I dearly wish I had a screeshot of this, but since I still haven't got the required cable for the Video-In for my TV Tuner card, I wasn't able to even get a snapshotof the offending scene when I saw it. If anyone can find one, I beg of you to post it in here.

 Anyway, it was a season 7 episode of Law and Order: SVU. I think the episode title was "Web". About some minor who was making porn of himself and selling it online. Anyway, at one point to go the the "Computer Crimes" division, an they do the typical "Trace the IP Adress!". Of course, whenever they do this in a television show and we get a look at it, the IP address is always impossible for IPv4 (either because they don't want watchers to them bombard a real IP address, or out of ignorance. Take your pick). This normally happens in the form of at least one octet having a value higher than it's maximum possible value.

 Now I think I can safely say that we've all seen impossible IP addresses in media before. I remember loudly disclaiming "What the fuck!?" during Big Momma's House 2, when an octet had a value of 258. In an episode of Millennium, an octet had a value of 300-something. But what I saw in this episode was unprecedented. I forget which octet it was (first or last), but it had a value I had never expected to see, even in my wildest dreams. What was the astonishing value of this octet?

 3042. You read that right. Three thousand and forty two.

 That's right. Normally when they fudge an IP address, it's still the right number of digits. But they went above and beyond.

Sorry if anyone thinks I'm making a big deal out of this, but this just left me flabbergasted. This just wowed me more than nearly any error or mistake I've ever seen. Even possibly more than the infamous "I'll make a GUI Interface in Visual Basic, see if I can trace an IP address".

 You are clearly not 1337 enough. It's in binary. Oddly enough though I don't get a ping reply from 11.0.100.10...

 

anonymous_person_1337@yahoo.com:

  3042. You read that right. Three thousand and forty two.

How to make this sound as bad as I can?  This is my yearly grammer nazi post... be happy you are my target, feel lucky even!

3042 is three thousand forty-two.

Three thousand and forty-two would be 3000.42

The "and" implies a decimal point in American English at least; though I know only a few people that understand this.

KattMan:

anonymous_person_1337@yahoo.com:

  3042. You read that right. Three thousand and forty two.

How to make this sound as bad as I can?  This is my yearly grammer nazi post... be happy you are my target, feel lucky even!

3042 is three thousand forty-two.

Three thousand and forty-two would be 3000.42

The "and" implies a decimal point in American English at least; though I know only a few people that understand this.

Hate to rain on your parade .. but "three thousand forty-two" is at least a US centric way(*) of writing out numbers. In other parts of the world "Three thousand and forty-two" is legitimate.

* There may be other cultures that write numbers in the same form as the US.

OK -- I'll bite, as my 'nazi' nazi reflex kicks in. 

If the 'and' implied a decimal place, then 'Three thousand and forty-two' would be 3004.2 or maybe 3040.2, but most likely 3042.

 "Fourty two" is not a valid way of expressing a decimal fraction, as the 'fourty' has an implied decimal place. Three thousand point four two is recognised worldwide.

cataclysm:

If the 'and' implied a decimal place

 

But it doesn't. Kattman is full of shit.

MasterPlanSoftware:

cataclysm:

If the 'and' implied a decimal place

 

But it doesn't. Kattman is full of shit.

 

 

That may be, but I have memories of a 5th grade English teacher on the verge of yelling when someone would say "one hundred and 3" instead of "one hundred three" for the numeric 103.

/poor Carlton never did learn the lesson

MasterPlanSoftware:

cataclysm:

If the 'and' implied a decimal place

 

But it doesn't. Kattman is full of shit.

Nay, he is not full of it, at least not completely.   Many grammar experts would agree with Kattman.... just Google "and means decimal" to find plenty of debate.

As a bilingual English-French person, this drives me nuts, because in French, "and" always (at least, as I learned it) means decimal.  English, as usual, is far more ambiguous...

I know shit about writing numbers out long in english. but when saying it out loud it seems to me that the "and" version makes it sound better when dealing with numbers where you have a order of difference.

102 one-hundred and two

122 one-hundred twenty two

10002 ten-thousand and two

13432  thirteen-thousand four-hundred thirty two

13032 thirteen-thousand and thirty two.

Also in lotr it was that hobbits, one-hundredth and eleventh birthday. Not sure if tolkien was big on languages or even cared, but i can at least remember that line from the movie.

AssimilatedByBorg:

Nay, he is not full of it, at least not completely.   Many grammar experts would agree with Kattman....

 

And yet, no one I know would ever interpret "three thousand and twenty four" with a decimal place. 

MasterPlanSoftware:

And yet, no one I know would ever interpret "three thousand and twenty four" with a decimal place. 

You do now :)  (okay, not personally, ...)

 Two thoughts:

1) ip.port notation is not unheard of, e.g., 127.0.0.1.8080 for port 8080 on localhost.  Notably, tcpdump uses this notation.  An application you might actually use when attempting to "trace an ip".  Since you're not certain whether it was the first or last byte... it's entirely possible that it was actually this format, which you failed to recognize

2)  If using fake IPs in TV is really that exciting to you, this one's really going to blow your mind: there is no 555 telephone number prefix.  All those 555-xxxx phone numbers on television shows?  THEY'RE NOT REAL!

MasterPlanSoftware:

AssimilatedByBorg:

Nay, he is not full of it, at least not completely.   Many grammar experts would agree with Kattman....

 

And yet, no one I know would ever interpret "three thousand and twenty four" with a decimal place. 

Didn't I say this was American English?  Didn't I also say that few people would actually know this?

As others have pointed out, the "and" does imply the decimal, but while this is grammtically correct, it is rarely used in that fashion.  I was pointing this out only to be interjecting something unrelated into an otherwise boring thread.

Just because you don't know about this grammatical rule does not mean the rule doesn't exist.  Just because the rule exists, doesn't mean that people will follow it.

Case in point, when writing out cheques (which is also the proper form, check is that mark you make, not the note, but American English uses it for both) you write 103.50 in the numerical part but then under it you write One hundred three dollars and fifty cents; the and implying the decimal here.

 WP has some detail on other shows using similar strategies

 Four score and seven years ago...

merreborn:

 Two thoughts:

1) ip.port notation is not unheard of, e.g., 127.0.0.1.8080 for port 8080 on localhost.  Notably, tcpdump uses this notation.  An application you might actually use when attempting to "trace an ip".  Since you're not certain whether it was the first or last byte... it's entirely possible that it was actually this format, which you failed to recognize

2)  If using fake IPs in TV is really that exciting to you, this one's really going to blow your mind: there is no 555 telephone number prefix.  All those 555-xxxx phone numbers on television shows?  THEY'RE NOT REAL!

With the exception of 555-1212

Go ahead dial it, see what you get.

KattMan:

you write One hundred three dollars and fifty cents

 

No, I would write it 50/100.

KattMan:

the and implying the decimal here.

I would say the 'cents' would imply the decimal point there.

MasterPlanSoftware:

KattMan:

you write One hundred three dollars and fifty cents

 

No, I would write it 50/100.

KattMan:

the and implying the decimal here.

I would say the 'cents' would imply the decimal point there.

Yes in common usage, or do you still want to fail at the fact I keep saying that grammatically mine is correct, but in common usage no one follows that rule.

Man I love how easy it is to bait you even when I'm agreeing with you.  You just refuse to learn.  Go ahead reply one more time so you get the last word, I'm done here.

KattMan:

Didn't I say this was American English?  Didn't I also say that few people would actually know this?

The timezone of the OP is nowhere near the US. So why are you trying to apply US grammar rules to him?

KattMan:

Just because the rule exists, doesn't mean that people will follow it.

If nobody follows it, then you can hardly consider it part of the language.

Case in point, when writing out cheques (which is also the proper form, check is that mark you make, not the note, but American English uses it for both) you write 103.50 in the numerical part but then under it you write One hundred three dollars and fifty cents; the and implying the decimal here.

No, the "and" is used to represent addition here; the "dollars" and "cents" are units; you wouldn't say that with something like "five feet and two inches", for example, the "and" represents the decimal place.

 

merreborn:

 If using fake IPs in TV is really that exciting to you, this one's really going to blow your mind: there is no 555 telephone number prefix.  All those 555-xxxx phone numbers on television shows?  THEY'RE NOT REAL!

Would it throw you to hear a character in a movie/tv give a phone number to someone else as "555-9252-6"? I think that's the equivalent here - the fact that they didn't come up with some dumb IP-sounding string, but one that isn't even close (unless they were referencing a port number)

KattMan:

do you still want to fail at the fact I keep saying that grammatically mine is correct, but in common usage no one follows that rule.

 

 

Your belief in An Absolute Code of Grammar amuses me.

Common usage IS correct usage.  If most people can understand it, it cannot be wrong.  It just might take a little time for the authors of the grammar textbooks to catch up.

 

 

 

 Here's my take on it, lacking an authoritative source: In check writing, or any other place where the distinction is well-known, the second part is always given with a distinct unit from the first, e.g. "Two thousand fourty eight and 72/100", or "One hundred five and seventy two cents". The 'and' is a separator, not an implied decimal point. You could just as easily say "Two hundred fifty five and three eighths". So I'll agree that "Four hundred and ten" to represent 410 is wrong, but it's also wrong if it's intended to represent 400.10 because no fraction was given.

The real WTF is that someone was watching Big Momma's House 2.

Lastchance:

So I'll agree that "Four hundred and ten" to represent 410 is wrong

The use of "and" in this context is an i18n issue, so there is no absolute wrong or right unless you specify the context that it applies. The OP is not from the US, but KattMan has invoked US English, and that started off all the hilarity over the definition of "and".

KattMan:

the "and" does imply the decimal, but while this is grammtically correct, it is rarely used in that fashion.  I was pointing this out only to be interjecting something unrelated into an otherwise boring thread.

So "four and twenty blackbirds" is actually about 4.2 blackbirds?

And the phrase "one and one is two" (as used in the title of a Paul McCartney song), means "1.1 = 2"?

 

Interesting. 

stratos:

Also in lotr it was that hobbits, one-hundredth and eleventh birthday. Not sure if tolkien was big on languages or even cared, but i can at least remember that line from the movie.

Tolkein was big on languages, and cared about them long before he started writing LOTR.

Also, in the book, there was a bit about it being his "eleventy-first" birthday, but the movies didn't mention it.

Oh man, I just can't get it why movies/series tend to b0rk IP addys when 10.x.x.x or even 127.0.0.1 is enough. No, they have to put >255 octets in there. BTW, the first movie I remember having invalid octets would be "The Net", ironically Sandra Bullock's character was actually doing a traceroute (ok, "graphically-enriched", but a traceroute anyway) on that IP, coupled with a bunch of fingers for more show.

Not all movies go down the stupid IP way, though: at least Anti-trust used 10.0.0.0/8 addresses, as well as Matrix Reloaded. In Matrix Reloaded's case, you can even have a good argument on that usage, I'd expect power facilities to have isolated networks!

However, there is something mentioned here that absolutely irks me even more than invalid IPs...

anonymous_person_1337@yahoo.com:

I remember loudly disclaiming "What the fuck!?" during Big Momma's House 2, when an octet had a value of 258.

I remember loudly disclaiming "What the fuck!?" when they made the "1337 h4><0|2" an idiot kid that has more in common with script kiddies than actual hackers. I'd rather see the "hackers" from Hackers portrayed as the hacker image than Big Momma's "stupid snarky kid" stereotypes.

TRWTF is that I was forced to watch Big Momma's House 2 during a bus ride, with speakers at full blast!

merreborn:

So "four and twenty blackbirds" is actually about 4.2 blackbirds?

And the phrase "one and one is two" (as used in the title of a Paul McCartney song), means "1.1 = 2"?

FLAWLESS VICTORY!

 Those are not things from America. The proper usage here IS to replace and with the decimal place. However, you also must supply the fraction. 'one hundred and two' is not correct. One hundred and two tenths is.

 

Second; "you wouldn't say that with something like "five feet and two inches", for example, the "and" represents the decimal place."

 Yes it does. In this case, the fraction is supplied - inches, which happens to corrospond to twelths. This is the same as saying 'five and two twelths feet'.

 

Isuwen:

Those are not things from America. The proper usage here IS to replace and with the decimal place. However, you also must supply the fraction. 'one hundred and two' is not correct. One hundred and two tenths is.

Think about what you just said logically. If the "and" is working as a decimal place then you don't need to supply a fraction as you know that whatever comes after it is after the decimal place. Eg, Two hundred and one, 200 AND 1, would be 200.1 *if* it worked that way. The correct way that the "and" operator works is that you add the two sides together, eg Two hundred and one becomes 201.

Otherwise if you replace the "and" with a decimal place, then with your example of one hundred and two tenths, 200 AND 0.2 you would get 200.0.2 (makes no sense right?), or if we were to ignore the extra decimal place you would get 200.02, not two hundred and two tenths.

The function of "and" acting as addition is highlighted by previous examples, eg, one hundred dollars and two hundred cents. 100 cents = 1 dollar, lets convert them to the same units. 100 dollars and 2 dollars. Can you honestly tell me 100.2 is one hundred dollars and two hundred cents? Obviously people won't normaly say  two hundred cents, but you know, it's an example which shows how the replace and with decimal point breaks down. So it makes more sense just to use it as addition. Get the coins out if you need to, I want you to figgure out how one dollar and five hundred cents becomes 1.5 dollars and not 6 dollars (or for that matter one dollar and 5 dollars. I'll trade you 2 dollars for one dollar and five hundred cents, lol)

This exact same logic can be used for any other numbers, just replace "dollars" with "units", you have to specify a different unit (or fractional number) to get that decimal place.

danixdefcon5:

Oh man, I just can't get it why movies/series tend to b0rk IP addys when 10.x.x.x or even 127.0.0.1 is enough

 

Problem is, if they did use non-routable addresses, some pedantic prick would end up on this forum posting "OMG LOLZ THEY USED NON-ROUTABLE ADDRESSES, WOT A BUNCH OF LOOSERS!!!!111ONE'

 

Quinnum:

Problem is, if they did use non-routable addresses, some pedantic prick would end up on this forum posting "OMG LOLZ THEY USED NON-ROUTABLE ADDRESSES, WOT A BUNCH OF LOOSERS!!!!111ONE'

Before some pedantic prick jumps on you for it, they are technically private addresses, not non-routable.  Just FYI.

morbiuswilters:

Before some pedantic prick jumps on you for it, they are technically private addresses, not non-routable.  Just FYI.

 

Yeah, I had a mind block on the correct term at the time of posting

 

I love IT people.

merreborn:

there is no 555 telephone number prefix.  All those 555-xxxx phone numbers on television shows?  THEY'RE NOT REAL!

 

That's another US-centric view of the world! :)

Around here there are plenty of normal phone numbers beginning with 555. And 911. Although we do have 8-digit local numbers so your numbers wouldn't work anyway...

Back ontopic I agree that IPv4 IP addresses shown on TV/movies should have the first octet starting with a number between 256 and 999, just to avoid collisions with "real" IPs. I'm assuming that in the case of the OP the show's writers/producers/whatever heard about IPv6 and half-implemented it, where there are possibly 8 sets of 4-digit numbers.

Here in New Zealand, we always say the "and".

eg.

436 = "four hundred and thirty-six".

436.14 = "four hundred and thirty-six point fourteen" (or maybe "point one-four").

I always wondered about why Americans left out the "and". I'd never ever heard of it representing a decimal point before. Are you telling me you'd say "four hundred thirty-six and fourteen" for 436.14?

The IP address I saw had no port number appended to the end of it. It was just the four octets, that's it. I'm also rather sure that the erroneous value was the the first octet, too. About those lamenting about Big Momma's House 2, I'm right there with you. I went with some friends because we liked the first one and hoped the sequel would be worthwhile. We learned our lesson. I won't even go into the whole "THE COMPUTER DUDE IS A LIL KID, LOL!" part of that film.

KattMan:

Yes in common usage, or do you still want to fail at the fact I keep saying that grammatically mine is correct, but in common usage no one follows that rule.

Citation needed. No evidence has been provided for the existence of such a rule.

Lastchance:

So I'll agree that "Four hundred and ten" to represent 410 is wrong

 

Really?  If I have four hundred things and ten things, how many things do I have?  I cannot understand how removing the 'things' from that sentence gives you a different number.

stratos:

... Not sure if tolkien was big on languages or even cared...

 

I'm sorry, but I just couldn't let that one go unchallenged!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._R._R._Tolkien#Languages_and_philology:

Linguistic career

Both Tolkien's academic career and his literary production are inseparable from his love of language and philology. He specialized in Ancient Greek philology in college, and in 1915 graduated with Old Norse as special subject. He worked for the Oxford English Dictionary from 1918, and is credited with having worked on a number of words starting with the letter W, including walrus, over which he struggled mightily.^[112] In 1920, he went to Leeds as Reader in English language, where he claimed credit for raising the number of students of linguistics from five to twenty. He gave courses in Old English heroic verse, history of English, various Old English and Middle English texts, Old and Middle English philology, introductory Germanic philology, Gothic, Old Icelandic, and Medieval Welsh. When in 1925, aged thirty-three, Tolkien applied for the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, he boasted that his students of Germanic philology in Leeds had even formed a "Viking Club".^[113] He also had a certain, if imperfect, knowledge of Finnish.^[114]

Privately, Tolkien was attracted to "things of racial and linguistic significance", and he entertained notions of an inherited taste of language, which he termed the "native tongue" as opposed to "cradle tongue" in his 1955 lecture English and Welsh, which is crucial to his understanding of race and language. He considered West Midlands dialect of Middle English to be his own "native tongue", and, as he wrote to W. H. Auden in 1955, "I am a West-midlander by blood (and took to early west-midland Middle English as a known tongue as soon as I set eyes on it)".

 

Zemm:

Around here there are plenty of normal phone numbers beginning with 555.

Mexico City's area code is (55), 8-digit numbers. Before conversion from the old 8-digit system to a US-ish 10-digit system (3-7 numbers except for the three major cities, which have 2-8 numbers), Mexico City's area code went from 55, to 5, then again to 55 when the "extra numbers" were added. As a result, some old lines were actually 555, and are currently 5555.

In fact one friend's office number once was something like 5555-5521. Too sad he's no longer got that number...

 Its funny how topics here go so weirdly off in random arguments. Well anyhows heres my 2 cents (or 'and 2 euro' for the crazy americans). Here in Ireland 'and' was and is always addition and definately does not denote decimal values. It's only posible form of specifying decimal would be simply stating a change in units. e.g. one euro and fifty cents or 1.50 euro. This whole idea dates back to pre-decimalisation times, the idea of asking for 'one and five' could mean anything: one pound and five pence; one pound and one shilling; one shilling and five pence.

 These days though we have been seing some malformed ways of specifing currency values. e.g. one fifty, meaning either 150 euro or 1.50 euro, depending on context. where it context can be ambiguous it is then polite to go with the more traditional form.

KattMan:

anonymous_person_1337@yahoo.com:

  3042. You read that right. Three thousand and forty two.

How to make this sound as bad as I can?  This is my yearly grammer nazi post... be happy you are my target, feel lucky even!

3042 is three thousand forty-two.

Three thousand and forty-two would be 3000.42

The "and" implies a decimal point in American English at least; though I know only a few people that understand this.

WTF????

Quinnum:

Problem is, if they did use non-routable addresses, some pedantic prick would end up on this forum posting "OMG LOLZ THEY USED NON-ROUTABLE ADDRESSES, WOT A BUNCH OF LOOSERS!!!!111ONE'

How about some of the other reserved ranges (such as 192.0.2.0/24 "Example use", or maybe 169.254.0.0/16 "Link-local" [the IP you get if DHCP server doesn't respond], 198.18.0.0/15 "Benchmark range")?

It's obvious that they used one of the shiny-new IP V.6 adresses.
You all fail.
I Win.

 While watching the anime Denno Coil, in one scene I saw a lot of numbers going by and paused to see if they actually looked like anything. They appeared to be formatted like IPv6 addresses, actually.

BioSehnsucht:

 While watching the anime Denno Coil, in one scene I saw a lot of numbers going by and paused to see if they actually looked like anything. They appeared to be formatted like IPv6 addresses, actually.

Some anime will actually use real stuff for their visuals; Serial Experiments Lain in fact revolved around an upgrade to "IPv7".

But I've also seen that some anime producers go down the cheap road: in Gundam Wing, the "diagnostics test" they run on one of the characters is actually an INSTALL.TXT for some TWAIN driver. However, this same technique for filling screens or paper with "tech" data has a long history... just watch THX 1138. That's Fortran code!

Hey, topic creator here. Although it's become obvious that this thread has become more about grammar than IP addresses, I just thought I'd make this post anyway. I happened to catch a repeat of this episode by chance, and made sure to write down the IP address they flashed on the screen.

It was 3098.41.60.5

anonymous_person_1337@yahoo.com:

It was 3098 and 41 and 60 and 5

 

FTFY.