Timeline for Why does Binary exist?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
26 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 27, 2020 at 22:28 | history | edited | DavidW | CC BY-SA 4.0 | Fix the spelling of Wookieepedia |
| Dec 19, 2018 at 5:31 | answer | added | George 2.0 Hope | timeline score: 1 | |
| Jan 13, 2016 at 21:11 | answer | added | adsilcott | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jan 13, 2016 at 10:08 | answer | added | Falco | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 18:15 | comment | added | RBarryYoung | @DavidRicherby Has nothing to do with the point. Two computers talking to each other over non-visible EM spectrum (and radio is not nearly the only way to do this), without connecting wires is wireless networking and it did not exist when the original movie was released (except in research labs). Since it did not exist, and Lucas did not anticipate it (as few did, even in SF), his only option is to retcon some reason for R2-D2 to have used Binary instead. | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 11:31 | answer | added | Mark Booth | timeline score: 17 | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 9:21 | comment | added | Zaibis | @thegreatjedi: your point. thanks for improving my knowledge. | |
| Jan 12, 2016 at 5:11 | comment | added | David Richerby | @RBarryYoung "Wireless: not a thing when Star Wars was originally released" Not so. Wireless data networking wasn't a thing but we've been using radios to communicate wirelessly for a long time. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 22:06 | answer | added | Klaatu von Schlacker | timeline score: 7 | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 18:21 | answer | added | Erroneous | timeline score: 5 | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 18:08 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackSciFi/status/686610572356534272 | ||
| Jan 11, 2016 at 16:06 | comment | added | RBarryYoung | Wireless: not a thing when Star Wars was originally released (however, audio data transfer was a thing). That's Out-of-Universe, but still a fact that means Lucas had to ret-con some arbitrary reason for it In-Universe, so some reasonable allowances seem called for. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 15:57 | comment | added | Todd Wilcox | Note that moisture vaporators also "speak" binary (it might make sense to say they are "programmed" or "controlled" using binary), and therefore we can expand beyond droid-to-droid communications when looking at where binary is used. Unless we want to consider moisture vaporators to be droids, which doesn't sit right with me personally. Without having seen one, I could also entertain the notion that a binary load lifter isn't a droid either, assuming it's more like a programmable forklift than a truly independent droid. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 15:22 | comment | added | mg30rg | @jpmc26 Do you have any canon source that droids can generate natural language written text? I know we see R2D2 communicating by the means of the X-wing screen, but that can easily be possible, because the fighter - which is designed to be astromech droid compatible - has a built-in translating device. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 14:34 | comment | added | deworde | "cannot be overheard": I'm not sure how true this is (indeed, as understand it, it's blatantly false) if every droid natively listens and speaks in radio. And encryption is medium agnostic. For example, just because your radio isn't telling you it can hear your router's signal, doesn't mean it can't, you've just specifically told it to ignore the signal. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 12:31 | answer | added | deworde | timeline score: 25 | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 10:45 | comment | added | thegreatjedi | Conventional wireless communication using the electromagnetic wave spectrum and so travel at the speed of light (3e8m/s in vacuum), yes, but audio speech travels through air and so follows the speed of sound, or the speed at which sounds waves propagate through the atmosphere (340m/s on Earth). This doesn't include hyperspace communications. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 10:41 | comment | added | Zaibis | You say wirless communication is faster then audio. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't every wireless communication just an form of wave we modyfy, same as audio is? So you are comparing the speed of the hearable spectrum of waves to those who are out of this spectrum? Or comparing digital exchange of data from modyfied waves vs waves that generate a sound, where you can trace by its noise, its 1/0? Just to clarify. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 8:35 | comment | added | David Conrad | George Lucas thought having droids beep and boop would sound futuristic. There's no sensible in-universe explanation. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 8:27 | answer | added | TheSexyMenhir | timeline score: 20 | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 7:50 | comment | added | jpmc26 | Even stranger is the fact that at least some droids using Binary can understand organic languages just fine. (Luke can give verbal commands to R2-D2.) They can also generate it (for text). The only missing component is actually making the sounds of the words. You'd think the hard part would be generating the sentences and phrases themselves, not converting it to noise. We can already convert it to noise today. (We have software that sings for cryin' out loud.) | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 7:18 | comment | added | March Ho | Even if the droids are being jammed, they can simply communicate like 1990 era phone line modems using identical protocols for modem messaging (which has both higher bit rate and capacity for digital encryption). | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 3:38 | comment | added | DVK-on-Ahch-To | @Adeptus - it basically is just that. | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 3:34 | comment | added | Adeptus | Maybe binary is "galactic Morse Code" | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 3:31 | answer | added | DVK-on-Ahch-To | timeline score: 84 | |
| Jan 11, 2016 at 3:07 | history | asked | thegreatjedi | CC BY-SA 3.0 |