Bit

“ Compare byte; see also bit. The more mundane spelling "nibble" is also commonly used. Apparently the `nybble' spelling is uncommon in Commonwealth Hackish, as British orthography would suggest the pronunciation /ni:'bl/.
Following `bit', `byte' and `nybble' there have been quite a few analogical attempts to construct unambiguous terms for bit blocks of other sizes. All of these are strictly jargon, not techspeak, and not very common jargon at that (most hackers would recognize them in context but not use them spontaneously) . ”

“ There are about thirty-six bits to a set, all of different shapes and sizes; but our young friends need not get quite so many; if they provide themselves with a couple of a medium size, this will be sufficient, such as the center bit and the auger bit. The center bit will cut holes varying from a quarter of an inch to three quarters of an inch in diameter, and is used by pressing the knob end against the chest, and twirling the center part round with the hand. It cuts a hole very clean, leaving it quite smooth inside. ”

“ Discarded, lost, or destroyed data is said to have `gone to the bit bucket'. On Unix, often used for /dev/null. Sometimes amplified as `the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky'. 2. The place where all lost mail and news messages eventually go. The selection is performed according to Finagle's Law; important mail is much more likely to end up in the bit bucket than junk mail, which has an almost 100% probability of getting delivered. Routing to the bit bucket is automatically performed by mail-transfer agents, news systems, and the lower layers of the network. ”

“ The centre of the hole should first be located upon the work. Then, after selecting the right size of bit and securing it in the clutches of the bit-stock, grasp the handle of the stock with the right hand and place the left hand on the top knob. Set the point of the bit against the work and bore steadily until the point appears upon the opposite side. ”

“ As stated elsewhere, the whole energy of the lathe is concentrated on the bit or cutting tool, hence, in order to get the most effective work out of it requires care; first, in grinding; and, second, in setting
p. 38
Machine Bits.—It does not always matter so much whether you use a square, pointed, or a round-nosed bit, provided it is properly ground and set in the tool holder. As a rule, the more brittle the metal the less the top rake or angle should be. ”

“ Tukey records that it evolved over a lunch table as a handier alternative to `bigit' or `binit'.
:bit bang: /n./ Transmission of data on a serial line, when accomplished by rapidly tweaking a single output bit, in software, at the appropriate times. The technique is a simple loop with eight OUT and SHIFT instruction pairs for each byte. Input is more interesting. And full duplex (doing input and output at the same time) is one way to separate the real hackers from the {wannabee}s. ”

“ The extension bit (Fig. 68, A) is a very convenient tool for boring a hole of any size within certain limits, and is at times extremely valuable.
(G.) The center bit (Fig. 68, B) is often used in boring holes through thin material which would be apt to be split if an auger bit were used.
(H.) In filing an auger bit, it should be held as shown in Fig. 69, and a small, fine file used on the inside of the lips and the bottom of the cutters; in no case should the outside of the lips be sharpened, [Pg 93] as the size of the bit will be reduced. ”

“ Fig. 106.—Gedge's Twist Screw Bit.
true to dimensions. Centre bits are perhaps the most commonly used bits (see Figs. 107 and 108) ; they are useful for boring large holes, and are much superior to shell type bits in the important point of boring exactly where the hole is required. Expanding centre bits (Fig. 109) are known, and are a great convenience if of good quality. The Forstner auger bit (Fig. 110) is guided by its periphery instead of its centre, and consequently it will bore any arc of a circle, and can be guided in any
Fig. ”

“ Twenty men will each in a few moments be setting one of these bits, and, in a few minutes more they will come and lay down the type and the number of the bit in the long trough, in just the right order of the number of the bits—“one,” “two,” etc. Then all the type will be 30 slid together, and a long article will thus be set in a few minutes, which it would take one or two men several hours to set. ”

“ I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. ”

“ It is used for boring a larger and rougher hole than the bradawl, for receiving screws, which are screwed into their place by the screw driver, a sort of chisel, the edge or point of which enters the notch in the head of the screw, so that the workman may turn it round.
The bit is a tool not unlike a large bradawl, which fits into a stock or handle. The bits are of various sizes, and are used for boring large holes. ”

“ A bag which was left and not only taken but turned away was not found. The place was shown to be very like the last time. A piece was not exchanged, not a bit of it, a piece was left over. The rest was mismanaged. ”

“ That, then, is called a short bit. If you have one, you lay it triumphantly down, and save two and a half cents. But if you have not, and lay down a quarter, the bar-keeper or shopman calmly tenders you a dime by way of change; and thus you have paid what is called a long bit, and lost two and a half cents, or even, by comparison with a short bit, five cents. In country places all over the Pacific coast, (134) nothing lower than a bit is ever asked or taken, which vastly increases the cost of life; as even for a glass of beer you must pay fivepence or sevenpence-halfpenny, as the case may be. ”

“ Get the horse "light in hand" by the usual play of the bit, first the curb, then the snaffle, tapping him on the right side, just forward of the girth, if he fails to respond or offers to back.
Now press him just back of the girth with your left heel, at the same time relaxing the rein a little. If he steps forward, pat and praise him, but if not, press him more firmly, at the same time touching him as before with the whip. When he moves forward praise him, and after a few seconds stop him, leaning back a little and laying your whip by a turn of the wrist on his back just behind the saddle. ”

“ By extension, writing code which does something in an explicit or low-level way for which a presupplied library routine ought to have been available. "This cretinous B-tree library doesn't supply a decent iterator, so I'm having to walk the trees by hand."
:byte:: /bi:t/ /n./ [techspeak] A unit of memory or data equal to the amount used to represent one character; on modern architectures this is usually 8 bits, but may be 9 on 36-bit machines. Some older architectures used `byte' for quantities of 6 or 7 bits, and the PDP-10 supported `bytes' that were actually bitfields of 1 to 36 bits! ”

“ As it was impossible to explain to you, at one and the same time, all the resources of the needle as well as those of biting, between which, as I told you before, there exist very intimate relations, I had to choose a general example by which to demonstrate the processes employed, and which would allow me to explain the reasons for these processes.
There are two kinds of biting,—flat biting and biting with stopping-out. ”

“ Small tit-bits will be forthcoming at odd times, as for instance in the early morning, when they are moved from the perch to the block, or taken to bathe, or to be carried. They will pick a little from the tirings at which they are almost every day set to work. ”

“ By the cubit of a man we may here understand the ordinary cubit, and that this was the angel's cubit who appeared in the form of a man. Or suppose we understand the height of the man as being here intended, and that this was the length of the measuring rod. ”

“ Try another Subtraction sum. Take a bone from a dog: what remains?’
Alice considered. ‘The bone wouldn’t remain, of course, if I took it—and the dog wouldn’t remain; it would come to bite me—and I’m sure I shouldn’t remain!’
‘Then you think nothing would remain?’ said the Red Queen.
‘I think that’s the answer.’
‘Wrong, as usual,’ said the Red Queen: ‘the dog’s temper would remain.’
‘But I don’t see how—’
‘Why, look here!’ the Red Queen cried. ‘The dog would lose its temper, wouldn’t it?’
‘Perhaps it would,’ Alice replied cautiously.
‘Then if the dog went away, its temper would remain!’ the Queen exclaimed triumphantly. ”

“ Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even:
Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon,
And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.
Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries, 'Away!'
Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood:
Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:
Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.
Away, away! to thy sad and silent home;
Pour bitter tears on its desolated hearth;
Watch the dim shades as like ghosts they go and come,
And complicate strange webs of melancholy mirth. ”

“ Here the whole ten fingers are used, at Opa only the left hand, five fingers down being five, the first finger up and the rest down six, and so on until all are up which makes ten, then two tens, three tens, up to ten tens or one hundred. In the distribution of food, too, it is wonderful how accurate they are, and it is very rarely that any one is left out of the count. Of course, where the science of numbers is unknown, nature teaches by a more roundabout, but scarcely less accurate process. ”

“ A ballista intended to throw a two-pound stone will have a hole of five digits in its capital; four pounds, six digits; and six pounds, seven digits; ten pounds, eight digits; twenty pounds, ten digits; forty pounds, twelve and a half digits; sixty pounds, thirteen and a half digits; eighty pounds, fifteen and three quarters digits; one hundred pounds, one foot and one and a half digits; one hundred and twenty pounds, one foot and two digits; one hundred and forty pounds, one foot and three digits; one hundred and sixty pounds, one foot and a quarter ”

“ The notation of the decimal form is such that the content of DL 10 can be passed out onto a card in the usual way and if the card is then listed the digits of the numbers α,m will then appear on the listing paper in the usual way. Or in other words only the first 10 minor cycles of DL 10 are used, and a decimal digit is represented by the minor cycle in which a pulse occurs, and its significance by the position of it within the minor cycle. ”

“ The uniform employment of twelve as the divisor and multiplier in tables of weight, distance, time, and space, as well as in arithmetical notation, has all the conveniences of the decimal system of France, and some others besides due to the greater convenience of twelve as a base. ”

“ The Eastern brokers have used for ages, and still use, the method of secretly indicating numbers to one another in bargaining, ‘by snipping fingers under a cloth.’ ‘Every joynt and every finger hath his signification,’ as an old traveller says, and the system seems a more or less artificial development of ordinary finger-counting, the thumb and little finger stretched out, and the other fingers closed, standing for 6 or 60, the addition of the fourth finger making 7 or 70, and so on. ”

“ Select a multiplicand digit. 2. Select a multiplier digit. 3. Refer to the multiplication table with these digits. 4. Obtain the value of their product, called a partial product. 5. Add the preceding carry. 6. Set down the right-hand digit. 7. Carry the left-hand digit. We can, however, simplify this subroutine for a machine by delaying the carrying. We collect in one place all the right-hand digits of partial products, collect in another place all the left-hand digits, and delay all addition until the end. ”

“ You now see that the convenience of our method of numeration arises from a few simple signs being made to change their value as they change the column in which they are placed. The same advantage arises from counting in a similar way all the articles which are used in every-day life. For example, we count money by dividing it into pounds, shillings, and pence, of which a shilling is 12 pence, and a pound 20 shillings, or 240 pence. We write a number of pounds, shillings, and pence in three columns, generally placing points between the columns. ”

“ I. In numeration learn to connect each primary decimal number, 10, 100, 1000, &c. not with the place in which the unit falls, but with the number of ciphers following. Call ten a one-cipher number, a hundred a two-cipher number, a million a six-cipher number, and so on. If five figures be cut off from a number, those that are left are hundred-thousands; for 100,000 is a five-cipher number. Learn to connect tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, &c. ”

“ If the screw be turned through revolutions, as shown by the scale, and through an additional fraction, as shown by the divided circle, it will pass through times the pitch of the screw, and an additional fraction of the pitch determined by the ratio of the number of divisions read from 0 on the divided circle to the whole number into which it is divided. ”

“ The use of figures and symbols offers an infinite number of possible combinations, but the straight decimal system is in no way practical for general use, chiefly because a voluminous key is necessary even to interpret the symbol. ”

“ The next most popular amusement is pitch-penny, at which all the boys play " for keeps." A shallow hole is scraped in the hard earth beside the road, and the first player stands off ten feet or more and pitches half a dozen coins at the hole. ”

“ Whether or not the principal number base of any tribe is to be 20 seems to depend entirely upon a single consideration; are the fingers alone used as an aid to counting, or are both fingers and toes used? If only the fingers are employed, the resulting scale must become decimal if sufficiently extended. If use is made of the toes in addition to the fingers, the outcome must inevitably be a vigesimal system. ”