Did he think of it himself, or not?

[muninnhuginn]

Actually, it's probably a real old one: the ravens nearly fell off their perch anyway. One of the Independent on Sunday's quotes of the week, from Jeremy Paxman:

"There are 10 types of people in the country: those who understand binary and those who don't."

Comments

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

yay!

(Also not ironing, nor laundering, nor paying bills ...)

Probably not original

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

... as I got it in a file of .sigs sometime last year and sent it to various work colleagues then ... I thought I might even have put it up here somewhere but can't find it in my history. I'd guess it's at least a year old and probably much much older, though it's too late at night for me to go searching the internet.

It's harder to say than to read of course, but most people I told it to last year got it straight away, but then I picked particular people to tell it to based on my estimation on whether they'd understand a spoken "ten" as the correct way of saying "10" in any number base (i.e. in octal it goes "one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, ten, eleven, twelve ...")

Re: Probably not original

[muninnhuginn]

Thought it couldn't be new. It's an immensely satisfying joke, though. Possibly 'cos it's self-fulfilling. Tell it and world neatly divides into,--well, three maybe, the ones that get it, the ones who don't, and the one smart-arse who must've come up with a good riposte.

Files it with the favourite light bulb joke.

Smart-arsed (but not good) riposte

[akicif.livejournal.com]

Or there's "10 types, those who understand trinary, those who don't, and those who aren't quite sure..."

I'm leaving octal as an exercise for the vocabulary-enhanced.

Re: Smart-arsed (but not good) riposte

[muninnhuginn]

Good. Raised a giggle.

A smart-arsed re-write

[muninnhuginn]

Wouldn't there be a neat extra dimension if the original began, "There are 10 types of people in the system?
Depends where you live I suppose.