Re: Is Abu ?Abd Allah Mu?ammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi Dead?

"Bob Badour" <bbadour_at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote in message news:%g1vh.6160$1x.107747_at_ursa-nb00s0.nbnet.nb.ca...
>Marshall wrote:

>[snip]

>> Of course, these days we have very different calculating
>> requirements than we did in al-Khwarizmi's time. A
>> polynomial is very, very different now from what it was
>> more than M years ago. If nothing else, the rise of
>> XML and the Web and their tremendous success should
>> make us go back to first principles and consider whether it
>> might be time to revive what was once, for centuries, the
>> dominant numeric form. In particular, the fact that XML uses
>> *text* tags, represents everything as character strings,
>> and discards the straightjacket of rigid, well-defined schema
>> should make us consider the value of a number system
>> that represents quantities as strings of letters without
>> any fixed base.

> I prefer normalized RN, and I suggest the proper spelling is: MLX. Or is
> that too much of a rigid straightjacket?

I suggest the alternative spelling: MXL. This has the added benefit of making an homage to form MLX of the (US) IRS. A paragon of structure and simplicity, to be sure. But did you know that, if you add up the value of the letters in the phrase "Internal Revenue Service" according to as certain sercet code, the sum comes to the same as MCLXVI. That's apocalyptic, to be sure. Received on Mon Jan 29 2007 - 21:58:36 CET