From: Frank Peelo (fpeelo at domain eircom.net)
Date: Tue 26 Jun 2001 - 19:13:11 IST
> Actually, it's part of the "Compute PI to a ridiculously large
number of
> places" project. Every so often, they chop off a few gigabytes, and
as it
> contains every possible bit string, they just pick the bits that
look like
> an editor, mail reader, sex doll, news reader, vi emulator,
psychiatrist,
> zippy and whatever else takes people's fancy, convert it to LISP,
tar it
> up & ship it.
>
> Kate
From 'Contact' by Carl Sagan, no doubt. Or maybe the film with Jodie
Foster in it. I always wondered how they had the nerve to read meaning
into the fact that if you looked at PI in the right base for long
enough you could get to see things like simple geometric shapes. I
want the entire works of Shakespeare, dammit, if a bunch of monkeys
can do it then an infinitely nonrepeating number should be able to
manage it too.
FP (Drunk as a skunk but still spelling fairly well)
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