(OT) Why do movies always use Roman Numerals in the date

You will find it to be true for many definitions of efficient!

Reply to
Rob
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Is it efficient to throw away everything learned over a lifetime? What's the ROI?

Yes.

Reply to
krw

You're reading this thread. Join the club.

Reply to
krw

Exactly. There is more than one definition of "efficient" and even given a definition, the value of "efficient" changes depending on how you draw the universe around it. Lefties (like most Rightpondians) like to look at only one side of an equation when declaring moral superiority.

Reply to
krw

...and then computers happened.

No, living quite well.

Reply to
krw

No, there really isn't. You don't even do it.

Reply to
krw

For those who are not very familiar with computing history, there are very few truly "decimal" computers. Only the ENIAC comes in mind with counter tubes with 10 cathodes.

Later computers used groups of 4 bits to handle a single decimal digit in a form of BCD digit or ECCESS-3 or similar systems. A single decimal digit (4 bits) processed in parallel, while the decimal digits were processed in serial.

The russians tried to implement something Base-3 arithmetics, but without a great success.

While some Flash chips might be able to store the 0, 1, 2 and 3 states, I haven't seen any chips supporting 4 level logic design.

Reply to
upsidedown

But, if you want to learn the multiplication table, base 10 has (ignoring times-one and times-zero, and digit order) 36 different entries to memorize. Base 36 would require 595.

Computers get off a bit easier, because they only need a table of squares for the normal multiplication scheme. Base 36, with that algorithm, requires 71 entries memorized.

Reply to
whit3rd

... which is why I argue for a decimal system with digits ranging from

-4 to +5. There would be only ten entries to memorize.

There are other advantages too: It works like successive approximation. Rounding and truncation are the same. You can add a mixture of negative and positive values in a single column. Carry-overs tend to cancel rather than to accumulate. Multiplication and long division become child's play. It's really much nicer than our common decimal system.

It's nothing new, but I'm always surprised it's so little known. See John Colson, ?A short account of negativo-affirmative arithmetick?, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, XXXIV, 1726, pp161-173.

Jeroen Belleman

Reply to
Jeroen Belleman

Not true at all. The IBM 650, 1620 (CADET ;-), and 7070 were also decimal computers.

There is also Bi-Quinary encoding, which was also popular. How is BCD or Bi-Quinary not really "decimal"?

While communications systems use quite large symbols.

Reply to
krw

I think, when it has to be "made great again", the implication is that it currently isn't that great anymore. Probably one of the steps to make it great again is to adapt the metric system. We'll see what comes up.

Reply to
Rob

It doesn't matter much in the grand scale of things.

Not as much as adaption of the metric system, I think. Now that most people cannot calculate without using an electronic calculator, it does not really matter anymore.

Reply to
Rob

Depends on the definition of "decimal" computers.

IBM650 was bi-quinary.

How about 4 function calculator (bit parallel digit serial) or

4004/4040/TMS1000 ? What about 8080/6800/Z800 with DAA Decimal adjustment decimal after addition for adding two bytes each containing two BCD digits ?

The only time I have worked with "real" decimal computer was some Phillips office computer with exactly 1000 (decimal) words each 10 decimal digits. In a dual operand instruction, you could specify any of the 1000 locations of physical memory. Maintaining that computer was a mess, since _all_ internal wiring used _yellow_ wire-wrap connections:-)

There is a tradeoff between signal to noise ratio (SNR) and occupied RF bandwidth.

Reply to
upsidedown

Probably not. Trump needed a slogan, and that one appealed to enough people who weren't doing all that well to get him the electoral college (even if it left him three million short on the popular vote). Trump doesn't confine himself to actual facts all that often, and what he says has more to do wi th what he wants than with what's actually going on.

Opinions differ. Many people thing that moving back to the kind of income i nequality that the country had before about 1980 would help more than adopt ing the metric system. Others fancy universal health care, yet others an ed ucation system where the quality was more nearly uniform, and the median qu ality a bit higher.

Softhearted people would opt for better gun control, but so few people get massacred by heavily armed lunatics that it probably isn't worth trying to cut the income of the gun making business (which spends lot of its profits on very generous lobbying).

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Arguably MLMX would be an acceptable less common shorter form.

It makes for transposition errors in Ancestry dates where dd,mm < 13 and the transcriber belonged to an opposing dd/mm/yyyy faction. Not helped by the month being written out in longhand text. Always worth checking the original source material before taking it at face value.

To be fair IBM have used YYYYMMDD date format internally in databases since forever - to allow natural date sorting.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

It isn't.

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

I guess I would like to get on board. I have already bought a mm scale and now a mm tape measure. So many components today are specified in mm. Now is the time for me to get comfortable with it. So now I will consider changing my date format. A little practice should do it.

Reply to
John S

You're an idiot.

Reply to
krw

How is it not decimal?

So? It's still a decimal character.

The 4004 wasn't decimal. I believe the HP35 was, though.

All of the connections in the original IBM mainframes was, too. All backplanes were wirewrapped until at least 1980 (the Clarke boards on the 308x were wireweld twisted pair.

Sure, but the point stands.

Reply to
krw

tto:

AFAIK no, it's not acceptable. You can't subtract AND add from the same "digit" at the same time.

Bye Jack

Reply to
jack4747

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