1,000,000,000,000 points

[Than_Bogan]

(Required announcement per tradition. It you're new here, feel free to entertain yourself trying to figure out wtf I am talking about.)

 

Last such milestone was over two years ago:

100,000,000,000 points

[Than_Bogan]

Btw, while I'm sure @Horton will cringe at my ubernerdiness, it's actually mostly a credit to him that I can continue to double my points every so often, because that suggests exponential growth in membership of the site.

[eleeski]

Than, you are a nerd. I have imaginary points.

 

Eric

[Horton]

I have no idea but I guess it is winter so what the hell

[Skoot1123]

Total points @horton has for “self likes” of his own posts?!

[MISkier]

It's 2 to the 12th power = 4096. Binary representation.

[h2onhk]

the number of exact x-y coordinate points on the slalom course to successfully run 45 off

[thager]

The number of points required for tight wad @Horton to send out a free sticker.

[Horton]

@thager that cost is $10. If you order one I will also throw in a pink Baller hat.*

 

(* this offer is for @thager only. Everyone else just gets the sticker.)

[thager]

@Horton Check is in the mail. Only send the hat if it is wrinkled!

[Than_Bogan]

There are 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

 

11 out of 100 times, jokes about binary are funny.

[MISkier]

100 out of 101 dentists recommend Trident gum for their patients who chew gum.

[dchristman]

11 cheers for binary!

[skihacker]

What's the deal with the 101st dentist anyway??

[MISkier]

@skihacker, I think this explains it

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tXqAyMhgc7I

[skibackwards]

It just says 4 out of 5.

 

[MISkier]

100 out of 101 in binary is 4 out of 5.

[skibackwards]

What do I get for beating MISkier to the punch.

 

[Horton]

I still have no idea what this is about

[Than_Bogan]

It's really not that hard to explain, but it's more fun not to...

[Horton]

geeks

 

:-|

[MISkier]

@Horton, binary numbers consist of a series of ones and zeroes only. Each position in a binary number represents a power of two, with the rightmost digit representing 2 to the zero power (or the decimal value equal to one). The next digit to the left is 2 to the first power (or the decimal value equal to two), then 2 to the second power (decimal value equal to four), and so on. If a one is indicated in a particular position, the particular value for that power of 2 is added to the total to achieve the decimal equivalent of the binary representation. If a zero is indicated in a particular position, nothing is added to the total.

 

 

Than's original post showed a binary number with a 1 in the 13th position and the remaining positions as zeroes, which equates to 2 to the 12th power (4096). That was how many Baller points he had attained at the time of the post.

 

It can get more complicated when you want to consider values to the right of the decimal point.

 

When I completed an introductory course on microprocessor programming 30+ years ago, one of the concepts that totally blew my mind was that a silicon chip in a computer can only do one inherent thing: differentiate between a low voltage signal (a zero) and a high voltage signal (a one). Everything else in computing, everything, is built on top of that physical capability of a silicon chip. Thus, binary encoding was necessary to allow for representation of numbers and letters (via the ASCII and EBCDIC sequences and 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit structures). The exact interpretation of the streams of these values is the function of the chip circuitry (AND gates, NAND gates, NOR gates, etc.) and the design of the BIOS, OS, languages, firmware, etc. by the computer scientists.

 

[MISkier]

And if you think that is obscure, we'll talk about hexadecimal next. Than's point total in that would be 1000.