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Ok, so its very late at night....
Someone New.... ish Started conversation Oct 18, 2001
.... and I've been up since 8 this morning. So when I find an article suggesting I go look up researcher U100000000000...... I'm naturally curious (easily pleased and all that!). So, I go to the page, and find that it defaults to Researcher 1593835520. Now Abi, why on earth is it that number???? Is it to do with the binary for the machine - which even fully compus mentus (sp?) I would take ages over working that one out - or is there some other wierd and wonderful explanation???
Ah well, if nothing else, it might distract you all in the office for five minutes or so! 
(PS And what happens to Researcher 1593835520???? 
)
Ok, so its very late at night....
Abi Posted Oct 18, 2001
Do you know I have no idea! But I will try to find out for you.
Which article was it?
Abi
Ok, so its very late at night....
Someone New.... ish Posted Oct 23, 2001
Ummm.... I did say it was late at night! It was in a forum off an article, and as usual had gone off-topic! I really cant remember - sorry. Did you find anything out about it? Its been really bugging me!
Ok, so its very late at night....
Abi Posted Oct 23, 2001
Jim says that it is because user numbers are stored as 32 bit numbers, so the number you get is the number you type truncated to a 32 bit number. The highest user number we could have is 2147483647 in the current database.
So there you go!
Ok, so its very late at night....
IanG Posted Oct 23, 2001
...which doesn't explain the number 1593835520.
It's fairly round number in hexadecimal: 5f000000. But it's a bit of a wierd number nonetheless. If numbers were simply being limited to the highest possible value, you would see, as Jim says, 2147483647 (which is 7fffffff in hex), or possibly 4294967295 (ffffffff in hex - the largest number you can represent if you decide you'll never need to store a negative number).
Mindless overflow would give you something else again - the number 100000000000 in hexadecimal is 174876E800. Chopping that off to 32 bits (exactly 8 digits in hex) gives you 4876E800, which would be 1215752192 in decimal.
But it's none of these. Lots of numbers have magic significance to computer software in certain contexts, but I've never seen 5f000000 used in this way, so I don't think Jim's telling us everything.
(Two of my favourite 'magic' numbers are 3131961357, 3735928559 - these crop up all over the place. Convert them to hex to see why...)
Ok, so its very late at night....
Abi Posted Oct 23, 2001
You know I said I loved it when you got all technical?
Well I was lying!
I have alerted Jim and he will come and sort you out himself!
Ok, so its very late at night....
Jim Lynn Posted Oct 23, 2001
I don't know where you're getting 1593835520 from.
U100000000000 goes to Researcher 1215752192. Which is exactly what you get if you type 100000000000 into the Windows scientific calculator, then switch to hex and back again.
You can probably get 1593835520 from some other high number (any number of them, in fact) but I can't be bothered to look for it.
And nothing happens to the researchers with these numbers - except they'll get extra hits on their pages from loonies lke you who stay up too late.
Ok, so its very late at night....
IanG Posted Oct 23, 2001
Changing to Windows XP was clearly worth the effort - Calc XP can happily cope with hexadecimal numbers bigger than 32 bits. Oo. (In other words if I put 100000000000 into calculator, switch to hex and back, the number I get is...100000000000)
U1000000000000000000000000 gives you -1593835520, if that helps.
Ok, so its very late at night....
Someone New.... ish Posted Oct 23, 2001
I really should have kept my mouth shut shouldnt I! Thanks guys
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Ok, so its very late at night....
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