The original post (by the originator of the post) is the only one that has the option of adding [SOLVED] to the heading to let everyone knows it's closed (although they can still respond if they have something to add or ask)
Or the caretakers of this forum can change it for you, if they deem it appropriate.
It's nice to give credit to the forum (and the one who solved your problem) when you find an answer. So nice...
Happy Thanksgiving !
WF 7.6.4 & 5.3 Charles Lee
November 27, 2008, 10:45 PM
Charlz
I wish I had been in on this thread when you were talking about +0 and -0, because it reminded me of normalizing mantissas in floating point numbers, which only works if there at least one bit that's set to "1" ! How do you normalize true '0' ? You can't ! There's no bit set in zero.
Someone here in this thread said that you can do it in assembler, by setting the sign bit and nothing else, but then 2's complement confounds the issue.
Who invented 'zero' anyway ?
OK, so it is without a doubt the most important number there is, but it sure causes a lot of trouble for something so small !This message has been edited. Last edited by: Charlz,
WF 7.6.4 & 5.3 Charles Lee
November 28, 2008, 06:16 AM
nubi
quote:
Who invented 'zero' anyway ?
it was the indians wasn't it? along with the number system we know and love so much- us europeans were still using roman numerals at that time ...
Developer Studio 7.64 Win XP Output: mostly HTML, also Excel and PDF
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." - Heinlein's Razor
November 28, 2008, 07:54 AM
FrankDutch
quote:
us europeans
Nubi I think this is the first time I see someone from the UK saying this.... Now the only thing We (the Europeans) would like Them (the UK) to do is, introducing EURO, driving on the proper site of the road, using the metric system ...and some other things I have forgotten for now....LOL
Frank
prod: WF 7.6.10 platform Windows, databases: msSQL2000, msSQL2005, RMS, Oracle, Sybase,IE7 test: WF 7.6.10 on the same platform and databases,IE7
November 28, 2008, 02:17 PM
Charlz
Right, Nubi, it was the mathematicians from India who thought of '0' as having meaning as a 'placeholder' to distinguish '5' from '5000'.
x + z = x, and x - z = x, for all x. Simple, but who thought of formally stating that, or even that it needed to be said ?
Apparently the Romans thought that 'nothing was nothing' and therefore gave it no symbol, which may have held them back almost as much as the lead in their ceramic dinnerware (which may be why they never thought of using '0' in the numbering system in the first palce ?)
Roman numerals are fascinating, but can you imagine doing even simple math with it, much less calculus ?
Maybe it seemed to the Romans like "Much ado about nothing," but I'm sure Pascal or Descartes (who invented the Cartesian join ;>p) would disagree.
Without the '0', where would we be today ? How would it effect your paycheck if they simply left out the '0's ?
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