Microsoft to Copyright Pi, Found to Contain Entire Arial Font
Microsoft to Copyright Pi, Found to Contain Entire Arial Font
sebastiancarlos.com
Microsoft to Copyright Pi, Found to Contain Entire Arial Font
60 comments
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If pi is truly infinite, then it contains all the works of Shakespeare, every version of Windows, and this comment I'm typing right now.
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That's not how it's works. Being "infinite" is not enough, the number 1.110100100010000... is "infinite", without repeating patterns and dosen't have other digits that 1 or 0.
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to be fair, though, 1 and 0 are just binary representations of values, same as decimal and hexadecimal. within your example, we'd absolutely find the entire works of shakespeare encoded in ascii, unicode, and lcd pixel format with each letter arranged in 3x5 grids.
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If it's infinite without repeating patterns then it just contain all patterns, no? Eh i guess that's not how that works, is it? Half of all patterns is still infinity.
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Yes that's why they specified pi.
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In some encoding scheme, those digits can represent something other than binary digits. If we consider your string of digits to truly be infinite, some substring somewhere will be meaningful.
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This person doesn't understand infinity. Don't feel bad, no one really does, it sort of breaks our brains.
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shaves the sphere down with a sculptor's knife
There. 3.1416. Not perfectly round but it'll bake in the oven just fine.
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I ate The Onion
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Tbf I've heard crazier things which have ended up being true in the past week alone...
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Microsoft sues the Library of Babel
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“I may be a staunch atheist,” said Richard Stallman, creator of the GNU + Linux operating system and self-proclaimed architect of the modern world, “but any decent analysis in comparative religion would conclude that the universe is a copyleft creation, thereby pi should automatically fall under the terms of the GNUv3 license.”
Lol, he would actually say that
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Is there an algorithm or number such that we could basically pirate data from it by saying "start digit 9,031,643,679 with length 5,345,109 is an MP4 of Shrek"? Something that we could calculate in a day or less?
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The short answer is no, and even if we could, the digit index you'd start at would have a larger binary representation than the actual data you were trying to encode.
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An example I found: the string of digits 0123456789 occurs at position 17387594880. In this case, it took 11 digits to describe where to find a 10-digit number.
So I think such an algorithm would technically work, but your "start digit" would be so large it would use more data than just sending the raw file data. Not to mention the impossible amount of computing power needed.
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What if instead we utilized an algorithm, some code, that would ultimately generate the file? I could imagine a program that generates a number which ultimately is more dense than the program. For example, if we just-so-happened to need a million digits of Pi the program would be shorter than the number. Is there a way to tailor an algorithm to collapse down to any number? As an example, what if we needed a million digits of Pi but the last 10 digits need to be all 9s?
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Similarly: if you write a program to randomly run through all the combinations of pixels on a decently large screen (say, 1080p) you will eventually see every important question and answer that can be expressed on a screen.
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Could we already do this by leveraging the Library of Babel?
Genuinely asking, I'm not really sure.
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you can bookmark(?) pages
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Conceptually this is basically just standard encryption: some math that spits out gibberish unless you have the info to make that gibberish become something useful.
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I think if you can ridiculously compress the size down then maybe lol.
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Do you happen to know of any good algorithms or numbers? Pi gets harder to calculate with each digit, so it's not a great candidate.
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This just in: Measurements are now limited to ~3M decimals.
Science is ruined!
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Welp, time for quectoquectoquectoquectoquectometers.
Actually, a plank length seems to be 10 microquectometers, so my first guess might only be necessary for interpretation of the world, and not physical accuracy.
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And I thought that was a measuring unit for ducks
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There's no way the copyright office is actually going to approve this right?
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I think this is satire. Poe's law is stronger than ever
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According to Dr. Calibri, there's a 99.9999% chance they will approve it :)
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Omg. Calibri.. Didnt catch that the first time around lol
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60 comments
Including relevant XKCD as demanded by internet law: https://xkcd.com/10/
Oooh, a rare two-digit.
Eating the onion is sure popular today!
they didn't?