Victor Fraenckel wrote:

> Others weigh in:
> 
> http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?NewsID=7432

Is this just plain stupid, or am I missing something?

"13. The alphabet problem Hexadecimal numbering works because the reading
device "understands" hexadecimal. Suppose you could use coloured and
shape-grouped bits to store more information, you would then need to
"understand" it. If every pixel represented a 32-bit colour then its value
is 2 to the power 32. A contributor to Daily Tech calculated that you could
have a 4096x4096 grid using pixels of 1-32 colours and so arrive at 6MB of
data. Two such "super bits" could represent 16GB (16 trillion) pieces of
information but ... you have invent an alphabet with 16 trillion letters
and map that to a binary alphabet. This is not a trivial computational
problem."

Where's that not trivial? The "letters" of this "alphabet" are each just a
number of bits, and two such "super bits" together are just two such
sequences of bits.

Gerhard

-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist