by Wing Nut » Sat Sep 27, 2003 1:05 am
OK, I will give this a shot...
As far as you or I for FS purposes go, the only thing we'll ever need to worry about with binary is 1=yes, 2=no when you alter your config file.
As far as programming languages go (and I'm still new, so please correct me) it is a matter of base 2. We humans count with base 10 numbers; that is, 0123456789. Binary however, is base 2; 0 and 1. This also means that each number is double what the previous number is. The first eight numbers in base 2 are 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 128 Signals are interpreted by your computer as electrical impulse that are either on or off. 1 is on, 0 is off. So in order to convert that to a language, the base is changed and you have to come up with a new way to represent numbers.
To do so, you count which place is the number. The number 4586 has a number 4 in the thousands place, a 5 in the hundreths place, a 8 in the tenths place and a 6 in the ones place.
To translate binary, you simply take the place it is times the number, add as you go along and you are set. For instance, in 1101 it would be 1 (the number 1 in 1101) * 1 (the place it is in base two) + 0 (the number 0 in 1101) * 2 (the place it is in base two) and so on. The whole equation looks like (1*1)+(0*2)+(4*1)+(8*1) = 13. so the number 1101 in binary translates to 13.
Clear as mud? :)
Kevin
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