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.

* 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?

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.