17 Nov
2000
17 Nov
'00
1:40 a.m.
Bill Pechter wrote:
Any votes for computer war of the last 3 or 4 decades?
Hex vs. octal.
Whether to number the bits from the most significant end or the least.
Endianness in general.
Whether floating point is the greatest thing since binary or the work of the
devil.
ASCII vs EBCDIC (vs. old ASCII vs. Murray vs. FIELDATA vs. CDC display code
vs. non-Murray 5-bit codes vs. variations on EBCDIC vs. ...).
Which terminal is best.
These wars are mostly won now, except maybe for endianness, but you did say
3 or 4 decades! (In the case of floating point, it's more like 5.)
-- Derek