The confusion arises from the fact that, when referring to RAM, we (mistakenly) use 'kilobyte', 'megabyte' or 'gigabyte' to mean 2^10, 2^20 or 2^30 bytes.
It's not a mistake. In a living language, weight of usage trumps prescriptivism.
However, in common usage we now have the pretty awful scenario where, if a person says "a megabyte", the actual number of bytes they're talking about can change depending on where the data is stored! A megabyte of RAM is not a megabyte of hard disk space.
That's not correct. A megabyte of RAM and a megabyte of HD are both 1,048,576 bytes, one megabyte. Again, usage trumps prescriptivism.
I agree that the hard-drive-manufacturer thing is not a "conspiracy;" it's simple false advertising that slips through the cracks of the law because of, again, a foolish belief in prescriptivism on the part of the enforcers.
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It's not a mistake. In a living language, weight of usage trumps prescriptivism.
That's not correct. A megabyte of RAM and a megabyte of HD are both 1,048,576 bytes, one megabyte. Again, usage trumps prescriptivism.
I agree that the hard-drive-manufacturer thing is not a "conspiracy;" it's simple false advertising that slips through the cracks of the law because of, again, a foolish belief in prescriptivism on the part of the enforcers.