16 Oct
2011
16 Oct
'11
11:08 a.m.
On 16/10/11 1:02 AM, Fred Cisin wrote:
You'll be pleased to know this is still an FAQ - on sites like Quora, etc.
> FAT16, for
example used a SIGNED long for both the file size and for the
> maximum partition size. Therefore, instead of 0 to 4GB, the range was
> -2GB to +2GB
> That opens up some interesting possibilities!
> I stepped on the DIR of a floppy disk, and created a -2GB file. I then
> copied that file to an almost full hard disk, in order to get more disk
> space without the DANGERS! of compression. It didn't work.
On Sat, 15 Oct 2011, ben wrote:
Did you remember the -2GB is for imaginary data
when C gets REAL numbers.
"COMPLEX" numbers maybe?
I always hated having to explain to students that "REAL" numbers in
languages such as BASIC were floating point binary approximations, and
were absolutely NOT "REAL" numbers. Until about 6 years ago, we actually
had a course in "Computer Math", in which we tried to teach students
[among other things] how floating point worked. Of course, we had to
start by undoing a lot of what they had previously been taught, such as
that PI was EXACTLY 22/7 ! (half a century ago, in elementary school, I
got into "big trouble" for telling a teacher that PI was NOT 22/7 !)
Don't worry! They may end up with co-workers like this guy:
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/l32qk/if_only_we_all_had_cowor…
--Toby