Ok, something for my quote file

[jarandhel]

"There are 10 types of people in the world, Those who understand binary, and those who dont." -author unknown

This is especially funny to me because I've been learning about binary and hexadecimal in my computer classes. I even took the time to figure out the basis for the IP ranges that make up the different classes of networks is found in binary. For instance:

Class A Networks have IP addresses ranging from 0._._._ through 126._._._
Class B Networks have IP addresses ranging from 128.0._._ through 191.255._._
Class C Networks have IP addresses ranging from 192.0.0._ through 223.255.255._
And so on. Doesn't look like there's a real pattern there, does it? But there is.

Now, in binary:
0 would be written 00000000.
128 would be written 10000000.
192 would be written 11000000.
224 would be written 11100000.
And so on. See the pattern now?

The number ranges aren't arbitrary. They're based on the binary in a very orderly and logical way. They didn't teach us this in class, or in our textbooks, I figured it out on my own, but the fact that I'm the only one in my class to figure this out and the teacher himself didn't even mention it to us (though seemed or pretended to know it already when I mentioned it to him in class the next day) really does underscore that there's a fundamental difference between those who understand binary and those who don't. I don't claim to be great at binary, but I've at least grasped that much of it so far, and it's an amazing tool for helping you figure out what class a network is rather than trying to memorize an awkward series of number ranges in decimal form.

Comments

[animelily.livejournal.com]

Binary is pretty understandable, at least in terms of numbers. It works off of the power of 2 and each place is just adding +1 power. the first place is 2^0, second is 2^1, third is 2^2, fourth 2^3, fifth 2^4 and so on.

Actually, I know you're interested in metaphysical stuff, but yin and yang could be considered a binary system. I'm sure one could write a program of Yi-Jing divination, yin as 0 and yang as 1.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I just remember that each place value is double the place value before it... generally stopping at 128 for computer purposes, it appears.

And yeah, I've seen that before with Yin and Yang, but metaphysically I'm somewhat more interested in trinary systems. This can come up to some degree in the concept of Yin and Yang forming the Tao, or more directly analogously in the mitsu tomoe symbol, which is very similar to the celtic triskele or the triquetra.

I'd really like to see what computers could do with trinary logic. I was working a bit on a trinary number system earlier tonight, just to see how it would work...

0, 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 20, 21, 22, 100, and so forth. It'd be really interesting if computers could manage this, but presently computers are really stuck with two options: on and off, ones and zeros, because it's easier to tell if voltage is passing through a circuit than to try to measure how much is passing through.

[dogemperor.livejournal.com]

Actually, a trinary system could work in one of two ways:

Computer states (programming): 1, 0, indeterminate (this could actually be useful in quantum computing, once that takes off--reportedly both MIT and scientists in Israel have gotten small working quantum computers going and some claim No Such Agency and the Mossad have for a while).

If you're going through the traditional switch-based methodology that computers use, it would require the use of a double-pole double-throw switch, but 0 could be no power, 1 could be one or the other connected, and 2 both feeds connected. (This could be potentially represented as a null power/half power/full power situation for purposes of computing. Prolly would require small relays though.)

Yes, I do think about this shit too much. :3

And yes, thinking about IP classes in terms of the actual binary makes SO much more sense :3

As an aside, tomoes show up in Korea, too (and it may be that either Korea and Japan discovered them independently or, more likely, the Koreans invented it and the Japanese incorporated it). A three-coloured tomoe is the traditional symbol of Haneolism (the traditional pre-Buddhist Korean religion that has elements of the old shamanism, among others).

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

I actually had a weird idea concerning trinary... what if we just used a second data path to determine if the number in the first data path should be 1 or 2? Like... no charge on the first line = 0. Charge on the first line and no charge on the second line = 1. Charge on the first line and charge on the second line = 2. And it would provide some internal (if intermittant) parity checking since any time the charge on the first line is 0 the charge on the second line should also be 0. The drawback of this system at first glance would be that it needs more lines to operate, but at the same time trinary could theoretically represent larger numbers using smaller data paths anyway (increasingly so at higher powers of n, as I understand it), so that might mitigate the extra overhead to some degree.

[tlttlotd.livejournal.com]

With quantum computing you could theoretically get a lot more than just trinary logic out of the qubits - because each qubit is in all possible states simultaneously you could basically get analog computing out of them instead of discrete states (for example, a qubit could be in a state representing the value 4.127872 in a precise manner instead of the good-enough-for-government-work manner that you get with a fixed-length series of bits/trits in floating point math).

[tlttlotd.livejournal.com]

That is because the lowest common denominator of computers is to use 8-bit bytes these days. If nothing else at least that's consistent across all network-capable computers. Endianness (whether or not the most significant bit is first or last in the byte) is defined as LSB (least-significant bit first) if I recall correctly.

I always prefered using 1, 0, and -1 for trinary logic. The idea of a computer that uses alternating current internally strikes me as funny.

Check this out: It's a whitepaper on trinary computing technologies.

[tlttlotd.livejournal.com]

There are quite a few out there on the Web.