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Note to Self: Trying to understand the inherent difficulties in dealing with mathematical systems based in octal and their subsequent technologies in terms of marrying them to mathematics and technologies developed in decimal and/or binary is just flat-out a bad idea when it's 2AM and you're suffering from a headache.
Trying to understand why the Ancients in the Stargate series based their entire numeral system on octal really hurts. Unless they were counting the spaces between fingers. At least octal is sometimes used in programming. But even then, binary and hexadecimal are more commonly used, because hex is far more useful in dealing with data larger than 8 bytes (relaying and keeping track of file sizes becomes messy in octal) and is divisible by 4. But modern computing is very much a far ways away from basic mathematics. And since modern computing is derived from basic mathematics, it stands to reason that changing the nature of the latter fundamentally changes the data structure and algorithms in the former.
No wonder its taking people so long to understand Ancient tech. Unless someone was clever enough to have written a script (please tell me someone was clever enough to have written a script), every single time they try to do something with Ancient tech or mathematics, they have to first translate it into decimal, and check a few dozen times to make sure the math is still correct. Furthering that, they have to make sure their computers don't flip out whenever they're connected to the device, because I can sure bet you that file systems based in hex or decimal will be very unhappy with one based in octal, and that's assuming they're even using octal as the basis for their file system.
Come on. We have problems getting Macs and PCs to be happy with each other (I hate you, Independence Day, I hate you so much for that plot device). Hell, we have trouble getting FAT32 and NTFS to stop being mutually exclusive.
I handwave the existence of the USB-to-whatever dongle that makes the SGC Dell laptops (I think they're Latitudes...or at least they were at one point) "compatible" with Goa'uld crystals/Ancient acrylic memory cards/whathaveyou for Spearhead. I have to. My players are smart enough to call me on it, and ask me "what do I have to roll in Computers/Electronics to make a dongle/connect to an alien system", and expect me to have a logical explanation for whatever answer I give them. If I throw my hands in the air and declare "it's a solved problem", they'll (mostly) accept it, and if they think it's fishy, they'll accept that it's a dongle that's totally made of klugite. But when I try and understand the handwave, because something requires that I understand it, well...
Clearly, I need to stop because the only way I'm getting anywhere further tonight would be by downing Jolt, and that's just Not A Good Idea when I'm trying to unfuck my sleep-schedule.
Trying to understand why the Ancients in the Stargate series based their entire numeral system on octal really hurts. Unless they were counting the spaces between fingers. At least octal is sometimes used in programming. But even then, binary and hexadecimal are more commonly used, because hex is far more useful in dealing with data larger than 8 bytes (relaying and keeping track of file sizes becomes messy in octal) and is divisible by 4. But modern computing is very much a far ways away from basic mathematics. And since modern computing is derived from basic mathematics, it stands to reason that changing the nature of the latter fundamentally changes the data structure and algorithms in the former.
No wonder its taking people so long to understand Ancient tech. Unless someone was clever enough to have written a script (please tell me someone was clever enough to have written a script), every single time they try to do something with Ancient tech or mathematics, they have to first translate it into decimal, and check a few dozen times to make sure the math is still correct. Furthering that, they have to make sure their computers don't flip out whenever they're connected to the device, because I can sure bet you that file systems based in hex or decimal will be very unhappy with one based in octal, and that's assuming they're even using octal as the basis for their file system.
Come on. We have problems getting Macs and PCs to be happy with each other (I hate you, Independence Day, I hate you so much for that plot device). Hell, we have trouble getting FAT32 and NTFS to stop being mutually exclusive.
I handwave the existence of the USB-to-whatever dongle that makes the SGC Dell laptops (I think they're Latitudes...or at least they were at one point) "compatible" with Goa'uld crystals/Ancient acrylic memory cards/whathaveyou for Spearhead. I have to. My players are smart enough to call me on it, and ask me "what do I have to roll in Computers/Electronics to make a dongle/connect to an alien system", and expect me to have a logical explanation for whatever answer I give them. If I throw my hands in the air and declare "it's a solved problem", they'll (mostly) accept it, and if they think it's fishy, they'll accept that it's a dongle that's totally made of klugite. But when I try and understand the handwave, because something requires that I understand it, well...
Clearly, I need to stop because the only way I'm getting anywhere further tonight would be by downing Jolt, and that's just Not A Good Idea when I'm trying to unfuck my sleep-schedule.
maybe they didn't count their thumbs
(and its good to see that these issues are noticed...I gave up trying to understand them, when they ran into (and whumped/bested) unknown tech that even Teal'c was unfamiliar with)
have nice days & be well.