Computer Science

Please select a page from the list below.

Bitwise Operators

Did you know that 2 AND 2 is not equal to 4? Well, it's not – open up Windows Calculator, click [2] [and] [2] [=], and you will see that the result is 2. But how does this work? This seems to make no sense. Haven't we all heard the expression "put 2 and 2 together"?
Article | Posted on Thursday, January 7, 2010 at 8:54 PM | Permalink | 10 Comments »

The Case of the Missing Gigabytes

You buy a nice, shiny 500 GB hard drive. But to your horror, you realize that its actual capacity is only 465 GB. Where did 35 GB worth of space go? Your friend claims that it's used by "formatting". But formatting can't really take that muchspace... or can it?
Article | Posted on Saturday, September 11, 2010 at 10:08 PM | Permalink | 0 Comments »

Why Computers Use Binary

Binary numbers – seen as strings of 0's and 1's – are often associated with computers. But why is this? Why can't computers just use base 10 instead of converting to and from binary? Isn't it more efficient to use a higher base, since binary (base 2)representation uses up more "spaces"?
Article | Posted on Saturday, May 15, 2010 at 4:04 PM | Permalink | 84 Comments »