Why does IBM use a different representation of the bit (EBCIC) than the rest of the world (ASCII)? Would anything dramatically be altered if IBM changed its system and started using ASCII?
I know this is a little off topic, but there is a song by Flight of the Conchords called "Robots", where they sing a binary solo....you might find this group pretty funny...a great laugh....but anyway, I knew that a binary representation was made up of 1s and 0s, but I never knew it's purpose and what the two numbers actually meant. So that's really all I could think about when you were talking about bytes.
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Kate:
ReplyDeleteHmmm...maybe I should ask you to come to the front of the room and sing the song you couldn't get out of your head...maybe that would work....
IBM invented their EBCDIC system when they were the #1 company in the world and tried (unsuccessfully) to get the rest of the world to bend to their ways (not unlike Microsoft of a few years ago). Now, IBM and its customers are locked into EBCDIC and it would enormously costly (not to mention a huge black eye for the firm) to switch to ASCII....the sins of the father....
Doug