting or registry hack or cracked .dll or something that I can use to fix it?

EDIT:
Also I heard that Mac and Ubuntu had switched over to writing things properly, instead of like a bunch of backwoods rednecks who don't know how SI prefixes work

[Aklyon]

As far as I can tell, they have two systems because its easier to explain (to people who use metric) what a gigabyte is than explain why computers read in set of 1024 and why it uses a different word. Part of metric really liking its similar prefixes for things.

Also its not exactly wrong, glancing at the wikipedia chart of the two. It is 1024 to the billions place, and this is probably why windows has both 'size' and 'size on disk' in file/folder properties windows.

[Bohandas]

As far as I can tell, they have two systems because its easier to explain (to people who use metric) what a gigabyte is than explain why computers read in set of 1024 and why it uses a different word. Part of metric really liking its similar prefixes for things.

Also its not exactly wrong, glancing at the wikipedia chart of the two. It is 1024 to the billions place, and this is probably why windows has both 'size' and 'size on disk' in file/folder properties windows.

It's still objectively the wrong prefix. Also, regardless of any technical reason they may have for doing everything in powers of two (which I don't understand; I know that computers use binary logic, but I also know that you can repressnt any number in base 2, not just straight powers of two, just like regular numbers aren't required to all be even powers of ten) the quantity in multiples of 1024 is worthless to the end user and therefore should not appear in the finished interface.

[Thief^]

The power of 1024 thing is legacy from when disks were small and cpus were slow and lacked a hardware divider. Dividing by 1024 is as simple as shifting the number right by 10 bits (much like how division by 1000 in base ten is a simple 3 digit right shift), no "real" division necessary. This sped up file listings significantly.

There's more to it with the disk thing...
Disks are normally built as a multiple of a power of 2 for ease of construction reasons, especially flash. Some of the disk is reserved for write cache and bad sector replacement among other things. But disk makers like to use base 1000 because it means they can advertise the disk as larger than it really is without being legally lying. They then put a disclaimer on that you won't get the full advertised capacity due to overhead... So the disk might be 64 GB (base 1024), but have enough reserved that only 59.6 GB (base 1024) is usable, but still be allowed to advertise it as "64 GB". No two "64 GB" disks from different manufacturers will have the same number of bytes...

FYI I've seen several hard disks that used 1 GB = 1,000,000 kB, 1 kB = 1024 bytes. Haha

At least RAM is honest, you always get exactly the power if 2 you paid for.

[da_nang]

So my rear case fan (~4 years old) is making noise. I thought maybe there was some dust stuck in there so I decided to clean the PC. One cleaning session later, it's still making the noise. So I'm thinking I might have to replace it.

I'm using a Cooler Master HAF 912+ case (Case Specs). I'm on a low budget, but I hear case fans shouldn't be too expensive.
I'm specifically looking for a 120 mm fan. Currently, I'm looking at getting either Arctic F12 PRO PWM (specs) or Arctic F12 TC (specs). I'm using a ASUS M5A97 motherboard, so PWM fans are compatible, yes?

Which one would be a better choice? Are there better alternatives? Anything I should look out for when buying rear case fans?

[Lord Shonus]

I just realized that my computer is displaying the sizes of files and drives incorrectly. It claims to list the sizes in gigabytes (the unit "GB" is displayed), but the actual numbers displayed are actually in Gibibytes ("GiB". An abortion of science based on multiples of 1024). Is there any way to get it to correctly count gigabytes and megabytes (I don't want to change the displayed symbol, I want it to count things correctly in units of exactly one billion bytes)?

Any time gigabytes are used in computing, it's /always/ based on multiples of 1024.

No it's not. It's inconsistent. For example, The flash drives in question are labeled (on their casings and packaging) correctly as "64 gigabyte", but Windows displays them as the lower number based on powers of 1024. Furthermore, it is an incorrect usage regardless of induatry standards because "giga-" means one billion; if the industry standard is to use it to mean something else that just proves that whoever set the standards were illiterate morons. And there should be legislation to force them to change the standard. Either way, is here some kind of setting or registry hack or cracked .dll or something that I can use to fix it?

EDIT:
Also I heard that Mac and Ubuntu had switched over to writing things properly, instead of like a bunch of backwoods rednecks who don't know how SI prefixes work

The term gibibyte (and all other "binary" prefixes) did not even exist until 1998, and was not adopted as a standard by ANYONE until 2009. Prior to that date, every standards body on the planet Earth including SI (the body that regulates the metric system) defined a Gigabyte as 1073741824 bytes, and the creation of the "binary prefixes" resulted from a successful lawsuit against hard drive makers for cheating their customers by falsely claiming that 1000000000 byte hard drives were "1 Gigabyte", meaning that 1073741824 bytes was the legal definition as well.

[Thief^]

Prior to that date, [...] SI (the body that regulates the metric system) defined a Gigabyte as 1073741824 bytes

This isn't true. Prior to that date, SI didn't define any units or prefixes for digital information, including gigabyte.

[gimlet]

There is the One Constant Rule of Computing:   Marketing will always tout the number that makes it look bigger.  Thus diagonal screen sizes, capacities in 1000000000 etc.

[Lord Shonus]

Prior to that date, [...] SI (the body that regulates the metric system) defined a Gigabyte as 1073741824 bytes

This isn't true. Prior to that date, SI didn't define any units or prefixes for digital information, including gigabyte.

Didn't it? My school textbooks must have included some inaccurate information, not that that would have been unheard of.

[Gentlefish]

Copmuters are base-2, not base-10. Hence the number discrepancies. In a base-2 system, a kilobyte is really and truly 1024 bytes. Thus, a gigabyte, which is a thousand kilobytes, is truly 1024 shifted so many times.

Just because we use base-10 in all other areas of our like, a kilobyte being 1024 bytes is as accurate as a kilometer being 1000 meters. It's a difference of base.