End of the World..
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Ok..Here's another wierd question that keeps asking for processor time.. Suppose you knew that the world was going to end..and you are given the task of designing a system to preserve all known knowledge. You would also have to make sure that the next dominant species on earth would be able to understand and use that knowledge..Hopefully it would be humans.. How would you go about it? Let's hear your ideas.. P.S : If all the knowledge were to be digitized..what would be it's size?? :-D :-D I think I am MAD :-O :-O char *p="char *p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
This is a great question, something I have not seen before :) Ok, I am no linguist (maybe we should ask Tolkien for some tips?) nor am I a teacher of great note or understanding, but I have a brain and have some ideas. First off when you say the world is going to end, do you mean the Earth is physically destroyed or just all life wiped out leaving behind the rock and magma? 1- A simple pictographic language would have to be developed. One which corresponds visually to items in our world. For those things which cannot be visually depicted (e.g. love, hate etc.) a series of pictographic "stories" would have to be developed. 2- Digital is not the way. It would take far too long for the succesors on the planet to get to a technological level capable of "reading" a digital data store. Plus we have trouble even in this day and age reading digital data from a Mac to a PC! I would say engraving on a very tough, flexible and resilient material would be best. Of course this would result in a huge library which would have to be physically traversed. 3- While burying the "library" is a good idea we would need a way to indicate it's location to our succesors. Maybe a monolith of sorts *que theme tune to 2001 pls* or a satellite which uses some "light beam" (mirros using light from the Sun?) to shine down on the location *que God music pls ;)* Some problems I foresee are that: a: Our succesors evolve into something nothing like us at all. Maybe they do not even use sight as their primary sense. In which case a pictographic language would be useless and a location indicator useless aswell. b: If they do find the library and they are capable of sight maybe the world about them is so different from ours that nothing really corresponds. Maybe they are also vastly different e.g. no emotions or they do not understand the concept of a "story" c: What do we choose to preserve? History, including war and suffering? Art, will they even understand it? Fiction, maybe they will confuse our fiction with true life? As much as I struggle with, and dislike, maths I think though that it would be the only piece of our knowledge which we could safely transfer on. As scientists say it is the only truly universal language. LOL, maybe we should write all our knowledge on the moon in big black letters ;) Frankly I do not see much chance of our succesors fully understanding all of our knowledge in time to help them. It has taken hundreds of years for us to come to grips with the ancient Egyptian's knowledg
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Ok..Here's another wierd question that keeps asking for processor time.. Suppose you knew that the world was going to end..and you are given the task of designing a system to preserve all known knowledge. You would also have to make sure that the next dominant species on earth would be able to understand and use that knowledge..Hopefully it would be humans.. How would you go about it? Let's hear your ideas.. P.S : If all the knowledge were to be digitized..what would be it's size?? :-D :-D I think I am MAD :-O :-O char *p="char *p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
My answer: Nothing. Why infect a future civilization with our obviously flawed knowledge base? "War is hell" William Tecumseh Sherman.
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Ok..Here's another wierd question that keeps asking for processor time.. Suppose you knew that the world was going to end..and you are given the task of designing a system to preserve all known knowledge. You would also have to make sure that the next dominant species on earth would be able to understand and use that knowledge..Hopefully it would be humans.. How would you go about it? Let's hear your ideas.. P.S : If all the knowledge were to be digitized..what would be it's size?? :-D :-D I think I am MAD :-O :-O char *p="char *p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
How about this: Encode all the data in the world into one large digital stream. A buddy who worked for StorageTek told me that they estimate that to be about 75 Terabytes if all duplication is eliminated, maybe less if you dump all the information that would not be useful to future readers. Put a Decimal point in front of that stream, and convert that decimal to a fraction. Cut a conspicuous notch into a steel beam in such a manner as the ration of the cut to one end represents the numerator, and the cut to the other end represents the denominator. Ensure that the beam can be found easily, or alternatively make thousands of the beams and spread them around the world. -- David
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How about this: Encode all the data in the world into one large digital stream. A buddy who worked for StorageTek told me that they estimate that to be about 75 Terabytes if all duplication is eliminated, maybe less if you dump all the information that would not be useful to future readers. Put a Decimal point in front of that stream, and convert that decimal to a fraction. Cut a conspicuous notch into a steel beam in such a manner as the ration of the cut to one end represents the numerator, and the cut to the other end represents the denominator. Ensure that the beam can be found easily, or alternatively make thousands of the beams and spread them around the world. -- David
Put a Decimal point in front of that stream, and convert that decimal to a fraction. Cut a conspicuous notch into a steel beam in such a manner as the ration of the cut to one end represents the numerator, and the cut to the other end represents the denominator Then re-write this post in english so that I can understand... :-D maybe less if you dump all the information that would not be useful to future readers What would'nt you store? Open-source theory? .COM business plans? Organised religion? ;P regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible." - Chretien Malesherbes "Give me something better than Windows and I will use it, till then leave me be. Give me soemthing better than Science and I will believe it, till then leave me be." err, me
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This is a great question, something I have not seen before :) Ok, I am no linguist (maybe we should ask Tolkien for some tips?) nor am I a teacher of great note or understanding, but I have a brain and have some ideas. First off when you say the world is going to end, do you mean the Earth is physically destroyed or just all life wiped out leaving behind the rock and magma? 1- A simple pictographic language would have to be developed. One which corresponds visually to items in our world. For those things which cannot be visually depicted (e.g. love, hate etc.) a series of pictographic "stories" would have to be developed. 2- Digital is not the way. It would take far too long for the succesors on the planet to get to a technological level capable of "reading" a digital data store. Plus we have trouble even in this day and age reading digital data from a Mac to a PC! I would say engraving on a very tough, flexible and resilient material would be best. Of course this would result in a huge library which would have to be physically traversed. 3- While burying the "library" is a good idea we would need a way to indicate it's location to our succesors. Maybe a monolith of sorts *que theme tune to 2001 pls* or a satellite which uses some "light beam" (mirros using light from the Sun?) to shine down on the location *que God music pls ;)* Some problems I foresee are that: a: Our succesors evolve into something nothing like us at all. Maybe they do not even use sight as their primary sense. In which case a pictographic language would be useless and a location indicator useless aswell. b: If they do find the library and they are capable of sight maybe the world about them is so different from ours that nothing really corresponds. Maybe they are also vastly different e.g. no emotions or they do not understand the concept of a "story" c: What do we choose to preserve? History, including war and suffering? Art, will they even understand it? Fiction, maybe they will confuse our fiction with true life? As much as I struggle with, and dislike, maths I think though that it would be the only piece of our knowledge which we could safely transfer on. As scientists say it is the only truly universal language. LOL, maybe we should write all our knowledge on the moon in big black letters ;) Frankly I do not see much chance of our succesors fully understanding all of our knowledge in time to help them. It has taken hundreds of years for us to come to grips with the ancient Egyptian's knowledg
Now that's the Kind of answer i am looking for.. Ok..first of all "End of the world" would mean the wiping out of all life rather than the physical destruction of earth.. Ok now what i had in mind with digitized content was not only the media but a player for that media as well..an automatic self powered device that would be capable of displaying the digitized information.. Now if we were to engrave all the knowledge in a pictographic knowledge..how much information could you encode certainly not even 1% of what you could with digitized content.. I liked your satellite idea for marking the place..but how about this we have multiple satellites deployed in space with the same information marking different parts of earth .. whenever some one reachs the spot the satellite gets activated like an infra-red sensor detects intruders and projects a holographic image back to earth at the same spot..explaing the knowledge and how to find more information..do you get where i am going..? so this way we have multiple points on earth that can be covered.. The question of what to preserve is very important. I defintely agree with you on mathematics and science but i also think that history is really important..hopefully they'll learn from our mistakes.. But if they evolve out to be totally different from us then too if they were intelligent i think they would eventually figure out what we're trying to say.. And about the egyptians..well they didn't document their history knowing that their reign was going to end.... Ok..on a different note what if not the entire poulation but only the majority of life on earth is wiped out..wouldn't it be better if the survivors could somehow access all the knowledge in the world.. For example..if you are the only survivor..what would you want to know..?? char *p="char *p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
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How about this: Encode all the data in the world into one large digital stream. A buddy who worked for StorageTek told me that they estimate that to be about 75 Terabytes if all duplication is eliminated, maybe less if you dump all the information that would not be useful to future readers. Put a Decimal point in front of that stream, and convert that decimal to a fraction. Cut a conspicuous notch into a steel beam in such a manner as the ration of the cut to one end represents the numerator, and the cut to the other end represents the denominator. Ensure that the beam can be found easily, or alternatively make thousands of the beams and spread them around the world. -- David
:-D :-D If those guys can figure out that the ratio of the cut represents digitized data then they would be already much more advanced than us intellectually.. But your idea is interesting..you know once i had an idea that what if the decimal expansion of Pi,Golden ratio etc. were some sort of encoded information passed on to us..since these ratios and figures occur so commonly in nature..so i wrote a program to represent the digits of pi as a image...here are some of the problems i faced.. 1. Is the image in color or black and white? 2. What color does a digit represent?..for eg.. i tried. white for even numbers and black for odd ones..there could be so many ways..like < 5 black and >5 white etc. 3. What excatly is the size of the image?..it is too convenient to assume that the image would have a 640x480 resolution? Thus due to lack of time and processign power :-D :-D the project was given a extremely low priority and has never been scheduled since :-D char *p="char *p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
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My answer: Nothing. Why infect a future civilization with our obviously flawed knowledge base? "War is hell" William Tecumseh Sherman.
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Why is our knowledge base obviously flawed??? char *p="char *p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
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Well i don't think so..knowledge can never be flawed. It is the application of that knowledge that "may be" flawed. How the knowledge is applied depends on the person applying it..don't you think so? Now if it were in your hands..wouldn't you rather let people know what can happen if knowledge is used in wrong ways..rather than letting them find it out for themselves.. For eg. if humans had extremely short term memory and we were to forget the consequences of nuclear war..do you think that would be a good thing?..that we find out about the consequences from time to time??.. char *p="char *p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
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Now that's the Kind of answer i am looking for.. Ok..first of all "End of the world" would mean the wiping out of all life rather than the physical destruction of earth.. Ok now what i had in mind with digitized content was not only the media but a player for that media as well..an automatic self powered device that would be capable of displaying the digitized information.. Now if we were to engrave all the knowledge in a pictographic knowledge..how much information could you encode certainly not even 1% of what you could with digitized content.. I liked your satellite idea for marking the place..but how about this we have multiple satellites deployed in space with the same information marking different parts of earth .. whenever some one reachs the spot the satellite gets activated like an infra-red sensor detects intruders and projects a holographic image back to earth at the same spot..explaing the knowledge and how to find more information..do you get where i am going..? so this way we have multiple points on earth that can be covered.. The question of what to preserve is very important. I defintely agree with you on mathematics and science but i also think that history is really important..hopefully they'll learn from our mistakes.. But if they evolve out to be totally different from us then too if they were intelligent i think they would eventually figure out what we're trying to say.. And about the egyptians..well they didn't document their history knowing that their reign was going to end.... Ok..on a different note what if not the entire poulation but only the majority of life on earth is wiped out..wouldn't it be better if the survivors could somehow access all the knowledge in the world.. For example..if you are the only survivor..what would you want to know..?? char *p="char *p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
For example..if you are the only survivor..what would you want to know..?? Oh that is easy: "How to create/clone a woman, 101" :-D Ok now what i had in mind with digitized content was not only the media but a player for that media as well..an automatic self powered device that would be capable of displaying the digitized information Can you imagine the stability and robustness of the OS that would have to be used to keep a media player running for thousands of years without any fault? Not even a true Linux zealot would bank Linux on that task :) Power would not be a problem, some form of advanced nuclear reactor should do the trick (solar panels are to easily damaged so that idea is out). And about the egyptians..well they didn't document their history knowing that their reign was going to end.... Good point, though what they did document is quite extensive and still largely opaque to us. But if they evolve out to be totally different from us then too if they were intelligent i think they would eventually figure out what we're trying to say.. Agreed, but by the time they gained the intelligence to understand our works they would have developed their own culture and knowledge making a lot of ours pointless to them. Still it would be useful to them, even from a "comparison" point of view. whenever some one reachs the spot the satellite gets activated like an infra-red sensor detects intruders and projects a holographic image back to earth at the same spot..explaing the knowledge and how to find more information Very cool idea indeed. This also removes the media from any damage Earth can throw at it. I just had an alternate idea. We cryogenically store some of our brightest minds, one or two from each sphere of our knowledge (e.g. Stephen Hawking for Science, Tony Blair for politics etc. etc.) and send them into a stable orbit around Earth. We also would include some linguists and teachers. Along with them we send a computer (powered down) with the worlds knowledge. Then when life of sufficient intelligence is detected on Earth the satelite lands on Earth and the chosen few spread the knowledge. I cannot think of anything better than the human brain to adapt to conditions and teach knowledge. Also the chosen few would have the advantage of, hopefully, being revered as gods by the local population and so be protected and listened to. lol, maybe this has already happened on Earth far in the past and has led to
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Why is our knowledge base obviously flawed??? char *p="char *p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
Would you trust the knowledge base of a species that no longer existed? My first question would be - If they were so smart, why the hell aren't they around any more? Obviously, their knowledge failed them, it was inadequate for whatever final challenge they were confronted with. Could you learn something from it? Well certainly. But what if you learned the wrong thing, were taught the wrong lesson? If it were me, curious or not, I would never even open it. To hell with the losers in the cosmic game of survival. "War is hell" William Tecumseh Sherman.
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:-D :-D If those guys can figure out that the ratio of the cut represents digitized data then they would be already much more advanced than us intellectually.. But your idea is interesting..you know once i had an idea that what if the decimal expansion of Pi,Golden ratio etc. were some sort of encoded information passed on to us..since these ratios and figures occur so commonly in nature..so i wrote a program to represent the digits of pi as a image...here are some of the problems i faced.. 1. Is the image in color or black and white? 2. What color does a digit represent?..for eg.. i tried. white for even numbers and black for odd ones..there could be so many ways..like < 5 black and >5 white etc. 3. What excatly is the size of the image?..it is too convenient to assume that the image would have a 640x480 resolution? Thus due to lack of time and processign power :-D :-D the project was given a extremely low priority and has never been scheduled since :-D char *p="char *p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
expansion of Pi,Golden ratio etc. were some sort of encoded information passed on to us..since these ratios and figures occur so commonly in nature.. Much like a sci-fi book I once read in which the characters figured out that some mathetmatic sequence had been encoded into the very structure of the universe telling of all knowledge anyone ever wanted to know. Cannot remember the books name or author though. Very interesting though :) If those guys can figure out that the ratio of the cut represents digitized data then they would be already much more advanced than us intellectually Any way of representing our knowledge would probably run into this problem. Pictographic seems like one of the few that could circumvent this though :) regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible." - Chretien Malesherbes "Give me something better than Windows and I will use it, till then leave me be. Give me soemthing better than Science and I will believe it, till then leave me be." err, me
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Would you trust the knowledge base of a species that no longer existed? My first question would be - If they were so smart, why the hell aren't they around any more? Obviously, their knowledge failed them, it was inadequate for whatever final challenge they were confronted with. Could you learn something from it? Well certainly. But what if you learned the wrong thing, were taught the wrong lesson? If it were me, curious or not, I would never even open it. To hell with the losers in the cosmic game of survival. "War is hell" William Tecumseh Sherman.
I see your point but even from the lowliest we can learn something :) We have learnt lessons from the Mayans, Romans, Egyptians and many other now vanished races. If nothing our successors can learn that: "War is hell" William Tecumseh Sherman. ;) regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible." - Chretien Malesherbes "Give me something better than Windows and I will use it, till then leave me be. Give me soemthing better than Science and I will believe it, till then leave me be." err, me
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For example..if you are the only survivor..what would you want to know..?? Oh that is easy: "How to create/clone a woman, 101" :-D Ok now what i had in mind with digitized content was not only the media but a player for that media as well..an automatic self powered device that would be capable of displaying the digitized information Can you imagine the stability and robustness of the OS that would have to be used to keep a media player running for thousands of years without any fault? Not even a true Linux zealot would bank Linux on that task :) Power would not be a problem, some form of advanced nuclear reactor should do the trick (solar panels are to easily damaged so that idea is out). And about the egyptians..well they didn't document their history knowing that their reign was going to end.... Good point, though what they did document is quite extensive and still largely opaque to us. But if they evolve out to be totally different from us then too if they were intelligent i think they would eventually figure out what we're trying to say.. Agreed, but by the time they gained the intelligence to understand our works they would have developed their own culture and knowledge making a lot of ours pointless to them. Still it would be useful to them, even from a "comparison" point of view. whenever some one reachs the spot the satellite gets activated like an infra-red sensor detects intruders and projects a holographic image back to earth at the same spot..explaing the knowledge and how to find more information Very cool idea indeed. This also removes the media from any damage Earth can throw at it. I just had an alternate idea. We cryogenically store some of our brightest minds, one or two from each sphere of our knowledge (e.g. Stephen Hawking for Science, Tony Blair for politics etc. etc.) and send them into a stable orbit around Earth. We also would include some linguists and teachers. Along with them we send a computer (powered down) with the worlds knowledge. Then when life of sufficient intelligence is detected on Earth the satelite lands on Earth and the chosen few spread the knowledge. I cannot think of anything better than the human brain to adapt to conditions and teach knowledge. Also the chosen few would have the advantage of, hopefully, being revered as gods by the local population and so be protected and listened to. lol, maybe this has already happened on Earth far in the past and has led to
Oh that is easy: "How to create/clone a woman, 101" I Agree :-D I just had an alternate idea. We cryogenically store some of our brightest minds, one or two from each sphere of our knowledge (e.g. Stephen Hawking for Science, Tony Blair for politics etc. etc.) and send them into a stable orbit around Earth. We also would include some linguists and teachers. Along with them we send a computer (powered down) with the worlds knowledge. Great Idea!!!..A modern day Noah's ark of knowledge :-D lol, maybe this has already happened on Earth far in the past and has led to all our myths, religions and legends Could be! :-D :-D The problem of an ultra-stable OS is still a stumbling block for any of our ideas... char *p="char *p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
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Would you trust the knowledge base of a species that no longer existed? My first question would be - If they were so smart, why the hell aren't they around any more? Obviously, their knowledge failed them, it was inadequate for whatever final challenge they were confronted with. Could you learn something from it? Well certainly. But what if you learned the wrong thing, were taught the wrong lesson? If it were me, curious or not, I would never even open it. To hell with the losers in the cosmic game of survival. "War is hell" William Tecumseh Sherman.
Well so ur basically saying that there is nothing that can be learnt from failure??..In my view ur failures are the most learning experiences of ur life.. Could you learn something from it? Well certainly. But what if you learned the wrong thing, were taught the wrong lesson? What if you learnt the right lesson?? Is the glass half empty or half full? char *p="char *p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
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For example..if you are the only survivor..what would you want to know..?? Oh that is easy: "How to create/clone a woman, 101" :-D Ok now what i had in mind with digitized content was not only the media but a player for that media as well..an automatic self powered device that would be capable of displaying the digitized information Can you imagine the stability and robustness of the OS that would have to be used to keep a media player running for thousands of years without any fault? Not even a true Linux zealot would bank Linux on that task :) Power would not be a problem, some form of advanced nuclear reactor should do the trick (solar panels are to easily damaged so that idea is out). And about the egyptians..well they didn't document their history knowing that their reign was going to end.... Good point, though what they did document is quite extensive and still largely opaque to us. But if they evolve out to be totally different from us then too if they were intelligent i think they would eventually figure out what we're trying to say.. Agreed, but by the time they gained the intelligence to understand our works they would have developed their own culture and knowledge making a lot of ours pointless to them. Still it would be useful to them, even from a "comparison" point of view. whenever some one reachs the spot the satellite gets activated like an infra-red sensor detects intruders and projects a holographic image back to earth at the same spot..explaing the knowledge and how to find more information Very cool idea indeed. This also removes the media from any damage Earth can throw at it. I just had an alternate idea. We cryogenically store some of our brightest minds, one or two from each sphere of our knowledge (e.g. Stephen Hawking for Science, Tony Blair for politics etc. etc.) and send them into a stable orbit around Earth. We also would include some linguists and teachers. Along with them we send a computer (powered down) with the worlds knowledge. Then when life of sufficient intelligence is detected on Earth the satelite lands on Earth and the chosen few spread the knowledge. I cannot think of anything better than the human brain to adapt to conditions and teach knowledge. Also the chosen few would have the advantage of, hopefully, being revered as gods by the local population and so be protected and listened to. lol, maybe this has already happened on Earth far in the past and has led to
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Ok..Here's another wierd question that keeps asking for processor time.. Suppose you knew that the world was going to end..and you are given the task of designing a system to preserve all known knowledge. You would also have to make sure that the next dominant species on earth would be able to understand and use that knowledge..Hopefully it would be humans.. How would you go about it? Let's hear your ideas.. P.S : If all the knowledge were to be digitized..what would be it's size?? :-D :-D I think I am MAD :-O :-O char *p="char *p=%c%s%c;main(){printf(p,34,p,34);}";main(){printf(p,34,p,34);} Hard work has a future payoff. Laziness pays off now.
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> We cryogenically store some of our brightest minds... You're taking an awfully big step in assuming I want my mind frozen... To hell with those thin-skinned pillow-biters. - Me, 10/03/2001
LOL, don't worry though John, they are sure to store your whole body, including the errr vital organs. That way you can have your way with the natives when you are unfrozen. Imagine, thousands upon thousands of women who truly do think of you as a God, you would not even have to wear your "I am God" t-shirt to convince them. ;) I guess we could freeze you as part of the "Country and Western" knowledge base, but only if we deem C&W to be worth keeping... :-D regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible." - Chretien Malesherbes "Give me something better than Windows and I will use it, till then leave me be. Give me soemthing better than Science and I will believe it, till then leave me be." err, me
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I see your point but even from the lowliest we can learn something :) We have learnt lessons from the Mayans, Romans, Egyptians and many other now vanished races. If nothing our successors can learn that: "War is hell" William Tecumseh Sherman. ;) regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible." - Chretien Malesherbes "Give me something better than Windows and I will use it, till then leave me be. Give me soemthing better than Science and I will believe it, till then leave me be." err, me
LOL, touche. However, I would point out that our civilization is merely an extension of those older civilizations. There is a cultural continuum from them to us. They are significant to us because they are already a part of us, for better or worse. None of those civilization really died, they just became what we are. So the analogy does not quite hold. We are talking about the knowledge base of a completely different species with no connection to us. It would be a Pandora's Box. What if some single bit reinforced the beliefs of the likes of bin Laden? Or, suppose we existed in a civilization that had never known war, and opened some knowledge base of an older civilization that contained moral justifications for war. Not worth the trouble. Better to ask and answer our own questions in our own way, trust our own instincts and let the unrelated past lay where it is. They failed, they died, they don't deserve to be remembered. "War is hell" William Tecumseh Sherman.
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Put a Decimal point in front of that stream, and convert that decimal to a fraction. Cut a conspicuous notch into a steel beam in such a manner as the ration of the cut to one end represents the numerator, and the cut to the other end represents the denominator Then re-write this post in english so that I can understand... :-D maybe less if you dump all the information that would not be useful to future readers What would'nt you store? Open-source theory? .COM business plans? Organised religion? ;P regards, Paul Watson Bluegrass Cape Town, South Africa "We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible." - Chretien Malesherbes "Give me something better than Windows and I will use it, till then leave me be. Give me soemthing better than Science and I will believe it, till then leave me be." err, me
Paul for the cost of a shiny rock I will give you might interpretation of what David meant. He will then of course come back and tell us I am wrong. But by then I will have a pretty shiny rock anyway. :-D Say the steel beam is 3000 mm in length. Put the notch at the 1153 mm point. This would make the fraction 1153/3000. Convert this to a decimal and use it to decrypt the data. Michael Martin Pegasystems Pty Ltd Australia martm@pegasystems.com +61 413-004-018 "Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace" - Victor Stone