Quickie Questions

Ohhhhhh. OK, I get it now, thanks.

Hi, Newbie here so if this is the wrong place for this let me know. I was wondering if there is a page for montages where a series of assassinations are pulled off. I am thinking like order 66 from the Revenge of the Sith or the one scene in the Godfather (I think Avatar the Last Airbender had one too but I don't remember the context). I am asking because I realized I like that kind of scene and would like to see more of it and if there isn't it would be a fun one to make.

That sort of question properly belongs on Trope Finder.

What is a good Ebay/Craigslist alternative to can sell broken phones and tablets?

What ball/sphere is closest to Earth in terms of smoothness?

If you shrank it to the size of a billiard ball, it would be an exceptionally smooth billiard ball, though a pro player (maybe not an amateur) would probably notice it's not a perfect sphere.

So somewhere between a billiard ball and this crazy precise silicon sphere.

I know what a bit is. In binary, 8 digits allow you to go from 0 (00000000) up to 255 (11111111). Back in the day you had 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit consoles. Every time a console came out it always had double the bit count of something earlier. Why? Why did no one ever release, say, a 12-bit system?

Edited by WillKeaton on May 12th 2019 at 2:05:39 AM

They're powers of 2, and because computers calculate everything in binary, it's simplest to stay with a power of 2.

"Why were there no 12-bit systems" is like asking "why are there no 78-dollar bills?"

Edited by TParadox on May 12th 2019 at 1:29:08 PM

So there's no technical reason saying it can't be done.

It has more to do with the fact that the definition of a "byte" is 8 bits. When computers perform calculations, they are based on the word size of the processor: a chunk of memory that can be operated on in a single cycle. A "word" is a certain number of bytes, and it's simpler to design architectures if everything can be defined in terms of multiples of bytes.

Thus, when people talk about a "16-bit architecture", what they really mean is an architecture in which the basic word size of the processor is 2 bytes, which corresponds to 16 bits. If we had arbitrarily decided in the early days of computing that a byte should be 10 bits, then you'd have 10-bit, 20-bit, 30-bit, 40-bit, and so on.

The nice thing about using 8 as your multiple is that you're still working exclusively in powers of 2. 8 is 2^3, 16 is 2^4, etc. It makes everything very neat and mathematical.

There are architectures with variant word sizes, like 10 or 12 bits, but they are for dedicated systems and are not in common use, since it's very hard to write compatible software.

^note As an aside, 2^10 is 1,024, which is very close to 1,000, and this holds through all powers of 2 that are divisible by 10. 2^20 = 1,048,576, 2^30 = 1,073,741,824. Very roughly, every 10 powers of 2 corresponds to 3 powers of 10, so if we'd wanted computers that represent values from 0-999 in a single byte, we might have gone with that scheme. It would have made the hardware and software more complex, though, so here we are.

Edited by Fighteer on May 13th 2019 at 3:40:47 PM

In the early days, you'd see reference to a 4-bit "nybble" though.

so the fee to join the Something Awful forums is $10,does that mean it's only available in the US or something

not that I'm interested in paying for a forum I'm just curious

Edited by Ultimatum on May 15th 2019 at 9:56:52 AM

No, the online payment processors (options for Visa, Discover, Mastercard, and Amex card networks) handle currency exchange rates. And they have a gift sub option so someone who didn't have access to the card networks they accept could get someone to purchase them an account.

Ah,i see,it's just I'm used to websites which display currency alongside £ and $

Was atmospheric carbon dioxide stagnant during the pre-Industrial Quaternary or was it actively declining?

It was fluctuating.

One of the popular theories about the onset of the Little Ice Age is that the tremendous death toll that European diseases brought to the Americas after 1492 caused a lot of developed land to be abandoned and turn into forest, lowering atmospheric carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere and global temperatures.

Was the idea that Martin Van Buren is Aaron Burr's illegitimate child purely an invention by Gore Vidal, or was there rumors/talk of such before him?

For a work page, how many tropes does it need to have until it requires folders and/or subpages?

There's no hard rule. Either when it gets so big that it's causing a warning about length when you open the editor, or when it's so large that it's a pain to read and/or navigate.

What jobs will allow you to work for twelve hours for a few days of the week?

Can Realemon be used in place of Bleach? What are some good Bleach alternatives that are safe and get the job done?

Hold up, what exactly are you trying to do that calls for bleach?

Since Sony is a Japanese company, should films produced by Sony Pictures Animation be listed as "Anime" rather than "Western Animation" on this wiki?

No, Sony's movie division is American and generally makes things with American I Ps

Whitening my whites thoroughly.