Isn't it obvious? The printing in these books can be heard loud and clear.
In the Pipe. Five by Five! Castles & Crusades Sale!
- Thread starter Troll Lord
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Isn't it obvious? The printing in these books can be heard loud and clear.
Troll Lord
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As Deset noted, its a play on the 5th printing.
But its also one of my favorite lines from Aliens, the pilot, when they are first coming down to the planet says "In the Pipe Five by Five." I have no idea what that means, but it sounds cool.
blargney the second
blargney the minute's son
I guess nobody remembers Buffy lines anymore?
Troll Lord said:
"Five by five" is a reference to a system that subjectively measures the signal-to-noise quality of communications. When responding to a message, the responder will give the message they received a numeric rating (on a scale of one to five) of the volume followed by a rating of the clarity. Thus, a signal that is both loud and clear will be rated as "five by five". "Five by three" would be loud but slightly garbled, and "Three by five" would be lower volume but clear.
This system was commonly used by the military and air force (although I imagine it's a lot less useful now with digital signals), and shows up in a lot of old war movies. The usage in Aliens is an good example of the phrase being used properly, because the pilot is on the radio when it is spoken. I can also remember it being used in "Fail Safe" when communicating with pilots over the radio, and referenced in "Blackboard Jungle" when communicating over a loudspeaker.
When Faith first used the term in season three of Buffy, she was actually misusing it to just mean "good". You could interpret this to be a result of her lower status of education/culture than the other high school students, or it could have just been an honest mistake by the writers. It later became kind of a catch phrase for her. I think it's kind of unfortunate that the usage in Buffy has degraded the original meaning. The original meaning of "five be five" is now "five by one" to most people who hear it.
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