Cristatus

Diamond Member
Oct 13, 2004
3,908
2
81
This is another thing I was thinking about (but at some other point it time, just could never be bothered to type it up).

The following is the abstract, I don't remember what my point was, but I do remember vaguely, hope it makes sense.

When CDs first came out, their storage was measured in terms of movie time, or words (i.e: words, not "A set of bits constituting the smallest unit of addressable memory")

Does this mean that if a probram is written on a cd, it takes so many words/letters to make the program?
 

MobiusPizza

Platinum Member
Apr 23, 2004
2,001
0
0
Neverever heard a CD capacity define in "no. of words"
They did , for interest, said how many pages of books worth of information it can store.

Programs are compiled before they are published. Compiled programs are vastly different from readable source codes. You can't really specify that. Currently CDs are defined both by duration of music it can store, or number of bytes it can store (8 bit binary number)
 

Cristatus

Diamond Member
Oct 13, 2004
3,908
2
81
Originally posted by: AnnihilatorX
Neverever heard a CD capacity define in "no. of words"
They did , for interest, said how many pages of books worth of information it can store.

Programs are compiled before they are published. Compiled programs are vastly different from readable source codes. You can't really specify that. Currently CDs are defined both by duration of music it can store, or number of bytes it can store (8 bit binary number)

I see what you mean.
 

icarus4586

Senior member
Jun 10, 2004
219
0
0
You could, though, open, a binary file (eg jpeg, exacutable, etc) in a text editor and see ASCII characters, even though the binary is obviously not stored as ASCII. The text editor just splits the binary file into 8 bit segments, and represents each of these with the ASCII character that that 8 bit segment could be translated as.