Re:Ask HN: How would you store a number with a 10^6 digits a...
by brudgers on Thursday December 20, 2012 @12:18PM
(#4948744)
I can't remember where I read the story, but it goes:
There was alien who recorded all the knowledge of Earth. Each fact was encoded as a numerical string and all the strings were concatenated. The concatenated string was converted back to a number. The number was treated as length. The alien took a stick, cut it that length, placed it in his pocket and left.
Not remembering the source drives me nuts every time I think about one of these storage problems. Not that it's a practical solution of course.
There was alien who recorded all the knowledge of Earth. Each fact was encoded as a numerical string and all the strings were concatenated. The concatenated string was converted back to a number. The number was treated as length. The alien took a stick, cut it that length, placed it in his pocket and left.
Not remembering the source drives me nuts every time I think about one of these storage problems. Not that it's a practical solution of course.