What is Digg?174 Comments
- TeacherOfHeroes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+58you'll note that in their visual demonstration of adding that there was no overlap.
It was essentially this addition in binary
001011100
010100001
========
011111101
This kind of visual combination works this way when there is overlap ONLY when using boolean operators such as OR. In this case ORing the two numbers yields the same result as adding, but not in all cases
when trying to apply the same idea to addition when you need to carry to the next column (and binary needs this a lot, especially when adding 3 or 4 numbers) it gets messy
try adding;
110
101
overlaping (ORing) them yields 111, but the real answer by addition is 1011. Note the need to introduce an "eights collumn" next to the ones collumn, were we to use this proposed notation.
So adding by visual overlap is either ill concieved or intentionally deceptive - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+45The more pressing issue is whether the U.S. will ever switch to the metric system. Now that would simplify things quite a bit conversion wise.
- jonnyeh, on 10/12/2007, -1/+32Umm, I think the site is an obvious joke.
They are just trying to convince people to switch to a binary numbering system.
Their examples are shallow (as Teacherofheroes showed), and the 8 days per week, 4 weeks per month, and 12 months per year idea does not line up with anything. It's much longer than one rotation around the sun. And 32 days a month is much longer than the lunar cycle.
It's a good hoax since at first glance it seems to make sense, but at closer inspection, it's complete hooey. (yes, hooey!)
I thought it was all pretty funny! - slaser, on 10/12/2007, -5/+24I especially like the possibility of calculating visually.
- smellinator, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20Not sure what the problem is with big numbers... Similar to base 10. You just add digits for a bigger number.
- plamoni, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18The "visual adding" is a bit of a deception. It shows that you can just combine the characters, but that is just like saying decimal is easy because 123+456 is simply combining the numbers in each column (1+4,2+5,3+6).
The real disadvantage of a base 10 number system is division. For instance, 10/4 is 2.5 (a fraction) and 10/3 is 3.33 (an even uglier fraction). Base 8 is a little better, 10/4 = 2, but 10/3=2.5252 (a really ugly fraction).
So what would be better than base 8? How about base 12? 10/4 = 3, 10/3 = 4. 10/5 is a bit ugly, and so is 10/7, but when it comes down to it, base 12 is a much more useful number system than base 10 or base 8 because 10 can be evenly divided by both 2 and 3, which is very handy, and it is a larger base than 6 (which shares a lot of it's qualities), so the numbers don't get to be unruly very quickly.
Ironically, there are people who have a mutation which gives them 6 fingers and 6 toes. Obviously this is a recessive trait, but had it asserted dominance at some point, we might have developed with a base 12 number system and I wouldn't feel screwed when I buy 1 of something that is 3 for a dollar. - jk3us, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Regarding the "chronology," This version of a year has 384 days, which is longer that a solar year, which would make the seasons different every year. This would never fly, there are tons of reasons why timekeeping needs to stay pretty much like it is.
- Ghazi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12"in our western world?"
Ridiculous! What do you think the rest of the world use? The decimal system wasn't even invented in the west. - smellinator, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14I like the symbold chosen. Pretty clever. It's just octal though.. nothing new, but worth a digg for the clever shorthand notation.
But since you already got a digg from someone else, I'll save mine. - Ghazi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9"Sorry, but you'd be wrong.
Metric was invented in France."
I hope you do know the difference between the decimal and metric systems. - TheBeaver, on 10/12/2007, -6/+14you obviously don't comprehend this at all.
- jk3us, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Yeah, the lengths of time that are (and need to remain) defined by natural cycles are the day (~86400 of the current second) and the year (~365.25 days).
So any other timekeeping system needs to retain those. The problem is is that all these new systems try to define the other periods to be more regular, but 365 is not prone to regular subdivisions. 365 is only divisible by 5 and 73, so a system with nice regular periods, would need either 5 or 73 "months" (or whatever you want to call the 1st subdivision of a year). Since both of those numbers are prime, the number of "weeks" in a "month" could not be regular.
As far as divisions of a day... I don't see any reason that those could not be redefined, other than the enormous confusion it would cause :) - tintub, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8the metric system is not the same as the decimal system (base 10)
- Livert, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Damnit. Why the hell did we get 10 fingers instead of 8.
- tracydanger, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7That would mean that the answer to life, the universe and everything is 101010 (using the binary).
- rnelsonee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Well, no. Base 8 is no harder than base 10, which is no harder than base 12. Of course you learned base 10, and it seemed easy and natural to you, but it's only taught to you because that's what your parents, and everyone else, uses. But it had a start *somewhere*. In times of antiquity, before numbers were "base" anything, people counted on their fingers. When getting to numbers over 10, they'd remember "10" and then start counting with their fingers to get 11, 12.. etc. So we only count base 10 because we have 10 fingers.
Base 12 would be convienent mathematically - it would be a little harder for small childern to learn (we all counted on our fingers a little when we were younger), but 10 only has 4 divisors, which means it only has two divisors besides 1 and itself (namely, 5 and 2). A number like 12 is wonderful because it is evenly divided by 2, 3, 4 and 6. Dividing by three and four would be much easier (there would be many more 'digit tricks' used).
12 shows is usefulness in the imperial measurement system - there are 12 inches in a foot because 12 is such a great number to work with when cutting wood and making measurments. It's convienences like that that cause the imperial system to stick around for so long. Engineers and the like love metric because it scales so nice (I'm an engineer), but when it comes time to build a bar in your house, imperial works very well. - TeacherOfHeroes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Im sure that this isnt the oldest example, but to give you an idea of how ingrained the base 10 idea is, heres an example.
The romans used base 10 - their name for ten was decim(pronounced dekim), then after that it was something tacked onto decim; undecim for 11, duodecim for 12, tredecim for 13, etc...
Hence the name decim-al for base 10.
The Romans were also the ones that futzed around with the calendar to get it working, btw
While the Romans had a profound impact on modern western culture, I hardly think that I would count 2000 year old rome as 'the west' as the authors use it.
SI may be based in france, and may have been "invented" there, but metric is hardly the same as decimal. You dont count in metric, you measure in metric. You count in decimal.
Metric is used because it is based on decimal values, thereby making it easy to use. - slaser, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I guess we have to colonize Mars first, before we finally start thinking in alternative timekeeping systems ;o)
- slaser, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Keep in mind that all different number systems (not only this one) can always redefine the number of seconds, minutes, hours, etc. that pass in a given period of time, while the period can still remain synchronized to external events such as day/night changes or solar orbit.
So the 'octomized' day can have 8 (or 16) hours that take up the same time as todays conventional 12 (or 24) hours. - parth, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9Numerous studies have been done - trained professionals on either keyboard (Dvorak or QWERTY) are equally fast. There is really no difference between either in terms of being "better". The same is true for octal. In fact, octal as described on the page would be worse. The way we have our current system is there for a reason, and it makes a whole lot more sense than having 384 days or something weird like that. The whole system is set around the orbits of the sun, the moon, and the rotation of the earth. These things happen not to work out nicely in terms of time periods (they don't divide evenly), so it's essentially impossible to have things work out nicely no matter what you choose as your base. This is different from the the metric system, where we have a bit of flexibility in what we define as a meter or a gram.
Honestly, who cares if you can add visually. Not only does it have some flaws (that others have pointed out), it doesn't really affect us in day to day living. Who adds on pen and paper past the 2nd grade anyway... - joshduck, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I believe that 12 is popular in timekeeping and measuring because it is divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6.
- sirkevinthegeek, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5pfft, i use the d'ni base-25 system.
- prockcore, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Unix users already use octal for file permissions. 0644
- Livert, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8It's only easy because that's how we were taught. I would have been way easier to learn in base 8.
- CharlesGriswold, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5"Bit less" convenient? I get it! Haha! :-D
- prockcore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4That's nothing. I use Base64 every time I send an email attachment.
- the_snitch, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4We only have 8 fingers, + 2 opposable thumbs (technically not 'fingers', but 'digits')
- invaderJEN, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I've read arguments for counting in base twelve, but this is the first I've seen of base eight...
- j0keR, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4"Obviously this is a recessive trait"
Actually, it is a dominant trait. Just because a trait is dominant doesn't mean that it is common for everybody to have that trait, there are a lot of diseases and other abnormalaties that are dominant traits, though they are rarely ever passed-- or only passed in within a small community. - EdgeOfEpsilon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4*Your* ability to estimate amounts would be lost. That's because you (and everyone else) have been estimating in base 10 all your life. You can use the same argument against the Celsius system.
- Cybert, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Hexadecimal is more common than octal. That way the bit count is itself a power of two. 3 bits is a bit less convenient for computer science stuff.
- Beanis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Numbers are symbols used to denote an amount. Changing the symbols doesn't change what they represent. All math will still work the same, it will just look different.
- Livert, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6With this system, most of us would be millionaires. Not that it would mean anything :P
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Yeah, I'd prefer hexadecimal myself, better alignment with exactly two hex digits per byte. But either octal or hex is an improvement over the decimal number system.
- hometoast, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This is the most over hyped thing I've seen in a while. Lets draw binary in groups of 3.. OMGWTF! ITS OCTOMANIACAL!
- bmc152006, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4wow. screw the decimal system.
- zoltan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3maybe... but right now it looks like its the equivalent to learning latin to me
- Livert, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Friggin aliens must be laughing at us for choosing to count in base 10.
- headzoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yeah, might take me a *whole* hour to memorize the new symbols.
- Reddog_x2000, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8Interesting, but it'll never catch on.
- Berkana, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3We have an base 60 time system because it is based on the Babylonian hour system. The Babylonians used a base 60 number system, which, though cumbersome, was a compromise between base 10 and base 12; base 10 is easily divisible by 1, 2, and 5, while base 12 is easily divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. By using base 60, arithmetic with large numbers was made considerably easier.
My personal favorite base is balanced ternary, a base-3 system where the digits are -1, 0, and 1. It happens to be the favorite of Donald E. Knuth as well. It is very efficient, because the individual operations are as easy using 1's and 0's, as in binary, but it is "denser" than binary because the place values are powers of 3 rather than 2.
http://www.google.com/search?q=balanced ternary - PlaidPhantom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3you, sir, rock. Now to find time to actually teach myself D'ni...
- SatansMagicHat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Exactly, slazer, they CAN. As a matter of fact, they currently are. There is absolutely no reason to change. And for the point about 8 days in a week meaning one less work day, LIES! It would mean the exact opposite. One MORE work day, because thats how it would be interpretted.
I like that an official nation has this selected as their number system of choice. Oh wait. It's a made up nation called the Nation of Utopia. By definition, Utopia's fail. - Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3How about an infinite base? You just need one symbol to represent any given integer. Since obviously an infinte number of symbols is untenable, we could create symbols by aggregating from a small set of symbols. For instance, the 13th number could be represented by combining the already common symbols 1 and 2, thus giving us 12. Likewise, the next symbol could be deduced as 13.
- xiphoris, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Glad to know the Slashdot trolls are coming to Digg (now that Digg has surpassed it in traffic).
I think you would like TimeCube.com. - foxhoundadmin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2why does "the nation organon" have a flag that looks like the kde symbol with what looks like a sperm in it? that's really, really... there are no words for what that is. nerdy and g... ******xual. yeah, that's it. those two words describe their flag.
also, why is organon's flag shapped like a pennant? most nation's flags are rectangular. - proidiot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2props
- breckinloggins, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5You haven't heard of Octal?
I think I'm getting old.... - Livert, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2In base 8, a thousand would be 512 in base 10, but still written as 1000. Adding zeros to the end would still apply. The only difference it the "actual" amount.
- sspooner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Sheesh, someone never programmed a PDP-11.
Octal was is baby ! If you ever see an old VT100 with a worn out 7 key you'll know it was someone tinkering with old PDP's.
I guess it's kids night tonight. -
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