Soapweed said:
On March 10, at 12:07 a.m. (in the middle of the night) "supposedly" there were 462 users online all at the same time on the Bull Session forum. Surely this is a misprint, as the "record" prior to this was 42 users online at the same time. Just curious as to a logical explanation of this highly unlikely phenomenon. :???:
Soapweed, this could be something as simple as Bubba hooking the jumper cables wrong, you know:
Red is negative
Black is positive
Or it could be something as simple as some numbers that got scrambled up. We then need to convert them to something that can be understood by a computer. For this we use the binary number system.
Binary numbers are used to represent all information in the digital world. They're similar to our decimal system, which uses the digits 0 to 9, except binary uses only 0 and 1.
Binary is handy because now we can easily use something physical to represent numbers. For instance we could use a laser. When it's on you know it means '1' and when it's off you know it means '0'.
When we write numbers in decimal, it's the position or place of the number that tells us what its real value is. With 246 for example, the 6 at the end is six ones, the 4 in the middle is four tens and the 2 is two hundreds. Each place or position is 10 times greater than the previous position.
The binary number system also uses place to give value, but as we have only 2 numbers to work with each place or position is only 2 times greater than the one before.
In binary code:
Decimal number 0 is binary 0
Decimal number 1 is binary 1
Now it's different:
Decimal number 2 is binary 10 (one two and no ones)
Decimal number 3 is binary 11 (one two and one one)
Decimal number 4 is binary 100 (one four, no twos and no ones)
Decimal number 5 is binary 101 (one four, no twos and one one)
Say we wanted to send decimal number 5 which is 101 in binary. We take each digit one at a time: start with the laser on for '1', turn it off for '0' and back on again for the last '1'.
We convert each number to binary, send it down the optic fibre with a laser, then convert it back. Computers can switch a laser beam on and off very fast, so we can send lots and lots of numbers at an incredible speed.
In other words, keep your back cinch tight enough so you don't get a cactus flipped up in there. It could get you bucked off! :wink:
