This morning I expected to hike up Dixie Peak, but a freshly painted signpost on the trail noted I was instead hiking up TwoBit Peak.
No, I wasn't lost.
Later that morning, while at work, I researched the new name and discovered (1) the name change happened sometime in the last week and (2) may have been an act of vandalism. Such drama!
What about the new name? Two bits make a quarter, which once upon a time bought a shave and a haircut. These days when I hear two bits,
I think of computer bits, with each bit representing a one or zero. Two bits together represent a number from zero to three.
Many people believe eight bits make a byte, but this isn't always true. Eight bits make an octet, and an octet happens to be the same size as a byte on most computer systems today, owing to the popularity of the 8-bit microprocessors developed in the 1970s. However, the formal definition of a byte is that which is the smallest addressable region of memory in a computer, and so a byte may be any size. This is, of course, irrelevant information for the vast majority of people, even a majority of programmers.
5 comments:
To the uneducated masses of what we call SEC country, this is "Two bits"
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HjT_hD-nTlw
Bobby et al.— I'll think about Mr. Two Bits next time I go hiking, thanks.
I feel that my whole education was a betrayal. The only thing I remember from any of my computer classes in Middle School was that a Byte is 8 bits. And now you are saying that that was all a lie. What else is there that I knew to be true, which can now be revealed as a mere fiction of convenience? I wish I had never read this blog, and could be content to live out my days in happy ignorance. Now, the truth has come crashing in, and nothing will ever be the same again.
Craig, I feel you are tricking me into reading about computers and bicycles by masking your entries as a hiking blog.
Josh—I can't remember anything from that class either, other than that we used Apple 2E's and did a little BASIC.
Dear wife— Fooled you!
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