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#3344 06/06/00 08:22 PM
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I mentioned (in the rhyming slang bit) the term "pony" meaning 25 - there are other terms depending on the size of the bet. Does anyone know any others?


#3345 06/06/00 08:36 PM
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> I mentioned (in the rhyming slang bit) the term "pony" meaning 25 - there are other terms depending on the size of the
bet. Does anyone know any others?

Yeah, sure. I know that a 'ton' is 100. There's a 'monkey' which I think is 40. Should be plenty more.

On the same topic, where did the bookies language of 'tic-tac-toe' come from?


#3346 07/12/00 10:37 AM
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A monkey is £500 and a Bullseye £50.


#3347 07/12/00 11:48 AM
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Welcome, hotlegs.
Not asking!
I'm betting you're from Great Britain, as my
computer has a dollar sign--no symbol for the Pound.
We do have what we call a pound sign, though: #.
Amazing, some the "little" differences!


#3348 07/12/00 01:57 PM
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Do you also call a # a "hash"?


#3349 07/12/00 04:59 PM
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Actually, you don't have to have a pound sign button on your computer. All character symbols can be found by holding ALT and typing numbers in the numpad. For example the £ is made by typing ALT-156. ££££


#3350 07/12/00 06:10 PM
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Strange - on my system it is ALT + 0163

Thinks: are there dialects of ASCII?

#3351 07/12/00 07:16 PM
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> Strange - on my system it is ALT + 0163

Thinks: are there dialects of ASCII?

No! ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Exchange (Interchange) and is a STANDARD! Despite the 'American' it has been adopted worldwide. However, there is an exception to the rule. Certain non-American characters may be displayed using different key combinations depending on the type of computer or the Operating system. This is especially true of Unicode which incorporates Chinese characters and Kanji. Standard ASCII goes from 00-127. After that the standards are defined for the characters but the coding system is more liberal to allow more flxibility in larger computers and less stringency in smaller ones. This means that not all of your computer's memory will be taken up with useless extra characters. The reason that you had to tyep a different number to Jazzoctopus is because you had an extra few characters on your computer than he had on his. Check them out.

Try the ASCII code for 'A'. This should be 65. 'a' is 97 regrdless of the type of computer.


#3352 07/13/00 04:34 AM
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Only tangentially connected if at all, but why oh why are the numbers laid out differently on telephones and calculators?

Bingley


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#3353 07/13/00 10:06 AM
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> Only tangentially connected if at all, but why oh why are the numbers laid out differently on telephones and calculators?

Oh, now you've done it. I used to sleep at nights but now I feel a bout of insomnia coming on at the thought of that one. When I read this I happened to have both on my desk. I can't think of a logical reason for the differences but the two evolved at different times. Calculators (in mechanical form) have been around since the 1960s (possibly even earlier) and I suppose the companies who manufactured the machines adopted their own standards for reasons similar to those by which the QWERTY standard was adopted in most (but not all) countries for typewriters (and now word-processors). I can but guess that those who used the earlier machines (cashiers, accountants etc.) approved of the bottom-up approach to number crunching on mechanical calculators and this practice was maintained when the calculator world went electronic.

Push button phones have only really been around for the past twenty years and I presume the position of the buttons are primarily for the benefit of those with poor sight. The logical sequence of numbers from top left to bottom right reflects the Western method of character reading. You may have noticed aswell, that there is a small raised dot in the centre of the number '5'. This aids the quick selection of numbers for poorly-sighted users and helps to distinguish numbers from extra buttons on extended key-pad phones.


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