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http://www.infoverse.org/octomatics/octomatics.htm
Funny thing is, I met the guy who came up with the idea (or at least made
the site for the idea) and he seemed normal enough.
What do you think?
A pretty nice url. Does this have a future? I don't know. Probably no. :)
He suggests an octal system, but the digits look like binary.
So the question is does grouping bits by trios really help?
Why not 4 or 6 bits?
|_|_| |_|_| two 8-based digits
|_|_|_|_|_| one 64-based digit
I suggest a truly binary counting systems, binamatics. :)
: - 1
. - 0
The digits are very narrow. Here is a written presentation for 35:
|____ __|_| octomatics
:...:: binamatics
You are free to add any separators, so the same number may be written as:
:. ..::
:.. .::
:. .. ::
Now you may actually represent any number up to 1024 using your hands.
/) (\
/ ) ( \
_( ( _ _ ) )_
(((\ \ /_> <_\ / /)))
(\\\\ \_/ / \ \_/ ////)
\ / \ /
\ _/ \_ /
/ / \ \
/ / \ \
/ / \ \
Ok, it all was meant to be a joke. The system that I will actually lobby is
nonamatics. Why? Because I assidentially bruised one of my fingers and...
My best friend actually does count on his fingers in base 2...very useful
for scoring some of the board games we play, since you can easily need to
add up to 60-70 or so. (It's not 1023, but still...)
Not sure what this says about either my friend, or about my choices in
friends, but there it is. :-)
Tom
Well, I have come up with other ideas too. Like where there is the
standard 0's and 1's for binary. Where 0=off and 1=on. Add another one
represented by 2 and 2=maybe. It was a quirk idea to add a 3rd dimention
to computer thinking. This would make it possible to have real AI in
computers. Of course it would pave the way for a mechanical takeover as
computers might become self-aware.
Heehee, good one, Mikhael. I've taken the liberty to forward your response
to the site to the guy behind it via email...
In most 'fuzzy logic' systems out there, you use a range of reals from 0
to 1. You can think of this is a percentage if you like...0% = off, 100%
(1) = on. In that type of system, 'maybe' would be .5.
Trinary arithmetic is very intersting, but there are some very
fundamental advantages to binary over any other system, simply do to the
constraints on inputs and outputs, such as not having elements which are
not the identity function for some simple operator.
In binary, '0' is identity for the 'or' operator, '1' is the identity for
'and'. You can do some tricks to try to map 'trinary' operators, but may of
them reduce to a similar type of fuzziness as above.
If you are interested in other interesting bases for computing, you might
want to consider a base -2 system. That leads to all sorts of facinating
results, even with simple representations of numbers, addition, etc.
(If asymmetric is the opposite of symmetric, then should this system be
abinary?) Play around with this system if you have a little time. :)