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how to prove someone doesnt read binary

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bRiCe

Member
Joined
May 4, 2003
a kid in my biology class thinks that he's really badass with computers, but i can tell that he has no clue what he's talking about when he talks and tries to sound smart. For some reason this gets on my nerves really bad, and i kinda wanna prove him wrong. I was asking him all these questions and stuff, and asked if he knew ne programming languages and he said that he knew bianary. This other kid in the class believed him and asked what the letter "A" was in bianary. he said some arbitrary seven 0101011 or something like that, and then started saying the alphabet, or so he said. I said that he was full of.. well... poo, and everyone thinks that im stupid and dont know what im talking about. what should i say so that he knows that i know and he doesnt look like a freakin genius that he's not. I already asked a bunch of questions that made him sound stupid, but only to me cause he was saying stupid things about computer hardware (which is what i know a LOT about). what are some specific questions i should ask that will make him sound really stupid.
 
If he knows binary, tell him to give you the binary and asm instruction set of an x86 and SPARC. ;)

ANd ask him for the uppercase letters. Have an ASCII table handy. ;)
 
Thelemac said:
If he knows binary, tell him to give you the binary and asm instruction set of an x86 and SPARC. ;)

ANd ask him for the uppercase letters. Have an ASCII table handy. ;)

I think that would work nicely. Also, binary isn't really a programming language. No human can interpret binary by looking at it. We use languages that are higher than binary (not necessarily high level languages) to allow us to interpret the data. So, when he says he knows binary, take your favorite .exe, determine all the 1's and 0's, print it out, and ask him what it does.
 
Well since A is 01000001 which is 8 letters not 7 that would be one thing you could throw at him

also ask him why Ram is in numbers like 8, 16, 32, 64, 128,256, 512 and so on

The reason is everything is a base 2 like binary

if he is so good he should beable to say off the top of his head what say;

2^32 is, which is a pretty significan't number since it is the amount of addressing space most people have on there desktop computer // 4Gb

or even just 2^10 //1Kb

just hit him up with simple things you can back up, with proof, a Calculator can prove all of your 2^X tests
 
Or even ask a basic question like... if the address bus is 10 bits (swap with your preferred value), whats the theoretical maximum amount of addressable memory???
 
well i dont have anyt suggestions besides maybe find somthing that converts Binary and ask him somthing ad put it in... that should be enough proof for someone who was conviced by what he said and make him look like an ***, but i can relate ill tellmy story again cuz i like it... basicly there is htis kid at school how makes stuff to impress the computer illit kids in mty web designe class. first he came up with some BS like having a 3Ghz (not PR Ghz) AMD protype from sunMicroSystems, then he wouldnt do ANYTHING to try to prove it (not even try to photochop a WCPUID pic! that just shows how much he is making up) and then he is talking about how he has an X-Box emulator wich, i admit may exist though i ahve never seen on e and i think for somereason i woul dhave... being well... me, but i wont go into that. nee ways i ask where he got it and he said "a freind", so ask if he got it from a P2P program or an Ftp or what? he says "i think he got it from Kazaa" sign 2- Kazaa is P2P!!! THEN he make up this total crap that he has it running on "a 200mhz laptop he had lying around" and it runs fine... then when i ask him to prove it by bringing it in or at least pics of it running he says "well you see its only in Chinese.." and so i say thats ok just bring it and he just kinda says he will try and lets it drop knowing he is defeated (i could tell by the look on his face)... by thats ok i have the fun of tellin ghtis story every time:D

ok thnks for listening to my rant and have fun proving him wrong, i just dont get it when people blatently make stuff up like that... and about computers? i mean really that might get you somewhere int he lowest of circles- people who are geeks that dont really know anything lol :rolleyes: at least most geeky people KNOW stuff i mean damn!
 
deRusett said:
Well since A is 01000001 which is 8 letters not 7 that would be one thing you could throw at him

Well, there IS 7-bit ASCII. Older computers didn't always assume a character took up 8 bits.
 
You may be able to catch him by just asking him to convert a few decimal numbers to binary. Heck, try an easy one like 2 or 4 and see if he goes to pen and paper.
 
iirc, normal ascii *is* only 7 bits, and the 8th bit is used for an extra 128 characters that are in the pc bios like smiley faces, etc.

All the normal stuff like letters, numbers, etc, should have a leading zero if your chart has 8 bits for them.
 
srimmer said:
You may be able to catch him by just asking him to convert a few decimal numbers to binary. Heck, try an easy one like 2 or 4 and see if he goes to pen and paper.

That's what I was thinking.

I think it is something like

00000001 = 1
00000010 = 2
00000011 = 3
00000100 = 4
00000101 = 5
00000110 = 6
00000111 = 7
00001000 = 8
00001001 = 9
00001010 = 10

then for kicks ask him what 255 is.
(11111111)

EDIT: To prove to him that you know how binary works. Convert any number to binary for him. It works like this.

You have 8 zeros.
Each zero is a power of 2 starting at the right.
So right to left it is 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 and 128.
Add the valuses of the positions of where there are ones.
So for 00101101 you do 1+4+8+32=45.
I'm bad at explaining this, so good luck and have fun! There is almost nothing better then making someone (who rightly diserves it) look very dumb.

Axle
 
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