16 November 2011

Binary, Jobs, Lovins

See my previous post on binary numbers for more info and also for the correction I just made for the decimal expressions for the binary numbers 111011 and 111111.  


Also see this web page for "live" conversion of binary, decimal and hexadecimal numbers.


The binary equivalent of the decimal number 111,011 is 11011000110100011.  For decimal number 111,111 the binary expression is 11011001000000111.


I know!  Who cares?  

Well, I can take this opportunity to say I do without all the things Steve Jobs and crew have created.  I thought the original Apple II computer ad in Byte magazine in 1978 (I had a subscription) was pretty stupid, including the name (Apple).  Then in 1985 when I first used the Macintosh, I did not like it a bit.  I liked entering commands and programming, and didn't like the mouse experience, since as far as I could tell I was controlled by the computer rather than being able to control the computer.  I knew the machine language or "op codes" of the Motorola 68000 CPU in the Mac, but couldn't figure out how to get past the mickey mouse point-and-click environment and enter commands. 


Never had a ipod nor none of the other istuff, and don't care to. How have they improved the world?  The man close to Steve Jobs age (also my age) who would get my vote for working to change the world in a positive way is Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute.