TR1X (off mcmod)

<Curtsey>

 

you lot are weird

betty (shuffling away into otherness ;-)

 

I am keeping up - puff puff puff. Your vac sucks, BTW!
Now. Drudgery is what happens *between riding to work and back*. A
simple and easily misunderstood collective clause. BB could explain it
better.

 

<proud>

 

Another favourite of mine is

"There are 3 kinds of people... those who can count and those who can't"


G-S

 

Even so, 1023's right.. now with your shoes off you can get to
1,048,576.. or if you prefer :
11111111111111111111..

 

OK, even though you're bottom-posting (yes, I noticed!) this is far too
weird for me <hands over eyes>. Where's my knitting....?

betty
Fark, what was I thinking?
I can't knit!

 

Betty! (the cat's done a whoopsie in my beret!) err .. release your
inner nerd for a Quick Lesson. Sometimes the "pattern" is clearer, so
I've explained decimal and binary but added octal and hexadecimal to
help the pattern show.

In "normal" counting you have a base number of 10. This comes from
having 10 fingers basically.
Reading *right* *to* *left* on any number, the columns increase in value
in a factor of 2 to the power of column-1 - eg:

10^0 = 1
10^1 = 10
10^2 = 100
So for the number 342, you have : (3*(10^2)) + (4*(10^1)) + (2*(10^0)).

With binary, it's base 2. So column 1 is 2^0 (which is still 1) but
column 2 is 2^1, which is 2, and the next column is 4. So instead of the
1,10,100,1000 pattern, you have
1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048..65536 (256*256, or "64Kb").

As an aside ever wonder why "a meg" isn't "a million" and why "a K"
isn't "a thousand" ? The most convenient number is actually 1024. Since
puters are very hardcore about whole bytes and stuff for "1K" to be
1,000 that in binary is 1111101000. It's easier for the computer to just
think "1111111111". It'd be like you having a way to write all the
numbers from 0-100, but only using 0-97.

With "base 10" (decimal) that means there are 10 possible values for
each column. ie the rightmost digit could be 0,1,2,3...9. So you use
each toe as a 'value' for column 1.
So for the number 4, you'd count 5 toes on one foot (or a more
complicated way if you're like that) for this kind of result.
YYYYY NNNNN
Where Y is a counted toe, and N is not. Or to nerd it up :
11111 00000

With base 2, (binary) this means 2 values per column - 0 or 1. This
allows a nice trick where a toe "counted" has a value.

In decimal you'd just use "2".

In binary, NNNNN NNNYN is 2 (aka the '10' that got this started,
skipping the leading zeroes)
However there's no "digit 5" in binary, same as there's no digit 342.
You can still represent it by making the number have more digits.
0000000101 = 5 : (1*(2^2)) + (1*(2^0)).



Just like decimal, the highest number in any column (9) is increased by
1 by :
incrementing the number in front of it by 1 and dropping that number to
its base (ie 09 becomes 10).

So with 10 toes, you can generate (2^10)-1 "patterns" which represent
numbers. Anything from 0000000000 (zero) to 1111111111 (1,023).

To really twist your melon, Octal is base 8, so consists of 0-7, and
"10" actually means 8 in decimal.

The one that really fucks people up is "hexadecimal" ('hex') which is
base 16. It has the "digits" 0,1,2,3,..,A,B,..,F.
F in hex is 15 in decimal. 10 in hex is 16 in decimal. Again it follows
the "increment next column / reset to base value" pattern, as does Octal.

You might wonder why such a weird numbering system got used. May as well
go there whilst I am confusing everyone:
Way back when computers were 8 bit, this meant binary wise, a single
byte (8 bits) could hold a number from 0-255 (2^8)-1.
Hex can display *every* number in that range in 2 digits.
This meant looking at a pile of memory could be either irregularly
0, 175, 37, 20
255, 10, 238, 17

Visually it was a nightmare.

But in hex it came out all nice and shiny with regular
columnificationism applied naturally.

00 AE 25 14
FF 0A EE 11
Obviously in binary the numbers would column nicely too, but they'd be 8
digits long. In Octal they'd be 4.

way back when computers were lucky to fit 40 letters on a line, 9 or 5
character wide columns were nowhere near as tidy as 3 (2 characters and
a space)).

Believe it or not I think hex is the easiest one to read other than decimal.

I'll just go and get my propeller hat.. jeez.

 

OMG. I thought everyone just /knew/ this stuff.

Explains why my geek jokes always fall so flat with "ordinary"
(non-geek) type BBQs

Q: Can a Boolean-evaluated conditional expression achieve orgasm?
A: Yes. It comes after a while().

See!

N/

 

.................^^^

really?

Moike

Betty, If you're still reading, that should be a 10 (that's a decimal
10, not a binary 10 which would be a decimal 2. (Oddly, a decimal 10
would be a binary 1010)

 

LOL Nigel, LOL.

 

....and why, when I demonstrate counting in binary with my fingers, the
kiddies in my class always lose it when I get to 4(dec).

(..and why "four" is now a term of abuse in my classroom.)

 

By the way, this lesson can be sold online for $15E *(10^-2) and a..

 

Fark me Yeebok, could you have explained a such simple concept in any more
complex a way?!!?
Besides, I think BB would be well and truly versed in binary, octal, hex etc
having a past life as a teacher (as well as being a bona-fide Brainiac).
I think she's just making a disparaging comment about those of us who find
this kind of stuff amusing.

OK Nigel; I'm just not Geeky enough to get this one. (Does it just mean
that a Boolean etc takes a while to come to you?)

 

A while()statement is followed by a boolean thingy, which can thus be
said to *come* after a while()

Not so much geeky as nerdy. I didn't get it when he first posted it.
I'm a little ashamed of getting it now.

Moike

 

Simple? SIMPLE? <clueless stare>

Can I confess something? I actually moved Yeebs's post to somewhere safe
where I can look at it at length and try to make sense of it when I have a
few hours to spare. I have always wished I could understand the mysteries of
number thingies but my brain simply isn't wired for numbers! It has been a
mega-source of frustration and failure for my entire life... I am a
right-brainer, no doubt about it...

Awww, Clem, your faith in my brainpower is very touching (but totally
misplaced when it comes to mathematical things.) I am good at my times
tables, ha ha, but that's about it! I can also convert kgs to pounds pretty
well... my brilliance (bwahahahaha, such as it is, and it isn't really
very...) is confined to teaching younguns about language and literature, and
instilling love of same (I think THAT is a gift).... numbers have never EVER
been part of it.

I used to try and hide back in primary school whenever things like
"base(whatever)" were mentioned, and I will suffer eternal guilt pangs over
the heart attacks that eventually claimed my much-loved high school maths
teacher. The man was a saint, and he simply could not understand why such a
cluey chick who could read and write Japanese was so effing DUMB when it
came to maths. "If you can understand THESE (Japanese) symbols, why can't
you understand THESE (mathematical) ones? he said to me, more than once, in
total exasperation... but I couldn't see his point - the Japanese symbols
were about WORDS, not NUMBERS! (Mr Harris, I'm so sorry! I tried, really I
did!)

Is this more geekery?

betty

 

Don't lose any sleep over it Betty. None of this stuff is of any actual
use to human beings. A handful of geeks need to know it, and whenever
two or more converge they like to show off.

Math teacher Moike

 

Phew, thanks Moike! This inadequacy of mine has been bothering me for, oh,
somewhere around 30 years now....

<wacky aside> I have built my maths skills since I started riding. On the
very long straight rides that lots of people hate I play number games in my
head to stave off boredom - and I actually enjoy them! (betty, numbers? Does
not compute!) I don't know whether my calculations are worth a pinch of
shit, but you know what? I don't care! I actually have FUN with NUMBERS -
and that's a first for me....

I know exactly how many verses of a particular song I can get at 100kmh or
120kmh (or whatever). I can calculate the "slowage" rate of fog according to
the same musical parameters, tee hee. I don't need no base 10 or
binary/hex/mumbo jumbo stuff..... I make my own numbers, man.....

empowered betty

 

Errrm I understand the concepts involved reasonably well, did the
highest level of maths for HSC and a bit at uni as well and I still
looked at his post and felt my eyes glaze over...

BaseN counting is quite simple, here's the easy version

- In the system of counting we use, we increment from right to left as
we run out of numbers - so in your plain old decimal system you count
from 1 to 9, run out of digits, stick a zero in the right column and a 1
in next left and start counting again - 10, 11, 12 etc until you run out
of digits - 19 and then you add another one to the leftmost column. ,
20, 21 etc etc

Keep counting upwards in the singles column and incrementing the left
most column until you're done (hundreds thousands etc).

- You do exactly the same thing regardless of what "base" numbering you
are using, it's just the number of digits you have available to count
with changes - base 10 has 10 digits (0-9) before you run out and shift
to the next column.

- Base 2 only has 2 (0, 1). Hence you count 0, 1 (damn out of digits,
shift to the left) 10, 11 (damn out of digits again) 100 101, (bloody
hell couldn't you afford a few more digits ? ) 110 111.... etc etc

- base 8 gets 8 digits (0-7) but follows the same rules - count up to 7
then you run out of digits so 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7, 10, 11, 12, 13
14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21 22 etc etc

Same rules when you run out of digits you increment to the left and
start counting again.

- Apply the same rules regardless of what number N is equal to.

- Gets a little tricky where N > 10 though - our decimal system runs out
of "standard" digits at 9, so if you need more than 10 digits before
writing 10then you need something to take their place. Theoretically you
could use anything you like, but convention has it that for base16 (the
most common baseN over 10) that you use letters of the alphabet ie

- Base 16 you get 16 digits to play with 0-9 and A-F, so you count
0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B,C,D,E,F

THEN you type 10 and continue to follow the increment rules
11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,1A,1B,1C,1D,1E,1F,20,21,22 etc etc

Once you understand the basic incrementing concept that allows you to go
from 9 to 10 in base 10 is the same for all bases just the numbers of
digits available changes then it's very simple.

=====
Aside
=====

As a piece of trivia, while 10 is a common base used in many societies
(as we have 10 fingers incl thumbs) some cultures have used others -
Babylon and Sumeria famously used base60 and because they invented
clocks our system of time is based on base60

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_60

I seem to recall from school that the mayans used base 60 as well but
it's not in the wikipedia entry

Some Amerindians used base 8 and apparently an African tribe use base 32
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_32

JL
(NB that post could have been an eighth of the length - I just figured
over explaining was better when it was text only - it's a 2minute
concept to teach verbally)

 

OK; let me try the "idiots' guide to..." version.
If you look at a "normal" base 10 number like 345; each character-position
represents a value.
The 3 is hundreds, the 4 tens and 5 singles.
Maths teachers write this as 3 x 10^2, 4 x 10^1 and a remainder of 5 (or 5 x
10^0 if you want to be a weirdo)
Computers don't have fingers so they can't count to ten; they only know on
and off so they can only count 2 (0 and 1). So they use columns of 2^0,
2^1, 2^2, 2^3, 2^4, etc. (no; they can't count to four but thay can count
2x2x2x2 ad-infinitem).
So the binary character values would be 256 (2^8), 128 *(2^7), 64, 32, 16,
8, 4, 2, 1 and our example of 345 would be 1 x 256, 0 x 128, 1 x 64, 0 x 32,
1 x 16, 1 x 8, 0 x 4, 0 x 2 and a 1. (345=256+0+64+0+16+8+0+0+1 or 101011001
in binary).
Any number can be broken down into these parts and assembled from no more
than one of each of the binary characters.

Thus the original joke "There are 10 types of people in the world - those
that understand binary and those who don't" is funny because in binary "10"
becomes 1 x 2 ^2 + 0 x 2^0, or 2 + 0 or 2...... those that understand
binary and those that don't.

(OK Yeebok I concede; this stuff IS hard to explain!!)