Subject: Re: periodic hexadecimal reminder

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2001 14:31:41 -0000

--- In lojban@y..., Robin Lee Powell <rlpowell@d...> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 26, 2001 at 01:10:24AM -0400, Invent Yourself wrote:
> > On Wed, 26 Sep 2001 thinkit8@l... wrote:
> > 
> > > this is just a post to remind everyone that hexadecimal is the
> > > future, and lojban is by default hexadecimal. rafsi will be 
assigned
> > > for dau-vai, and "ju'u dau" will be used for references to the 
old
> > > way of doing things.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > What are the benefits of hex that outweigh the enormous, 
trillion dollar
> > investment in decimal infrastructure?
> 
> Especially since 16 isn't as divisible as either 12 or 60, and 
hence
> could easily be argued to be inferior to both of those.
> 
> -Robin

Yes, indeed. And for extent of success to be expected from trying 
to change the world over to hexadecimal, please see the Dozenal 
Society of America, c/o Math Dept., Nassau Community College, Garden 
City LI, NY 11530-6793, http://www.polar.sunynassau.edu/~dozenal/ 
Formerly the Duodecimal Society of America, they have been trying 
literally for decades (and I mean no small number of those either) 
to convince people to forsake newfangled, clunky decimal in favor of 
tried-and-true, flexible and vibrant duodecimal. And they have a 
point, actually: base 12 is so much more divisible, it's a lot 
easier to work with in many situations. (Of course, they really 
have not all that much more than *a* point, and I keep wondering 
what they fill their journals with each year. I even joined it, to 
find out). Hexadecimal is potently inconvenient to use in most 
situations, unless you're a computer. Hardly anything has a 
terminating representation. True, it's a real lifesaver when you're 
doing computerish things, but that doesn't affect most people all 
that much (unlike computer geeks like me). The dozenal folks will 
be happy with Lojban; they can use {dau} and {fei} happily for their 
extra digits (variously written as X and E in older texts, and * and 
# in newer ones. They also usually suffix dozenal numbers with a 
semicolon, so you can tell which base they're using. Kind of like 
{ju'u}).

~mark