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Posts: 180
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"There was also a term for 4 bits, but I haven't heard it used for at least a decade. Does anyone know or care to guess what that term is?"
Fifty cents?
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
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Fifty cents?
Reminds me of the old Computer Science Club football cheer: Not that we ever went to any football games
Shift to the left!
Shift to the right!
Pop up!
Push down!
Byte! Byte! Byte!
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Posts: 1,526
veteran
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veteran
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"Don' nobody peek..."
Heya, that's it! though I don't recall having seen it spelt that way. BF's answer is also correct. I'm not sure why the term went by the wayside, unless it's that current hardware makes it unnecessary to think about nibbles. (There are still semiconductor components that use a 4 bit bus, though ... it's possible the still use the term there.)
Next question - one to which I do not know the answer. Is there a generic term for a 'digit,' regardless of base? For example, bit's are "binary units" or "binary digits" depending on whom you ask. 10011 has 5 bits. 1066 has 4 digits. The hex number "FA3C" has 4 "hexadecimal digits" we always called them (a nibble is represented by one hexadecimal digit). But is there another term? I'm thinking 'digit' refers to base 10, although one could make an argument that 'digit' includes any integer base, though. After all the word digital (in opposition to analogue) refers to any descrete units (as opposed to continuous).
But back to the origin of this usage of grand. I found someplace on the web that referred to a grand as "one thousand pounds sterling." Does that usage precede the US usage?
k
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I've always regarded the 4-bit/nibble thang as an anachronism best relegated to history books. The original Intel chip (the 4004) that was the basis for the 8-bit chip (the 8086/8088) which powered the first PCs was a 4-bit wonder developed for calculators. Last I done heard of 4 bit architecture!
- Pfranz
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jul 2000
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"Large" is a criminal underworld term for $10,000, if I understood correctly the use of the word in "Rounders", a really excellent movie about very high stakes poker players. (Warning about the movie, there IS a lot of profanity and a good deal of violence.)
TEd
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
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So, if you were into him for ten large, that would be a hundred grand--and that is a large amount to be into someone for.
But "large" doesn't have an appealing ring to it so used.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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"large" doesn't have an appealing ring
Certainly not when you're into him for it.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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found someplace on the web that referred to a grand as "one thousand pounds sterling."
It certainly did - and does - mean 1000 GBP over here, but whether we picked the term up from y'all, I don't know. I suspect that we did, and that the major cuplprit was the large number of American "detective" story books that flooded the UK market just after the last world war.
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
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Just to go back towards the beginning of this thread for a moment, the question was asked:
OK. And what does the K come from to mean thousand? kilo?
FWIW there is a convention in the SI unit system that units that are named after a person take a capital letter whereas units that are not take a lower case letter.
So, for example, the unit of vibration is named after a man called Hertz and so one thousand Hertz would be shown as 1000Hz whereas one thousand kilometers would be shown as 1000km.
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Joined: Mar 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Is it me or does the post right above mine have no name? (it sounds like dxb but it doesn't *look like dxb)
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