On Thursday 25 December 2003 21:18, Bill Potts wrote: > John S. Ward wrote: > >First off, the use of non-integral bits is quite correct, and certainly > >possible. > > We were talking about bit as the term is used in the computer field -- > meaning binary digit -- having two states, on and off, usually represented > as 0 and 1.
Bill, Yes, of course we were discussing computers, "information technology." The original information that we want to store, exchange, and process with computers doesn't come in sizes of integral numbers of bits. Computer scientists figure out how much information the data contain to determine the best ways to store and manipulate them on binary computers. This is particularly relevant to data compression algorithms. Most of the data on my 120 GB (120 * 10^9 byte) hard drive is compressed. Don't feel so bad, we all make mistakes. It's no big deal. John
