Members List most posts

[Scotsboy]

In the Members List, the highest poster has 4,294,967,295 posts! Wow, over 4 billion. In fact, the poster has only 3 posts, so the 4 billion figure is bizarre. I'm in a lowly 13th highest place. All relatively unimportant, I know, but I was only curious.

http://www.wetset.net/forums/memberl...rt=posts&pp=30

[satyr]

That's 2^32 - 1. I bet what happened was this: the post count is stored as a 32-bit unsigned integer. Somehow, maybe when a post was deleted, the post count became negative. But because the post count does not keep track of sign (after all, one can't have a negative post count) the number rolled around and became the largest number that can be stored in a 32-bit integer.

[Supermaxx]

Hurray for being 16th.

[pissed_myself]

That's 2^32 - 1. I bet what happened was this: the post count is stored as a 32-bit unsigned integer. Somehow, maybe when a post was deleted, the post count became negative. But because the post count does not keep track of sign (after all, one can't have a negative post count) the number rolled around and became the largest number that can be stored in a 32-bit integer.

That is brilliant! Good job thinking that one up... SO... now explain why I have 65,535 unread private messages, but a total of 3.

[DeltaFoxtrot]

That is brilliant! Good job thinking that one up... SO... now explain why I have 65,535 unread private messages, but a total of 3.

65535 is 2^16... so it's overflow limit for 16 bit systems.

[Drying]

Wow... So many fellow nerds here xD
I wonder if there is an interesting relation.

I'm pretty sure that with the few members regularly posting here and at least three of them knowing about bitwise representations of integers, we are (relatively) above average as a non-tech forum...
Now off to explain the immature conversations