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oneuglybunny useless legacy Since: Nov, 2012

useless legacy

Jan 26th 2018 at 9:14:21 PM •••

Would this count as an example?

Webcomic

Jack Black from 21st Century Fox takes the ship's computer from the Disco Volante before it sinks, because it's a Feynman 9000 model with huge processing power. Later, Jack and Cecil explore its memory to find that it's filled with "yattabytes" of kinky porn and riddled with malware. When the system refuses to let them wipe away the porn and viruses, Cecil runs an override program, then orders the Feynman to "calculate to the last digit the value of pi," in the Monday 22 June 2009 update, allocating as much memory as necessary. As the image of the porn uploader disappears under a barrage of digits (all correct for the value of pi to that point), Cecil exults, "And that's how you kill a ghost in the machine: hit it in the face with a pi."

MikeRosoft Since: Jan, 2001

Aug 4th 2012 at 12:53:39 PM •••

The Biblical example has been removed for some reason (possibly for not quite matching this trope), I'll dump it here:

The Bible describes the equipment of the Solomon's temple in 1 Kings 7. Verse 23 reads: "He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits to measure around it." Giving the approximate value of pi as three.

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troacctid Since: Apr, 2010

Aug 4th 2012 at 2:59:36 PM •••

Yes, that's not an example of this trope so it shouldn't be listed.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

Statalyzer The Keenest Of Them All Since: Jul, 2009

The Keenest Of Them All

Dec 4th 2011 at 1:50:48 AM •••

"For the record, odds are that your computer "knows" pi to the nearest multiple of 2^-62, about 2.168 * 10^-19, so about eighteen reliable digits."

This needs a little more explanation to be less esoteric - even to an engineer and math tutor in this case.

Watch out where you step, or we'll be afoot. Hide / Show Replies

HydroGlobus Since: Jan, 2001

Jan 16th 2012 at 7:27:04 AM •••

When your computer calculates that (or anything), it uses the RAM. If for example, you have 2 gigabytes of RAM (which is typical), it can, at most, use 2GB = 2048MB = 2097152KB = 2147483648 Bytes = 17179869184 binary places (like decimal places, but in base 2). Actually, half that amount, because one of the binary digits will be a positive or negative sign. I don't know exactly how much bits does the floating point take, so it might be even less bits. There is simply no more room in the RAM to work with, unless you save it all to the hard disk, clear the RAM and go from there - that's what the article means by "make your own storage".

I hope I was clear. I hope that I was right (though I expect to be unless there is an even stricter limit somewhere that I don't know about).

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