[SpamCop-List] Re: spam is NOT 10 days old to me - got it this a.m.

[Mike Easter]

Frank Ellermann wrote:
> Mike Easter wrote:

>> '/designed/ for right to left?'
>
> If you read decimal numbers from right to left you immediately
> know that the first digit is 0..9, the second adds 10..90, etc.
>
> If you read it left to right you need an "algorithm" to decode
> it, the first digit is the most significant.  You'll only know
> "how" significant it is until you've reached the last digit.

Ha ha.  No no no.  Us humans aren't computers that read a several digit
number one digit at a time.

Us humans look at the whole number and know how many digits it has and
that's how we know that the first digit is, say hundreds.

> Not the same situation as for the "endinanness" of numbers in
> computers, because there you normally work with fixed lengths
> like say 64 bits (16 hex. digits).

The computer needs some kind of help to know, such as fixed lengths.

We humans often need some help too, crude help like commas.  Or, we just
throw up our eyeballs/hands and use scientific notation.


How come I said we humans down here and us humans twice up there?   Hmm.
It just came naturally and I'm going to leave it up there.

-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin