The Cellar  

Go Back   The Cellar > Main > Nothingland

Nothingland Something about nothing - game threads, diversions, time-wasters

 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
Old 09-27-2011, 04:43 AM   #1
DanaC
We have to go back, Kate!
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Yorkshire
Posts: 25,964
I saw this and thought of us...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15060310


Quote:
A few million virtual monkeys are close to re-creating the complete works of Shakespeare by randomly mashing keys on virtual typewriters.

A running total of how well they are doing shows that the re-creation is 99.990% complete.

The first single work to be completed was the poem A Lover's Complaint.

Set up by US programmer Jesse Anderson the project co-ordinates the virtual monkeys sitting on Amazon's EC2 cloud computing system via a home PC.

It's slightly less exciting than the headline would suggest once you get to the fact that they are operating within certain constraints. To do it with complete randomness would apparently take longer than the age of the universe.

But that hasn't stopped people attempting to test the hypothesis for real. My absolute favourite of which is this one:


Quote:
Also in 2003, Paignton Zoo carried out a practical test by putting a keyboard connected to a PC into the cage of six crested macaques. After a month the monkeys had produced five pages of the letter "S" and had broken the keyboard.

Like the title says: I saw this and thought of us :p
__________________
Quote:
There's only so much punishment a man can take in pursuit of punani. - Sundae
http://sites.google.com/site/danispoetry/
DanaC is offline   Reply With Quote
 


Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)
 
Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump

All times are GMT -5. The time now is 09:58 PM.


Powered by: vBulletin Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.