A related joke:

Why do programmers celebrate Christmas and Halloween the same way?

Because DEC(25) = OCT(31).

Another related joke:

There are 10 types of people in the world – those that understand binary and those that don’t.

Oh byte me!!

<grin>

SELECT * FROM USERS WHERE CLUE > 0
0 ROWS RETURNED

This is one of my favourites such as

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE 127.0.0.1

All sees on fantastic t-shirts at ThinkGeek

No place like localhost? Would it work better if it were “THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE ~/ “? ThinkGeek is great, though!

I’m glad the jokes are going around, but i’ve only received 1 helpful hint to my question. Anyone, anyone???

I can’t help with most of those questions, but in case it helps, it’s very easy to convert from any base to base 10. Here’s how:

Write all of the digits of the base-N number. Above, from right to left, write N^x where x goes from 0 and up. Convert those N^x to their decimal (base-10) equivalents, and then multiply each column. Then add those products.

Eg, for the binary number 10110, you’re in base-2:

 2^4  2^3  2^2  2^1  2^0 // powers, as exponents
  16    8    4    2    1  // powers, in base 10
x  1    0    1    1    0
---------------------------
 16 +   0 +  4 +  2 +  1   = 23

So 10110 in base 2 = 23 in base 10.

Taking my joke as an example for oct (base 8):

8^1  8^0
  8    1
  3    1    // We're converting 31 base 8
--------
 24 +  1   = 25

For hex, the numbers go 0-9, A, B, C, D, E, F. For the letters, when you’re multiplying, treat them as 10-15.

Anyone, anyone???

The problem is that it’s such a fundamental question that no one has any idea why it would be asked. If those elements aren’t known, then we have no clue what kind of answer will make sense. It’s clear the OP isn’t a programmer, so we can’t even guess what terminology might be understood. It’s like going to an auto shop and hearing the mechanic say “What’s a ‘wrench’? What’s a ‘bolt’?”

Tom