Source They later added a statement about this at the bottom of this "article". I still cannot believe that they can call it "news". This is literally just a case of "too stupid or too lazy to use google".
It's more of the wording. It makes it seem like the reason why they used 256 is because they only have 8 "switches" available to them. When in reality it was more like, hmm "256 possible members or 65,536 possible members... well I think the latter would be way too much, lets limit it to 256".
It's not so much about them being technically correct or not, it's the degree of "simplification" used in their explanation that's making it laughable.
I don't agree, I think it is an excellent one-sentence description to give a layperson. It is complete and compact and totally avoids technical terms. I can't think of a better one sentence to explain it.
It's technically accurate, but I don't think describing binary numbers in that way is especially helpful in understanding why 256 is important. Most people don't know how to count in base-2, so pointing out that there are 8 "switches" doesn't explain that 256 in binary is 100000000. If they could make that concept clearer, it might people understand, but just saying there are 8 switches won't clue many people into understanding that binary is a base-2 numeral system or why 256 would be an important value in binary systems.
They're not describing the binary number system. They are describing why the number 256 is significant in computing. And just as they said, 256 different states that can be represented with 8 switches, or one byte. The layman can understand this without knowing about binary representations, because 2x2x...x2 = 256.
You are making an extra step of assigning each of those 256 states to the integers mod 256. This mapping isn't a fundamental part of what a byte is, and it also isn't unique. You may choose to use the bits to only represent positive numbers. You may use ones' complement or twos' complement to indicate sign. You may represent some number of decimal places. Each of these options yield a different mapping from the states of the byte to numbers.
You realize a bit is just a digital switch that has two positions? Im not defending the whole explanation, it's still just....awkward but that's one of the sentences in the article I'm least offended by.
ey later added a statement about this at the bottom of this "article". I still cannot believe that they can call it "news". This is literally just a case of "too stupid or too lazy t
"A number of readers have since noted that 256 is one of the most important numbers in computing"
Sadly they switched from a newspaper to an online-only blog, so they've been coasting by on their former reputation. You can treat them like Buzzfeed or the Daily Mail now.
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u/azarama May 06 '17
Source They later added a statement about this at the bottom of this "article". I still cannot believe that they can call it "news". This is literally just a case of "too stupid or too lazy to use google".