Gamers, Tech-heads, Mathletes and Geeks of all Persuasion; I summon Thee

Gamers, Tech-heads, Mathletes and Geeks of all Persuasion; I summon Thee (Full Version)

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darchChylde -> Gamers, Tech-heads, Mathletes and Geeks of all Persuasion; I summon Thee (7/17/2008 11:53:32 AM)
Ok, i was fiddling around with some numbers and i came up "randomly" and repeatedly with a particular number on my calculator. Yes, i really am that bored to be playing on a calculator for entertainment. Thinking back, i remember in earlier days of video gaming; this number was one of some significance in numerous game. i know i could look it up, but i thought this would be more interesting; i ask you to tell me the significance of this number and why it so often seems to come up. Please try to refrain from looking it up and go by memory and your cognitive abilities alone. Finally, what is so special about the following number? 65535

slvemike4u -> RE: Gamers, Tech-heads, Mathletes and Geeks of all Persuasion; I summon Thee (7/17/2008 11:57:38 AM)
It's my zip code ?

stef -> RE: Gamers, Tech-heads, Mathletes and Geeks of all Persuasion; I summon Thee (7/17/2008 12:05:02 PM)
Just to name two, it's the highest possible value of a 16 bit binary number and it's the number of available TCP/UDP ports. ~stef

faerytattoodgirl -> RE: Gamers, Tech-heads, Mathletes and Geeks of all Persuasion; I summon Thee (7/17/2008 12:08:53 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: stef Just to name two, it's the highest possible value of a 16 bit binary number and it's the number of available TCP/UDP ports. ~stef you got that from wikipedia!!!

stef -> RE: Gamers, Tech-heads, Mathletes and Geeks of all Persuasion; I summon Thee (7/17/2008 12:11:44 PM)
Who let you out of the Random Stupidity forum? ~stef

jlf1961 -> RE: Gamers, Tech-heads, Mathletes and Geeks of all Persuasion; I summon Thee (7/17/2008 12:12:12 PM)
Uh Darch, does having an old college math poster over the computer desk count as looking it up, or just Looking Up? 65535 is a Mersenne number, being 216 − 1. But since its index, 16, is not prime, 65535 cannot be a Mersenne prime. It is the product of the first four Fermat primes: 65535 = (2 + 1)(4 + 1)(16 + 1)(256 + 1). Because of this property, it is possible to construct with compass and straightedge a regular polygon with 65535 sides 65535 is the 15th 626-gonal number, the 5th 6555-gonal number, the 3rd 21846-gonal number.

LadyHibiscus -> RE: Gamers, Tech-heads, Mathletes and Geeks of all Persuasion; I summon Thee (7/17/2008 12:27:49 PM)
I love all you guys who knew the answer. If I was younger, I would have your children!

pahunkboy -> RE: Gamers, Tech-heads, Mathletes and Geeks of all Persuasion; I summon Thee (7/17/2008 12:29:35 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: stef Who let you out of the Random Stupidity forum? ~stef lol=== Nooo- that is the number of lays this year that we had.

windchymes -> RE: Gamers, Tech-heads, Mathletes and Geeks of all Persuasion; I summon Thee (7/17/2008 2:49:29 PM)
If you turn it upside down, it spells SESSP. Sort of.

DomKen -> RE: Gamers, Tech-heads, Mathletes and Geeks of all Persuasion; I summon Thee (7/17/2008 3:26:34 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: darchChylde Ok, i was fiddling around with some numbers and i came up "randomly" and repeatedly with a particular number on my calculator. Yes, i really am that bored to be playing on a calculator for entertainment. Thinking back, i remember in earlier days of video gaming; this number was one of some significance in numerous game. i know i could look it up, but i thought this would be more interesting; i ask you to tell me the significance of this number and why it so often seems to come up. Please try to refrain from looking it up and go by memory and your cognitive abilities alone. Finally, what is so special about the following number? 65535 It's the maximum integer value of 2 bytes. IOW 2^16 -1. It comes up a lot because it used to be very common that a 2 byte integer was the standard size integer number on any number of different computing systems and was therefore the size limit for any number of things.

vampnoir -> RE: Gamers, Tech-heads, Mathletes and Geeks of all Persuasion; I summon Thee (7/17/2008 3:57:39 PM)
To bring the discussion back around to the OP, 65535 came up a lot in the early days of video games because most PC games were written for 16 bit DOS. Because hardware was challenged to perform to video game levels, it was necessary to optimize in every way possible. Most game mechanics values topped out at 65535 because it's the largest value a 16 bit processor can handle in one operation. Also, this is the maximum value of an unsigned integer (uint). The max value of a standard (signed) 16 bit int is 32767 (or 8 depending which sign your O/S favored), which was also a common max value.

afterforever -> RE: Gamers, Tech-heads, Mathletes and Geeks of all Persuasion; I summon Thee (7/17/2008 5:47:05 PM)
I love this thread. I clicked because I was the UK version of a Mathlete, but this totally out-geeked me.

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