{"id":330,"date":"2009-02-26T09:40:15","date_gmt":"2009-02-25T22:40:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/?p=330"},"modified":"2010-01-28T13:53:06","modified_gmt":"2010-01-28T02:53:06","slug":"3626216940","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/?p=330","title":{"rendered":"3626216940"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the last item on today’s ‘Best of the Web Today’ column<\/a> in the Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal, the writer draws attention to a gaffe by the US Vice President in which he made reference to ‘a website number’. Presumably, that’s what most people would refer to as a website address, or even a URL.<\/p>\n

At the end of this item the writer has a link to what he claims is the website number which, he says, is 3626216940<\/a>. If you hover the over this link (either here or in the WSJ piece), you ought to see on your browser’s status bar an address: http:\/\/216.35.173.236. But what is actually in the link is http:\/\/3626216940.<\/p>\n

Of course, the 216.35 etc is the fixed address of the website in question (recovery.org). But what’s 3626216940 all about?<\/p>\n

The way we specify URLs in numerical terms is a weird hybrid of hexadecimal and decimal notation. In the AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD format, each of those AAA etc is the decimal form of a two digit hexadecimal number. A more sensible representation of the address using actual hexadecimal numbers would be D8.23.AD.EC. Since a two digit hex number can encompass only an integer range from 0 to 255, that’s why you never see an Internet or network address in the hybrid dec\/hex format with a value of greater than 255 in any of the four slots.<\/p>\n

You can convert this address format to a fully decimal number by adding the least significant (right-most) number, to the next least significant multiplied by 256, to the third least significant multiplied by 256 and again by 256, and so on. Let’s do it:<\/p>\n

236+173*256+35*256*256+216*256*256*256<\/p>\n

Copy and paste that expression into a suitable calculator and you will see that the answer is 3626216940, the number mentioned in the WSJ piece.<\/p>\n

What I found surprising is that a browser will treat this as a decimal representation of URL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last item on today’s ‘Best of the Web Today’ column in the Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal, the writer draws attention to a gaffe by the US Vice President in which he made reference to ‘a website number’. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[29,30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=330"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":331,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330\/revisions\/331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hifi-writer.com\/wpblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}