Subject: Re: periodic hexadecimal reminder

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 30 Sep 2001 02:07:30 -0000

--- In lojban@y..., thinkit8@l... wrote:
> it's pretty simple. 16 is a power of 2. 8 is too, but the 
exponent 
> is not itself a power of 2. 4 is nice, however--i should look 
into 
> those egyptians. 4 is actually very intrinsic to us--being the 
base 
> of our DNA. 16 is the most usable of all these, though.

A power of 2? An excellent reason not to use it. Prime powers are 
notoriously poor in divisors (by definition). If we want to change 
the default base of Lojban, I'd be hard-pressed to find one that 
beats twelve. And no, I don't think we should change the default 
base. I can't think of any advantage to hexadecimal outside of 
computer work and a few specialized related settings (the same can 
also be said for fibonacci base and base-7 (the specialized settings 
part)).

~mark