Just watched a Jools Holland retrospective on iPlayer.

He was celebrating 250 programmes - so there was a chess board on which
there was one videotape on the first square, two on the second.....

Only the truly computer literate (and vaguely uncontrolled) were shouting at
the screen "It's 256 shows you stupid f***kwit!!"

Oh, does nobody count in binary anymore?

[and my 500Gb drive is really only 465.2Gb because they use K for '1000'
instead of '1024' - bl**dy marketing.]

Where is hexadecimal when you need it?

Grumble....

--
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
[Not even bunny]

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

In message , David WE Roberts
writes
Just watched a Jools Holland retrospective on iPlayer.

He was celebrating 250 programmes - so there was a chess board on which
there was one videotape on the first square, two on the second.....

Only the truly computer literate (and vaguely uncontrolled) were
shouting at the screen "It's 256 shows you stupid f***kwit!!"

Oh, does nobody count in binary anymore?

There are 10 types of people in this world, those who do and those that
don't.


[and my 500Gb drive is really only 465.2Gb because they use K for
'1000' instead of '1024' - bl**dy marketing.]

Where is hexadecimal when you need it?

Grumble....


--
Bill

David WE Roberts wrote:

Just watched a Jools Holland retrospective on iPlayer.

He was celebrating 250 programmes - so there was a chess board on which
there was one videotape on the first square, two on the second.....

That reminds me of the story of the king who was marrying off his
daughter to a prince of the kingdom next door. As folk in that part
of the world were keen on chess, and it was a rice-based economy, the
king thought he would include in the dowry a token quantity of rice,
to be presented on a chess board.

One grain on the first square, two on the second, four on the third,
and so on, doubling each time. He got his court mathematician in
to work out how big to tell his carpenter to make the board.

Naturally the mathematician had to persuade the king to drop the idea.

On 17/09/2010 21:22, Ronald Raygun wrote:
David WE Roberts wrote:

Just watched a Jools Holland retrospective on iPlayer.

He was celebrating 250 programmes - so there was a chess board on which
there was one videotape on the first square, two on the second.....

That reminds me of the story of the king who was marrying off his
daughter to a prince of the kingdom next door. As folk in that part
of the world were keen on chess, and it was a rice-based economy, the
king thought he would include in the dowry a token quantity of rice,
to be presented on a chess board.

One grain on the first square, two on the second, four on the third,
and so on, doubling each time. He got his court mathematician in
to work out how big to tell his carpenter to make the board.

Naturally the mathematician had to persuade the king to drop the idea.


Turn it on its head, and you get the binary method of sharing . . .
If you want to divide (say) a cake among a number of people, the first
person gets a half, the next person gets half of what's left and so on.
That way, you never run out - provided you're good at splitting crumbs! g

--
Cheers,
Roger
____________
Please reply to Newsgroup. Whilst email address is valid, it is seldom
checked.

On 17/09/2010 23:07, Roger Mills wrote:

Turn it on its head, and you get the binary method of sharing . . .
If you want to divide (say) a cake among a number of people, the first
person gets a half, the next person gets half of what's left and so on.
That way, you never run out - provided you're good at splitting crumbs! g

They had a similar problem in Norman Hunter's Incrediblania.

On Sep 18, 5:37 am, "David WE Roberts"
wrote:
Just watched a Jools Holland retrospective on iPlayer.

He was celebrating 250 programmes - so there was a chess board on which
there was one videotape on the first square, two on the second.....

Only the truly computer literate (and vaguely uncontrolled) were shouting at
the screen "It's 256 shows you stupid f***kwit!!"

Oh, does nobody count in binary anymore?

A chessboard having 64 squares -
So was there one more tape on the next square, i.e. 1,2,3,4,
making 64 tapes on the last square, a grand total of 2080 tapes?

Or did the number of tapes double on the next square, i.e. 1,2,4,8,
making 9223372036854780000 on the last square,
a grand total of 18446744073709600000 tapes?
How long are these programmes?

"John Rumm" wrote in message
...

Or the riddle of how to cut a round cake into 8 equal portions with only 3
straight cuts...

I can think of two ways..
One works with layer cakes the other requires moving the bits.

"Matty F" wrote in message
...
On Sep 18, 5:37 am, "David WE Roberts"
wrote:
Just watched a Jools Holland retrospective on iPlayer.

He was celebrating 250 programmes - so there was a chess board on which
there was one videotape on the first square, two on the second.....

Only the truly computer literate (and vaguely uncontrolled) were shouting
at
the screen "It's 256 shows you stupid f***kwit!!"

Oh, does nobody count in binary anymore?

A chessboard having 64 squares -
So was there one more tape on the next square, i.e. 1,2,3,4,
making 64 tapes on the last square, a grand total of 2080 tapes?

Or did the number of tapes double on the next square, i.e. 1,2,4,8,
making 9223372036854780000 on the last square,
a grand total of 18446744073709600000 tapes?
How long are these programmes?


The first row (8 squares) of the chess board had been filled with the usual
binary progression:
1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128
The first square of the second row (next to the 64 square) had the pile of
250 tapes.
So, 6 short of the full number of 256.
I don't think that they have any hope of completing even the second row of
the board :-)

--
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
[Not even bunny]

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

"dennis@home" wrote in message
...


"John Rumm" wrote in message
...

Or the riddle of how to cut a round cake into 8 equal portions with only
3 straight cuts...

I can think of two ways..
One works with layer cakes the other requires moving the bits.


Horizontal cut then two vertical cuts at right angles?
Wouldn't really give consumer satisfaction with a Victoria sponge though.
--
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
[Not even bunny]

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

David WE Roberts wrote:

The first row (8 squares) of the chess board had been filled with the
usual binary progression:
1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128
The first square of the second row (next to the 64 square) had the pile of
250 tapes.
So, 6 short of the full number of 256.

That doesn't entirely make sense.

For one thing, the first square of the second row would be next to the
1 square (if scanning) or the 128 square (if snaking), not the 64 square.

For the other, unless the first row of tapes were nothing to do with the
man himself, there'd be no need to begin a second row at all, and the
8th square (which *is* next to the 64 square) should have only 123 tapes
on it, thus adding up, with the 127 tapes on the first 7 squares, to the
required 250.

"Ronald Raygun" wrote in message
...
David WE Roberts wrote:

The first row (8 squares) of the chess board had been filled with the
usual binary progression:
1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128
The first square of the second row (next to the 64 square) had the pile
of
250 tapes.
So, 6 short of the full number of 256.

That doesn't entirely make sense.

For one thing, the first square of the second row would be next to the
1 square (if scanning) or the 128 square (if snaking), not the 64 square.

For the other, unless the first row of tapes were nothing to do with the
man himself, there'd be no need to begin a second row at all, and the
8th square (which *is* next to the 64 square) should have only 123 tapes
on it, thus adding up, with the 127 tapes on the first 7 squares, to the
required 250.


My bad - it was next to the 128 square.
[Mr. Picky decided not to wriggle around the fact that it was diagonally
adjacent to the 64 square - got me bang to rights guvnor.]

As you say, if they filled the first row to generate 0xFF tapes they should
have had 255 tapes.
Neverthless IIRC they had turned the corner for the biggest stack.
I assumed that they were doing the traditional 'chessboard thing' with a
binary progression else why the massive chess board with increasing numbers
on each square?
I'll probably have to go back and watch it again on iPlayer just to see how
inaccurate my recollection is.
Probably as bad as my binary arithmetic :-(

[Probably also difficult or impossible to pile 128 videotapes (Why
videotapes? Does the BBC still record to digital tape?) on the 8th square.]

--
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
[Not even bunny]

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

David WE Roberts wrote:

[Probably also difficult or impossible to pile 128 videotapes (Why
videotapes? Does the BBC still record to digital tape?) on the 8th
square.]

It's not difficult if you make the squares big enough and pile the
tapes more sensibly than as a single stack.

If instead of progressing binarily they had progressed linearly, piling
just one more tape on each square than on its predecessor, they would have
needed 23 squares and the tallest pile would have needed only 22 tapes.

The 23rd square would then have been nearer to the 64 square than to
the 128 square, except that they would not have been called 64 and 128
but 7 and 8. :-)

In message , David WE Roberts
writes
Just watched a Jools Holland retrospective on iPlayer.

He was celebrating 250 programmes - so there was a chess board on which
there was one videotape on the first square, two on the second.....

Only the truly computer literate (and vaguely uncontrolled) were
shouting at the screen "It's 256 shows you stupid f***kwit!!"

Oh, does nobody count in binary anymore?

[and my 500Gb drive is really only 465.2Gb because they use K for
'1000' instead of '1024' - bl**dy marketing.]

Where is hexadecimal when you need it?

Grumble....

And a 2TB HD is only 1700gig

calm down dear its only a counting system


--
geoff

geoff wrote:

And a 2TB HD is only 1700gig
calm down dear its only a counting system

Once you get into the range of terabytes, pretending the difference
between decimal powers and binary powers doesn't matter gets very silly,
you have to start using Gibibytes and Tebibytes instead of Gigabytes and
Terabytes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix