Marcus: I'm sorry, but you are still missing the point.
(By the way, the II in ASCII (written without a space) isn't a Roman numeral. It stands for "Information Interchange." There was no "ASC I" and there will never be an "ASC III." The current 8-bit version of ASCII is simply a subset of the more-encompassing 8-bit ISO code.) As for a greater number of bits, that's already been done. The new international standard is Unicode, which has 16 bits. I recommend you do a web search (with the Google search engine, for example) for Unicode. You'll turn up a wealth of sites. Unicode is already implemented in Microsoft Windows (NT, 2000, XP), in Novell's NetWare products, and in many implementations of UNIX. We didn't arrive at base 10 for rational reasons. The rational choice would have been base 8 (if only we'd omitted the thumbs). For very practical reasons, I can see no change from the use of bases that are powers of 2 for computer arithmetic (at the machine level) and memory addressing. Finally, a computer with a 100-bit bus would still be binary. It's the bit that's irrevocably binary. The number of bits simply represents a power of two. For example, a 32-bit memory scheme will yield 2^32 possible unique addresses. A 100-bit scheme would yield 2^100. In any case, bus width is a speed issue, not an addressing one. A 64-bit bus can be used to retrieve twice the same amount of data as a 32-bit bus, given the same clock speed. Machines with 64-bit buses still use 32-bit addressing schemes. On the subject of binary and decimal values, counting from the low order bit, we give the bits values of 1, 2, 4, 8, etc. Numbers, whether binary, octal, decimal or hexadecimal, have to be represented by groups of bits. All possible single-digit octal values can be represented by the seven possible values of the low-order three bits (1, 2, and 4). It takes four bits for either decimal or hexadecimal. The problem is that, in decimal, six of the possible values of the bit group are wasted. In doing decimal arithmetic on a computer, we cheerfully accept such waste. To extend that to the computer's memory addressing scheme (which is the main application of binary numbers within a computer) wouldn't be very smart. Finally, even if one could justify such a wasteful scheme, the absolute requirement for backward compatibility would rule it out. Might I recommend that you do some reading with respect to computer architecture. Conclusions that seem obvious from afar often turn out, on close examination, to be wrong ones. Bill Potts, CMS Roseville, CA http://metric1.org [SI Navigator] -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Ma Be Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2002 13:00 To: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:17285] Re: Duodecimal System On Sun, 6 Jan 2002 00:48:01 Bill Potts wrote: >It seems to me we've been over this ground before. > >Perhaps you could explain how 20 bits would not be binary. >... ??? Where did you get that from, Bill? Did I say anything to that effect??? Please reread my post. I made no argument concerning the above whatsoever. When I talked about binary, I talked about "binary *NUMBER* OF BITS" (in the sense that such numbers would be perfect multipliers of 2), nothing to do with its being a binary SYSTEM or not! (I'm keeping my entire post here for your reference!) ... >As long as a bit has only two possible values (0 and 1), the system is >binary,... Precisely! I can't understand where you saw disagreement in my post. Quite the opposite, you've given me more amunition and reason to accept my argumentation! I just wished that these guys would stop insisting on coming up with a next generation of computers always based on powers of 2 for bits. I'd prefer that they'd start producing a 100-bit bus computer/memory in the future and abandon this hideous practice. I'd also like them to come up with a next generation ASC-III code that would be based on 10 bits! There would be more than enough there to address all funny, different characters in western civilization and some! Marcus >Actually the above is a cheap excuse. Unfortunately the problem here is >that these guys decided to build computers using a binary number of bits, >i.e. 4 bits, 8 bits, 16 bits, 32 bits, etc (AARRGHH!!). Had they been more >user-friendly to the decimal system and they would have created 10-bit, >20-bit, 30-bit, etc computers, alas! IMHO there is no reasonable >justification to use binary powers for bit buses. What can I say?... :-S > >Marcus... Is your boss reading your email? ....Probably Keep your messages private by using Lycos Mail. Sign up today at http://mail.lycos.com
