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Woo Hoo, Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, glad you corrected it Mandrake or I would have had to!

By the way, 101010 is binary for 21, 42 would be 010101. Does that make me sound wierd?

YES
but after my binary "joke" I should be shhhhhhhhhhh

By the way, 101010 is binary for 21, 42 would be 010101.

I beg to differ. I think you will find that 101010 is binary for 42. I assume you are counting from the other end. Not sure why you would do that.

bananafish wrote:I beg to differ. I think you will find that 101010 is binary for 42. I assume you are counting from the other end. Not sure why you would do that.

'Tis true.

I used to program in binary many moons back (think 1983!) and unfortunately in my capacity as a known anorak, I can speak it fluently - although in those days it was all 8-bit - which could only ever give a number as high as 256 and as low as zero - but it's easily adaptable!
I couldn't cope with todays 64-bit processing without pen and paper...

BUT... I can VOUCH that 101010 is 42, as a 6-bit binary figure. As 8-bit, it would appear with two leading zeros... 00101010. I think where Nick is getting mixed, as Bananafish states, is that he's counting from the right - which is correct in a sense, as 00000001 would be 1, whereas 10000000 would be 128.

Sorted?

As the book (HHGTTG) states, what is the question?

Even more convincing than seige's explanation above (!) I had the DVD for Christmas and the additional subtitling facility gives a running commentary of useful/useless facts & figures as each episode is viewed. The scenes were they refer to the race of beings which had multiple arms, and therefore developed the aerosol deodorant before the wheel, show drawings on a cave wall and, right at the bottom, you can see 101010 'chalked' on the wall. Apparently Douglas Adams did the drawings himself (as well as appearing in many scenes in the background and also being the naked guy walking into the sea). Now you really know I'm an anorak!

Hmm, I still get 010101 for 42, wonder what I'm doing wrong. 1,2,4,8,16,32, using the second fourth and sixth bits gives 42 doesn't it or have I just got it completely wrong?

On second thoughts it is very worrying that so many of you seem to be able to count in Binary, in fact it reassures me of my sanity that I managed to get it wrong!

Edit, ok I'm doing it backwards aren't I!
Just a little bit of thinking and I managed to work it out, just goes to show haw a wrong method can get stuck in your mind. It probably also explains why I got a lower mark than I expected in a realtime prgramming workshop last year!