Subject: RE: [lojban] periodic hexadecimal reminder

From: "Craig" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 16:07:37 -0400

>> To me it seems rather inelegant that a language feature fails to function
>> in the absence of a default radix. For example, if you were a rabid
>> dozenal fanatic (or hex :-), would you want to be forced to specify the
>> radix of your own favorite number system in that depraved base X (ten)?
>> Or, stretching the point rather more than seems justified, perhaps if you
>> were a heptapus you could not manage base ten, and it's nasty and dumb to
>> shut the heptapi out of the Lojban world just over the radix.

>10 is the default earth human base, and the one shared by the six cultures
>that contributed gismu! No other apology is needed. The "cultulrally
>neutral" (retarded) solution is to issue the base number in base one.

Lojban has always said it is usable by both humans and computers. Tell me a
culture that uses a base lower than 10 (as opposed to no base at all). One
is no more culturally neutral. Heptapi are neither humans nor computers,
they can make their own language and we can later merge - as soon as there
are intelligent heptapi with which we want to communicate.

--la kreig.daniyl.

'segu le bavli temci gi mi'o renvi lo purci
.i ga le fonxa janbe gi du mi'
-la djimis.BYFet

xy.sy. gubmau ckiku nacycme: 0x5C3A1E74