Saturday, March 23, 2013

When bytes go backwards

The project manager was sporting a huge grin.

He had just explained to a client project manager that the Apple software project would be delayed by a few days because the network at his, the grinner's company, was currently being upgraded to handle backward bytes.

The client agreed to move the deadline out another week.

It was a bad but effective joke based on the fact that not all bytes have the same format of bits even if they represent the same data. If you really want to know what that means, do a web search for "little endian" or "big endian".

Besides being an inside joke for geeks, we think this is a pretty good example of how easily we can be fooled or misinformed and still be perfectly happy.

Happy? Yes, because the delivery was made before the extra week was over, and the client came back with more projects.


No comments:

Post a Comment