Should Land be sold in 10mx10m plots instead of 4mx4m plots?

You'd have to have 1 prim per 1mx1m plot I guess. There's probably some good mathmatical computer reasons linked to binary why we cant' have land in power of 10 instead of a binary based system that causes some headaches when you try to do things simply using 10m floor prims to build a building on a 32m plot etc

There's obviously a heap of great ways to create drama using 1mx1m adfarms etc, you would have to have minimum parcel ownership at 5mx5m, 10mx10m or something.

Discuss, have pie, whatever..

My guess would be because sims are sized in binary multiples. It'd be hard to slice a 256x256m sim into 10x10m or 5x5m plots. Of course, that only leads to the question of why sims are the size they are, and not, for example, 250x250m.

Maybe there's a sound technical reason for using binary multiples for land sizes (hey, this all runs on computers, which kind of like binary), or maybe it's just a stylistic decision on LL's part to make the world feel more 'techy'. The Metaverse in 'Snow Crash' (big influence on early SL) was sized and divided up this way.

I'd be just as interested to know why a 512 sqm parcel is allocated 117 prims, which isn't a binary multiple.

I guess because prim limit is not hardcoded in the gridstructure like plot size, it is set to nicely rounded 15000prims for a full sim, this leaves odd rounded prim limits per parcel and wasted prims. there is no technical reason why the prim limit cant be raised to the next power of 2, you cant make a sim bigger but you can make it handle more prims.

I propose a 16k limit for easy calculation.

I can't see why servers couldn't have more prims per sim, they have advanced in memory and speed since 2003

You need the spare capacity for visitors and so on.

I have never understood why we use Base 10 for our nimbering system. I think we should switch to Base 16. Then that 512 square meter plot that is 16 by 32 becomes a 200 square meter plot that is 10 by 20. Same amount of space, much easier math. And instead of using 4 x 4 plots, you can use 1 x 1 plots.

Problem solved.

Because you have eight fingers and two thumbs. 10 digits total. Base 10 is eminently practical because we are all human beings. We don't operate in binary like computers do. If we had only one then we would probably think in binary too, since that one finger could only have two states (up or down, for example).

As a aside here, because the underlying technology is still based on the concept of a series of electronic switches, to a computer everything is black or white, yes or no, on or off, 1 or 0. It's patently impossible for a computer's logic structure to handle anything else such as shades of gray or what the tech-heads call "fuzzy logic." Lots of work has been done to try to simulate such things, but it still remains exactly that, a simulation, as long as computer tech is forced to rely on the binary on/off limits currently imposed. We would need something like quantum computing where a switch can have more than two states to get away from the binary constraints.

So to humans a 10x20 piece of land makes much more sense than a 16x32 does, but the computer's nature makes such a size completely illogical and impractical, as opposed to a far more sensible binary-happy 16x32.

That is like saying computers can't handle counting to 1000, they have to count to 1024 instead so if you want computers to do calculations in millimetres they have to measure 1024mm in a metre because they get upset if you don't.

The machine at work I program makes paneldoors in sections of 488mm to 612mm, I've never said to management sorry the customer can't order any doors over 512mm because that's it's binary limit and it can't make 1024mm panels so I can't use 1024mm as a maximum size incase someone tries to order one

Computers are supposed to make our life easier not the other way around

It's a pity that he-who-must-not-be-named isn't computer literate; he'd have a field day with that

EF (who has just returned from a pub lunch)

nb,dnf

(not broken, do not fix!)

My post just now is not intended to be an insult to Tegg. It is a pub lunch fuelled attempt at humour, for which I apologise. I will delete the post if either Tegg alone, or a forum consensus feels that I should do so.

But by using base 16, the humans get their 10x20 plots and so do the computers. It will be the same amount of land as our antiquated Base 10 16x32 plot. Then everyone's happy.

Oh, and I don't know anyone who counts on their fingers anymore.

Let's do it. BASE 16, who's with me?

Base 16 sounds good to me. That'd also make me 29 instead of 41. I can live with that.

does that mean we finaly get a proper hexadecimal numiric keypad?

The reason land is the way it is is becuase of the physics system SL uses.

Havok prefers everything to be in "binary-happy" numbers as someone put it.

It can be changed easily. Sims can be any abstract size. But if they were they would run like shit becuase Havok will not be happy

This.

Computers really only see two numbers:

Nothing and something.

Everything else is a doubling of this.

It starts in the electronics - this capacitor has an electrical charge, or it doesn't. 1 and 0. Everything else is built by doubling up the number of capacitors in a circuit.

Something about that makes it easiest to bundle them in I think, packs that lead to a 0-15 scale (base 16)...

1 2 4 8 16

So most computer math done for human eyes works on the scale of 0 through F.
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F.

- which means that, for SL, using a '4' allows them to not have 'unused bits and bytes' - computer storage is used efficiently. If you switched to a 10 scale, 1/3 of all the database storage would end up 'vacant' - or require costly equations to work back in...
- costly on the scale of microseconds and nanoseconds - but it adds up faster than one might imagine when dealing with huge amounts of data running back and forth on networks.

Yes, but with only 5 keys, the 1, 2, 4, and 8 keys under the fingers and an Enter key under the thumb.

Oops, we're back to counting with our fingers again.

Not insulted in the least, I'm not insult literate

But next year you'll be 2A. Can you live with that?