On 11/29/06, Gerhard Fiedler <lists@connectionbrazil.com> wrote:
> 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
>

It's stupid.  They're comparing "number of bits" with "pieces of
information that could possibly be represented".

This is like saying 8 bits "can represent" 256 pieces of information,
but 16 bits "can represent" 65536 pieces of information, so (int) is
much more efficient at coding data than (char).

Regards,
Mark
markrages@gmail
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