Re: A Simplified Number System

From: Sean O'Leathlobhair (jwlawler_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 10/29/04 

Date: 29 Oct 2004 01:36:23 -0700

hrubin@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) wrote in message news:<clric3$44p4@odds.stat.purdue.edu>...
> In article <d1835a57.0410280119.7d3d217e@posting.google.com>,
> Sean O'Leathlobhair <jwlawler@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >Arnold Victor <arvimide@earthlink.net> wrote in message news:<EHhfd.7799$5i5.6829@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net>...
> >> Sean O'Leathlobhair wrote:
>
> >> > "Ebenezer T. Squint" <spam@spam.com> wrote in message news:<Hbked.3136$%k.776@pd7tw2no>...
>
> ...............
>
> >But oddly hexadecimal is not normally used in IP addresses which would
> >also be neater that way. An IP address is really just four bytes (may
> >be changing to 6 soon) and could be neatly written as an 8 digit
> >hexadecimal number. Instead it is written as four three digit decimal
> >numbers separated by dots. For example, www.google.com is
> >66.102.11.99.
>
> I agree. Even if separation is by dots, there is no less
> convenience in communicating it as 42.66.B.63. And when
> reading news, it would take less characters to identify
> an article if the addresses were in hexadecimal. Also,
> when designating registers, decimal is decidedly not at
> all convenient, as the register banks are in powers of 2,
> or small multiples of them.
>
> >The code set EBCDIC (used by IBM mainframes) is always written in hex
> >but ASCII is commonly written in decimal.
>
> Not so often now; I see it as harder to read in decimal.

I also prefer hexadecimal but if I hold down Alt and type 65 I get: A.
 To do a similar thing on an EBCDIC terminal here I need to type C1.
I remember a colleague needing to type C for cancel on a terminal with
a broken C key. He considered using the hex mode but it failed since
the EBCDIC for C in hex is C3.
 
> >It seems rather arbitrary to me. Even the computing profession cannot
> >agree on whether it likes hexadecimal. If they cannot agree, how can
> >they persuade the general public to like it?
>
> It is not a matter of persuading. Use it where convenient,
> and it will catch on, like alphabetic writing.

I should have used "could" in my last sentence. "How could they
persuade . . .". I did not intend to suggest that the computing
profession had tried to persuade the public to use hexadecimal or any
other base. I just meant that if even a group like this were divided
on the subject, there would be little chance of persuading the general
public. Put bluntly, my intended message was that OP's aim of
promoting hexadecimal had little hope of success.

Seán O'Leathlóbhair

Quantcast