Fun Stuff > CHATTER
ATTN: Americans: Bend over!
Jackie Blue:
What's really confusing in America is that most often marijuana is sold by the ounce (or half, quarter, or 1/8 ounce) but is weighed in grams.
Whoever thought that up must have been PRETTY STONED, DUDE.
Jackie Blue:
--- Quote from: redglasscurls on 16 Sep 2008, 09:54 ---You guys really are being kind of assholes to this guy. I understand you don't care much for him
--- End quote ---
Only one person was truly an asshole to me in this thread. Every time I say that people on here don't like me, someone says "Stop being dramatic, nobody dislikes you", so I'm just going to stop trying to figure it out.
Ozymandias:
--- Quote from: imagist42 on 16 Sep 2008, 09:22 ---RE: Computers: Hexadecimal was convenient for early computers because they were built on 16-bit architecture: a memory address was usually 16 binary digits (16-bit address space), and the information at any given address was also 16 digits long (16-bit addressability). So, instead of having to write out a sequence of 16 ones and zeros, computers could simply use hexadecimal digits to represent groups of four digits (2^4 = 16). This doesn't necessarily make anything easier, as when a computer is executing some instruction in memory it still has to expand into binary to parse the opcode, operands, etc., and even doing simple calculations it's often easier to use binary, as it simplfies the arithmetic (especially given two's complement calculations with negative numbers; at least, I find binary easier to understand in that case). So computers only really "use" base-16 numbers for input/output related things, as it's easier to report a long binary number in this kind of hexadecimal shorthand. Interestingly, it's not much harder to convert from binary to decimal than it is from binary to hexadecimal. At least, the logic behind the algorithms is pretty similar.
As far as Windows using hexadecimal, that's not quite true anymore. The x86 architecture, on which most processors for the last many years of computing have been based, is actually a 32-bit processor: 32-bit address space, 32-bit addressability. So mostly it works with larger numbers, but still in the way I outlined above. Eight hexadecimal digits per binary word instead of four. In recent years they've been developing stuff like the x86-64 architecture, which is 64-bit in contrast. This is why you have had 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows' latest OSs, and why programs designed for one aren't necessarily compatible with the other (if you're trying to read from one memory location to the next in a 32-bit program, that same program, depending on how it's designed, may instead read the first half of one location, then the second half, and so on).
--- End quote ---
I think it's worth noting that none of these OSes or computers were on hexadecimal architecture. They were all binary, but represented in hex for the user/programmer's benefit, because it's a convenient shorthand and converts extremely quickly and easily. The computer sees binary, the user sees hex, but it's the same thing.
imagist42:
Did I not explain that bit of it? I thought I had. Probably not well, anyway.
Oh, I am a cocker. I terribly interchanged "hexadecimal" and "16-bit" at certain points. Bloody 16, what a terrible number. Also, "computer" is both the machine and the person, so that's a little confusing in my post.
IronOxide:
--- Quote from: celticgeek on 15 Sep 2008, 23:10 ---Come on, use real units. My automobile gets 3DAB16 furlongs per firkin. Or 11110110101112 furlongs per firkin, if you prefer.
--- End quote ---
Those values are not equal, and I'd still call balderdash on your car being that efficient even at the most conservative estimate.
DAMN STRAIGHT I'M GONNA CALL YOU OUT ON THIS.
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