Ben Warren <bwarren <at> qstreams.com> writes:
On Thu, 2006-10-12 at 15:11 +0200, Wolfgang Denk wrote:
In message <452E2DD0.3070409 <at> smiths-aerospace.com> you wrote:
Back when I was a kid, all we had were ones. To make a zero we had to
They changed it to zeros later, because a zero is much more powerful. For example, leading zeros can be very powerful, expecially when you employ them in the management of big companies. [BTW: that's the difference between commercial and scientific notation: scientists tend to suppress leading zeros.] And, to quote an ancient usenet posting (sorry, the exact source is unknown to me):
Zero is an enigmatic value. It can mean success (fclose) or failure (scanf). It can mean black or white. It can mean no permissions (chmod) or all permissions (umask). It can mean now (setjmp) or later (atexit). It can mean the beginning (lseek) or the end (read). It can mean myself (getpgrp) or child (fork). It can mean all (kill's 1st argument) or nothing (kill's 2nd argument). It can mean `default' (SIG_IGN) or `I don't care' (waitpid) or `try to guess' (strtol). Indeed 0 lets you talk to God (setuid). Verily is 0 all things to all people.
Obligatory follow-on from a long-forgotten source:
"The decline of the Roman Empire can be traced to the fact that, lacking zero, they were unable to return from their C programs"
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Thank you all , learned the The Transcedental Truth about zero,
From spansion documentation :-
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When Flash memory is erased, all the bits in the erased area are set to a logical “1” (high signal level). Programming selectively changes bits to a logical “0” (Low signal level). Flash memory is traditionally programmed a single byte or word at a time and erased one sector at a time. Only an erase operation can return a “0” back to a “1”(erased) state.
For Floating-Gate technology, it is possible to re-program (or write over) a byte or word that has been previously programmed without first erasing the byte or word (as long as no attempt is made to program a “0” to a “1”). This re-programming of byte or word locations can be used to incrementally program individual bits to “0.” This incremental programming is useful to track the progress in multi-step programming schemes such as those used in a Flash File System.