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Typo corrected.
[View source for Usenet headers] Date: Wed, 23 Jul 97 21:11:20 PDT WALDBY@COEWL.CEN.UIUC.EDU writes: > There is no MAXINT. The program is run on a system with infinite state space. > It has capabilities of counting to infinity. Three male students (one in math, one in comp sci, and one in comp eng), and one female student (of women's studies), are sitting on a large towel on a beach somewhere in Southern California, half-blinded by the searing sunlight. Suddenly a figure emerges from the surf and walks towards them. As the figure draws nearer, it becomes identifiable as a beach bunny in the classic style. Blond hair frames blue eyes then sweeps back in a sexy Bezier terminating just above a perfectly contoured ass in a string bikini. Droplets of sea water slide down her body, moistening the top of the suit, which contains, barely, breasts that could be described as "38D" - but none of the students have any personal experience of bras, so they don't know that. But they know what they like. Her dainty nose is graced by a countably infinite number of cute freckles. In a perfectly modulated Valley accent, this vision of loveliness wonders aloud if any of these smart-looking people could settle a bet by counting her freckles - "like, all over, but starting with my nose?". A melting doe-eyed grin makes it clear, if there were any doubt, that the successful answer will be rewarded with more than the usual fruits of scientific curiosity. Of course, the math student gives up at once, sputtering "Fractal dust! Infinite complexity! Nobody can count that high!" before he exhausts his spoken vocabulary and is forced to start drawing alephs in the sand. The comp sci student and the engineer shout "But I can count high *enough*!" in unison. The computer scientist immediately starts drawing Booch diagrams and is soon hopelessly balled up; meanwhile, the computer engineer whips out his trusty Hewlett Packard SPF-48GX Beach Calculator, loads the bignum library, and bangs away in Reverse Polish until a firmware bug locks it in a loop and he is forced to swallow his pride and ask for help. But by the time the scientist and the engineer, working together, have patched around the firmware bug and gotten the SPF running again, the beach bunny and the women's studies student have both disappeared. Far down the beach, two figures may be seen running hand in hand through the surf. As the men scratch their sunburns in perplexity, they catch a distant peal of girlish laughter on the wind. Moral: left as an exercise. -- Matthew_Skala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca, hacking Delphi for MPR in Burnaby * RM 1.3 00829 * "I wanna be your underwear." - Bryan Adams
No Largest Prime, in which I give in to the pedagogical temptation.
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