Let’s say you get a terrific idea one day- one which sends your head reeling into trans-Uranian orbit immediately. Assume you've discovered how to encode The Encyclopedia Britannica onto a tiny scratch on a six-inch bar of metal. And, as if that wasn’t enough to rock Neptune around the Sun(hehe), that scratch of yours wouldn’t even contain any information on it like those old
vinyl (short, medium and long) playing records used to.
While the whole World falls at your feet in delirious astonishment, you produce your stardom. There are (you explain to them gently like one talking to bunch of silent lambs) fewer than 100 different letters and symbols in the print Encyclopedia.
What you plan to do is assign a 2-digit number to each of these symbols. For instance, letter A might be 01, letter B might be 02, semicolon could be say 51, a space between words say 67 and so on till u have them all covered. Now just like with this cipher system the word "bat" could be encoded as say, 020120, you can also, and obviously encode the entire encyclopedia into one huge number.
As many earthlings faint with awe, you then unleash your master stroke by placing a decimal point in front of this monster number and converting it into a decimal fraction.
Then you place a scratch on the bar dividing it precisely into lengths ‘a’ and ‘b’ so that fraction “a/b” (a upon b) equals the decimal fraction of the code. All you have to do now is, have a Super
Computer, measure the rod, compute the fraction a/b, and print out a copy of entire Encyclopedia!!!
Two questions--
(a) Is there anything theoretically wrong with this premise?
(b) Could it work in practice?
COMMENTS DEMANDED….. Please make sure you do leave your thought over this………
Have a nice day/night!
4 comments:
i m making a robot on Image processing on which there is a competion called G.O.A.L @ TECHFEST09,IIT,Bombay
it uses the similar code...
first by using matlab u convert it into RGB Image..n den u code it in accordance wid the orientation of the robot...since the image is a binary image it contains 0s n 1s we can code each step of da robot.. My code for the problem statement is ready if u want u can have it from me..
Answers to ur Questions...
1)it is not the exact way but on similar lines i have developed a code..
2) it is indeed practically possible as i have tried it...
Regards;
Sumeet Gupta.
i m making a robot on Image processing on which there is a competion called G.O.A.L @ TECHFEST09,IIT,Bombay
it uses the similar code...
first by using matlab u convert da image into RGB Image..n den u code it in accordance wid the orientation of the robot...since the image is a binary image it contains 0s n 1s we can code each step of da robot.. My code for the problem statement is ready if u want u can have it from me..
Answers to ur Questions...
1)it is not the exact way but on similar lines i have developed a code..
2) it is indeed practically possible as i have tried it...
Regards;
Sumeet Gupta.
Hey this is really a great idea!!!
But if you are coding an entire encyclopeadia the number could be really big, and as you said it would really be a big monster!! so how are we supposed to meaure a scratch with so much big accuracy??? if that can be measured then it will be a great system.
assuming all the codes are two-digit and the encyclopaedia does not start with a 00, we see that a and b depend mostly on middle two ( or three) characters.
since all we are asking for is the ratio a/b, we can assume a and be to be lengths of each part they represent,ie no of digits of the parts separated by the scratch.if we not using precise scale to measure the rod then we may not know the size of the book. this may render the fraction useless.
but i suppose the idea is quite possible by using some getaways. but hey, thats a great idea. i mean u r simplifying an encyclopaedia, although u r sacrificing uniqueness. and sumeet, i would like to see ur code please.
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