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The Binary Code In Canada's Gov-Gen Coat of Arms
Lev13than writes "Dr. David Johnston, formerly the president of the University of Waterloo, was installed as Canada's new Governor-General on Friday. As de facto head of state and the Queen's representative in Canada he is required to design a personal coat of arms. One modern detail has attracted particular attention - a 33-digit palindromic binary stream at the base. Efforts to decode the meaning of the number using ASCII, Morse, grouping by 3/11 and other theories has so far come up empty (right now it's a toss up between random, the phone number 683-077-0643 and Morse code for 'send help - trapped in a coat of arms factory.') Is 110010111001001010100100111010011 the combination to his luggage, or just a random stream of digits?"
all it says is EH
rewriting history since 2109
"trapped in a coat of arms factory" is probably aboot right.
English is not my first language, so cut me some slack -: Om du kan lasa det har sa kan du Svenska
that we let Governor General William Shatner slip through our fingers
I think it's safe to assume that it's an aesthetically pleasing bit of random binary to symbolically carry the message that he's in with technology, in much the same way one might tattoo some bitching runes onto one's arm to convey how one is incredibly down with the druids.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I mean, the guy that designed this is still alive, isn't he?
The story doesn't make it clear.
"Hey we need something to make the coat of arms look more modern" "How about that code in the matrix?" "Just put a bunch of 1s and 0s along the bottom"
And then an intern typed enough 1s and 0s to fill up the available space, trying to make it look random.
The first thing I notice is the binary string is a palindrome, the same forwards or backwards.
Being 33 digits, that is just strange. Dropping the first 1 to make 32 would be more fitting, but the first digit is still a 1, so unless he is into ANSI art, I doubt this is ascii encoding.
Just the fact it is the same both ways leads me to think an artist designed it, a lot more so than it converts to anything meaningful.
Which is a shame really, but not unexpected.
The downside is that what's gibberish to you and me, may be legible to someone else, and what's worse is it may convey a terrible message.
While I've only HEARD of people who's had "chop suey £3.99" tatooed in chinesse, I've actually seen phtotos of a guy who thought he had some bitching Viking runes tatooed, and they were horribly mispelled (I will not divulge the nature of the error, but suffice to say, he's not likely to hook up with any women who can read any scandinavian language)
So I only hope it's not random, but rather something we have not decifered yet.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
It's symmetrical, so probably just random code for aesthetics.
Although I hope I'm wrong -- it'd be cool if it contains meaning as well. And just running random number for the effect of code is a disheartening waste of opportunity, and makes a sad statement about preferring form over function.
I think that translates into: CNUS, Canada's Not the United States.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
It equals to 0x1972549D3. The article is wrong.
110010111001001010100100111010011 is 33 successive digits of pi (in decimal/binary/ternary/etc.). Cunningly, he did not choose the first 33 digits, of course.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
If he were from New Zealand I would say it's a binary solo, but being from Canada I'm not sure.
This number is a prime: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palindromic_prime in base 2.
In decimal it is: 6830770643
... Robert Langdon!!! I'm sure that buried somewhere in that seemingly random sequence of 1s and 0s is a code that will shake the very foundations of the human race and expose a truth that has long been hidden!
I can already hear Dan Brown feverishly scratching away at his notepad, as he begins researching and stringing together a load geographically accurate, but ultimately randomly contrived pile of nonsense for his next magnum opus, "The Canada Complex"
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Has anybody checked if this means anything in Swxwú7mesh (Squamish)? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%E1%B8%B5wx%CC%B1w%C3%BA7mesh
Now if it had been 43 bits, instead of 33, that would have been a total giveaway that it is a reference to 43-Man Squamish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43-Man_Squamish
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
its the master key for the upcoming DRM, already broken ..
The base64 result, y5Kk6QE=, reminds me of something a url shortener would spit out. But i am unsure which it would be.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
It's just meant to look good. And besides, since the blazon just says "ones and zeroes", you can feel free to put any binary number in that space.
We Canucks are just too polite to keep them secret. I'm sorry.
It's meaning is "I bet I can get a bunch of geeks to waste a lot of time trying to decipher this meaningless message!"
Monstar L
While everyone else is searching the Internet, I simply asked an expert on The Great White North--
Mr. McKenzie, what does this mean?
Ahhh! Take off, you hoser!
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
ISTR (from an abortive combinatorics course) that there's a commonly used encoding that provides 3 bits of ECC for each 8-bit byte. Could this string be 3 simple bytes with ECC?
That OTAN is NATO backwards is incidental, mirroring is not the reason for it. The reason is that France succeeded in demanding French as an official Nato language. OTAN = Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord.
There is no use for mirrored writing on airplanes, they fly too fast for your cars rear-view mirror, and planes that do have rear view mirror wouldn't wait 'till the bogey is a couple of yards behind them to find out who he is.
NATO aircrafts have OTAN printed on it because the two official languages used in NATO are English and French. OTAN means Organisation du Traité de l'Atlantique Nord.
It can get even worse. At least "chop suey $3.99" is clear where is came from.
Funnier stories are those like the guy who got "pig meat" in chinese letters because it was copied off a can of that. But I'd imagine that the latter realization comes after seeing that this guy has "pig meat" written on him. Yeah.
Then there was the guy who thought he got a tattoo saying "wise dog that guards the pack", but it actually meant "dog's ass".
In the same vein of "you're not going to get hooked up with any woman that can read that", one guy got a tattoo which he thought was totally bad ass, until a Japanese girl told him it means "abusive husband". Well, I guess at least it works as a warning.
Conversely one woman got the longer version of that, and it translated to "my abusive husband beats me." It's one of the things that aren't even funny but make one wonder if she got ripped off or it's a cry for help.
Though to be entirely fair, apparently cool kids in Beijing tattoo themselves with nonsensical combinations of English letters too, like "TWARP", "GWIPO", "FRUNK" and get told by unscrupulous tattoo parlor artists that they mean stuff like "old soul with young spirit" in English. (Actual example. If you were wondering what FRUNK means in English, now you know;)) Also apparently both CRYMPH and DLECH mean "beautiful flower dancing in the wind" in American according to one tattoo parlour in Beijing. In case you were wondering ;)
Luckily individual letters are not whole words in the Latin alphabet, so most are just nonsense. But you just have to wonder if there's some brave soul somewhere in China wearing a tattoo that says "I suck cock" and thinks it means "loyalty, courage, honour" ;)
That said, since runes were an alphabetic system, I would assume most of those are equally nonsense combinations. I wouldn't wonder if some guys out there were running around with tattoos that just say "FUTHARK" because someone just copied the first characters of the runic alphabet.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
it says "OMG! Canada haz teh internetz"
Obviously he is a Rush fan and this is an ode to 'The Body Electric'
1001001 SOS
1001001 in distress
100100oooooh
110010111001001010100100111010011 may or may not mean anything now, but hopefully by the time he leaves office we'll have wormed cryptic references to them into every nook and cranny of the country :)
Because the binary code is palindromic I think it is a symbol more than a message. In heraldry, symmetry can be an style in your weapon and looking at the weapon itself, it is vertically symmetric. Including a message in binary code in your motto could be an idea but since the weapon already has a motto (namely "Comtemplare Meloria") it can be seen as sort of an achievement and could indicate knowlegde(or degrees) in the area of computer science.
I am not fully sure what to think about this weapon since it is certainly a non-standard one but my best guess is that people are looking for to much into the binary code as a message.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
says: Be Sure to Drink your rich chocolaty oval-tine.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
Rubbish. Any given binary number is as likely as any other binary number of the same bit length. Finding strings of 1s and 0s of a particular length isn't a test of randomness. 0101010101010 and 111111111111 are just as likely to have been generated randomly.
Canadian planes should have 'NATOTAN' written on them to please the speakers of both languages ('NATO' 'stylishly' mirrored around the 'O'). Of course, for the Japanese, that acronym would read 'achieving a darker skin tone by slathering yourself in fermented beans'.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
If the number is converted to base 47, the sum of the digits, mod 47, is 42.
Coincidence? I think not.
A simple binary to hex conversion yields 2147483647
From Wikipedia...
The number 2,147,483,647 is the eighth Mersenne prime, equal to 2^31 1. It is one of only four known double Mersenne primes.
The primality of this number was proved by Leonhard Euler, who reported the proof in a letter to Daniel Bernoulli written in 1772. Euler used trial division, improving on Cataldi's method, so that at most 372 divisions were needed. The number 2,147,483,647 may have remained the largest known prime until 1867...
Never ascribe to malice or conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down
Whole summary is pretty corny... Bunching 10 random numbers into 3-3-4 doesn't make it a phone number.
First, 683 is the country code for Niue, and apparently they are small enough to use only 4-digits for their subscribers. So 10 digits is too much. (Nothing is apparent for (68) 3077-0643 either.)
Second, no telephone system that I am aware of supports 0 as the first number of a central office prefix, only as a subscriber number.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Numbering_Plan#Current_system
As a native-born Canadian who is the product of an English father and American mother (both of whom chose to become Canadian citizens), I can tell you with no doubt whatsoever what the stream of binary actually means. It is a brilliant synopsis of a far more extensive and far more profound multi-cultural national ethos that explains what it is to be truly Canadian. Perhaps most important, it embodies a deeply Canadian reality: across much of the country, for a significant part of the year, the roads are chancy due to weather...and stores that sell beer are never where you want them. So here's the translation:
"If you're going to drop in unannounced, you'd better have a two-four of beer under your arm, buddy."
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Canada finally has a Gov Gen that is not just a pretty face. The previous Liberal government really went out of their way to destroy the value of the post.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It's the binary of his pgp key. :)
Parent is Goatse
You mean, ArsenneLupin is the goatse guy? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
33 digits? Did someone say Freemason?
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
The sequence 1001001 from Rush's "The Body Electric" appears twice. Obviously a plea to Neil Peart for assistance.
If I had to design a coat of arms in this day and age, it would totally be all modern and matrix-style.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
RS232 sent 11 bits for every byte, It could be an RS232 string of three digits but I don't think so. It's garbage in ASCII.
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
I would call it just a simple palindrome, because it is the same sequence of 1 and 0's when read backwards or forwards with a 1 as the central digit. Perhaps that is all this is representing balance on both sides of centre. That certainly would be very representative of Canada and how it views its social conscience and historically how it represents on the world stage. Canada certainly is seen as peace keepers maintaining a balance between antagonists for the last 50 years, but also just as historically willing to step up to the plate of world conflict just as certainly.
Either that, or it's just balanced front to back because it looks nice and symmetrical on a badge. :)
A simple binary to hexadecimal conversion yields: 1572549D3
I'll go for 10010 (as some of the readers here may recognize is a song by Adolphson & Falk)
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I wonder when goo.gl will stop letting people make recursive shortenings of goo.gl (and other shortening service) URLs. It takes delving two levels to figure out where that link goes (hint: add an extra /info level in the URL path before the random string --- which works for bit.ly also, last time I checked).
No, NATO reads OTA[mirrored letter N] in the rear mirror of the other planes. (I'd have used И but Slashdot eats that.)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Oh man I wish I had mod points... That was pure gold.
Aside from unicorns(!!) which already should say something about the author's intent, did anyone notice two human feet under the main shield? Based on positioning of those feet, the person behind the shield could only be standing with his/her posterior towards the viewer, bent over with knees squeezed together, perhaps holding tightly not to pee (or ready for something else?)
I think compared to that a random stream of bits is not quite as unusual.
Well, just been studying some basic cryptanalysis. Using basic technique, I notced 33 digits, so I wrote out eleven three-part digits: 110 010 111 001 001 010 100 100 111 010 011 then, using columnar transposition, get 3 eleven digit binary numbers: 10100011100 11100100111 00111000101 Got nothing after that. Time for bed.
That's the day before a House of Commons election.
One of us is missing a few years in the remembering department. I distinctly recall George W. Bush being president.
Was that just a very, very bad dream?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If you convert the whole thing to hex, you get 0xCB92A4. This as an RGB color is strikingly close to the color of the critters on the coat of arms. The designer probably did it so they wouldn't forget that particular color.
They're obviously Ls and Os! He's having a laugh at everyone trying to figure out what the binary code means! Lol!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Yes, but if you look at the longest number of same bits in the number, the probabilities are not equal.
For example, the probability that the longest sequence of equal digits has the length 1 is 1/2^32, and the probability that the longest sequence of equal digits has the length 33 is 1/2^33. The probability of the longest sequence being 2 bits is already substantially higher. I don't know where the peak is.
Basically if you test randomness, you ask the question: What is the probability that this was generated by a random process, as opposed to a non-random process. Now, strictly speaking, you'd have to have a model of the non-random process to answer that, but the point is that the probability is clearly not the same for each sequence, despite the fact that for the random process each number is equally likely. That's because for the non-random process the probabilities are not equally likely, and those probabilities enter into the answer to the above question through Bayes' rule.
Now we don't have a model of how humans produce "fake random" numbers (well, actually some psychologists might even have one), however we are not calculating exact probabilities anyway. However we do know that humans have a tendency to choose the value which has been chosen less often before, and from that alone we can infer that shorter runs increase the likelyhood of "human-random" numbers, and therefore decrease the likelyhood of real random numbers.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
This happens every time a new URL shortening service launches without a preview feature, and n00bs fall for it.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
33 has only 2 factors: 3 & 11. We can therefore plot the bits as a 2d image in only one of 2 possible ways:
11 rows of 3:
---
110
010
111
001
001
010
100
100
111
010
011
---
or 3 rows of 11:
---
11001011100
10010101001
00111010011
---
This last image looks like the letters AV (easier to view if plotted in a grid), or then again it may just be a pretty pattern. Not enough data to be sure. My next thought was that maybe it evolves into something if plotted in Conway's Game of Life, but it doesn't seem to do much.
Who cares what it means, what I want to know is, does he claim to have a copyright on it which will last until his greatgrandchildren die? Is he in the pockets of corporate IP interests?
Hmm, maybe he's on the "other side" and that is the secret key to the next great DRM scheme, still in secret alpha testing?
:-)
It says:
All your base are belong to us
Yeah, like an ambulance, so you know to pull over :P
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Actually I know the herald that designed that portion of the Coat of Arms. I asked her right away & the verdict is: no hidden meaning. Come on life, this is my one chance for a +5 Informative rating on slashdot...
would have been cooler
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...they were trying for the lyrics to "The Body Electric," by Rush, but failed miserably...
1001001 In distress...
No one got beat up more often than the mimes of the old west!
Damn you beat me to it.
Not sure if anyone is aware of the University of Waterloo's reputation, but I will briefly fill you in.
It is most likely one of the best schools on the continent--certainly in Canada--for computer science, engineering, and mathematics. It may not quite match up to MIT and Stanford, but it is a very good school. If you haven't heard of it, it's probably because it's not much older than 50 years and doesn't output a lot of research. (That or... you know, it's in Canada, eh. The hat may not be particularly noteworthy.) Don't think that the binary on the coat of arms is a mistake or an attempt to get with the times. It was definitely intentional, and is probably some cute inside joke. Though I couldn't offer you much insight towards its meaning :P
110010111001001010100100111010012
What if it is decimal?
110 nonillion, 10 octillion, 11 septillion, 1 sextillion, 1 quantrillion, 10 quadrillion, 100 trillion, 100 billion, 11 million, 10 thousand and 11
I'm not up on my Canadian politics, but I would've thought the PM is the "de facto" head of state? While technically, the Queen is the actual head of state.
I would've thought the governor general position is purely ceremonial, hence the heavy emphasis on pointless bullshit like coats of arms.
sic transit gloria mundi
It's a palindrome. Fold it in half, hinging on the middle number, XORing every number that ends up on top of another, and you're left with 1.
The pattern repeats itself in reverse after the 17th digit:
1100 1011 1001 0010 1 0100 1001 1101 0011
It's coordinates to the place where the treasure of the Templars (and the Holy Grail) is hidden. But in order to read it, you need a Canadian quarter and a North-pointing moose.
Your mirror does not work correctly. Patch it.
McCartney fans pay bus tickets. [...] Lennon fans too, with discretion.
Canada won't have the possibility of being a democracy till the Queen is excised from all Canadian institutions. It's no longer acceptable to have political structures dominated by fantasies of Monarchy from God, conquest or tyranny.
How the monarchy came to be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAaWvVFERVA
We've had representative government from the start. We got responsible government through negotiation. We achieved independence and ended slavery without a war for either. We just happen to split the function of "head of state" away from the function of "head of the executive branch," which allows us to think as witheringly as we please about the latter without having to show him any respect in his role as the former. The United States never figured out the advantages of that.
In short, we've got democracy. (Look up what happened to the Conservative Party after Brian Mulroney if you don't believe me). Take your cultural chauvinism home.
-Gareth
I wouldn't read too much into the number being a palindrome. The entire coat of arms is symmetrical; why would the digits be any different?
Look a few comments above yours... Of course, to most people this is crazy talk... we do live in a world of coincidences rather than conspiracies, after all! ;)
Grammar nazis are to this community what excrements are to gold.
33 bits = 8 hex digits + 1 bit.
Infuriate left and right
I think it's a code for another code that could translate as: Pass the Moose Milk I'll be at Tim Hortons, and no place else! Don't interrupt me while hockey is on.
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
Drink more ovaltine, eh.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
Broken down into octal values you get 6-271-124-4723 - a phone number perhaps? :-)
Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real-time.
It sounds to me like you suffer from a degree of political chauvinism, though I can't tell if its also cultural chauvinism.
That brings me to an interesting point, / . is just "the ramblings of socially-inept, technology-literate news-mongers".
Taking the first bit as error correction (even parity), and filtering as extended ASCII (using whichever I found first on google) I get
0x97 26 49 D3
or
ù&I
and then one of those funky old ascii lineart codes; in particular, the bottom left corner with a double line at the top and a single line to the right, which I'm not sure how to write here, or if it's even possible.
U&I (two lines becoming one)...
You and I become one?
If it is that, though, it sounds like it's written by a kid who's just picking crap out of an ascii table without actually caring, in much the same way as the people down the page are talking about bad translations of chinese, japanese, and english tattoos.
Taking the last bit as error correction, by the way, gives a load of nonsense--two lines horizontally, AE, upside-down-questionmark, uppercase theta
I've decoded it. Yeah, it's porn...
They're making fun of the US National Debt?
Should be modded down, or FruitLoops should be modded up. As he says:
1972549D3 (hex)
6830770643 (decimal)
Since each Mersenne primes is (by definition) one less than a power of two, it should be immediately obvious that in binary, it will be a string of ones, with no zeros.
The universe was intelligently designed. Unfortunately God was in a hurry so he coded it in Java.
GG Johnston was also the 14th Principal and Vice-Chancellor of McGill University, which William Shatner attended. The students got together and named University Centre (the student union's building) 'Shatner', although the administration refuses to acknowledge the name.
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
Canadian planes should have 'NATOTAN' written on them . . . .
No, that would be NATOTAN-Eh
Sadly, as a Canadian computer geek, my natotan-fu is weak eh?
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
For example, the probability that the longest sequence of equal digits has the length 1 is 1/2^32, and the probability that the longest sequence of equal digits has the length 33 is 1/2^33.
I think the latter should also be 1/2^32. In both cases there are two possibilities out of 2^33, the former being "010101...0" and "101010...1" and the latter being "000000...0" and "111111...1".
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
That would be "natto tan". Nato-tan would obviously be a cute little anime girl mascot for NATO.
the first part of the palindrome is
1100 => C
1011 => B
1001 => 9
0010 => 2
In 1992 Johnston, according to Wikipedia, received the 125th Anniversary of the Confederation of Canada Medal and a honorary doctorate at the Université de Montréal. So the binary simply stands for the hex equivalent of Canada's Best, -92, spelled in binary both ways and with a 1 in middle, symbolizing "numero uno", the quality of being TEH BESTEST.
I think we need to do the bob and doug mckenzie metric conversion on the number before it will make any sense. Double it and add 30.
It is
192.168.1.1
You can ALL turn in your geek cards. You see a 32 bit number and don't think IP address?
Sorry, but I see a 33 bit number. And I don't see anywhere a string of 7 consecutive 0s, as the binary representation of 192.168.1.1 has even twice.
Yes, someone should hand in his geek card. Guess who. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
It's curious that there only 1's and zero's, what do you think that means?
Whoever wrote it can't count to 2. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
It's morse! It says "Tintmee", there you go, it's just instructions for the artist to shade (tint) that area!
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
Yup, I know that one alright :) "Blinkar Blå" is even better though.
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night.
It's a palindrome only because the two sides of the shield are mirror images. He was just consistent with that.
The binary value isn't exactly random, but it's meaningless. It was chosen for aesthetic reasons... about the same number of zeroes and ones, grouped in a way so no grouping on zeros or ones is too long. Basically so that it doesn't look strange and looks like a "random" binary number.
Now stop dwelling on this.
0101 0111 0101 0100 0100 0110 0010 0001 0010 0000 0101 0011 0111 0100 0110 1111 0111 0000 0010 0000 0110 0100 0111 0111 0110 0101 0110 1100 0110 1100 0110 1001 0110 1110 0110 0111 0010 0000 0110 1111 0110 1110 0010 0000 0111 0100 0110 1000 0110 1001 0111 0011 0010 0001 0010 0000 0011 1010 0111 0000
6830770643 is a prime number.
... this number represents the coordinates of a lost treasure... :P
Until the skies turn blue...
Until the air of freedom strikes us...
When was the crest designed? 6,830,770,643 was (briefly) the world population, a few months ago.
You're right, of course. Indeed, all probabilities will be multiples of 1/2^32, because for each bit pattern, the bit-reversed pattern will have the same maximal length.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The wavy band inscribed with zeros and ones represents a flow of information, digital communication and modern media.
i'm with you. The first thing I noticed was they symmetry, which doesn't occur naturally in any coding schemes.
... the evil bit! Now, let me just check the RFC to see if that goes at the beginning or the end, then I can start decoding.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
probably all it is
She said: "That tattoo doesn't say 'Tiny'. It says 'Ticonderoga New York'.
Oh, I get it... they abbreviated it because it didn’t fit. (Ti NY)
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
And then there are those of us who've played Ultima games, and probably outnumber the druids. Took me a while to find out that for example F is Feh and not Flam :p
So your runic tattoo of, say, Bjarka Tyr will be read by about a million Ultima players not as "growth through harmonious changes", but as "Bet Tym" or the combination of "small" and "time" and wonder what spell is that. Slow time, maybe? I mean "An Tym" was stopping the time, Bet Tym sounds like it should work too in some game or another :P
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
if you translate it into a b/w image 11x3 pixels, then repeat, offset by a few rows each repetition, you get essentially the background of the shield:
http://i51.tinypic.com/30msd3s.jpg
Sounds like a lost opportunity for extreme cleverness to me.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
How about ATNO? Sorta like how UTC stands neither for Coordinated Universal Time, nor Temps Universel Coordonné.
I see the fnords!
Off course, we all know that it's the salary that he's gonna get over the time as a governor general... we all know that the only only thing canadians are good for is screwing their government...
It's awfully close to the estimated world population.
In decimal, the number is 6,830,770,643. According to Wikipedia, the United States Census Bureau estimates the world population to be 6,872,800,000.
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
After decoding your binary posts I am DEEPLY offended!
I won't decode then for young eyes. But you are a nasty person! That second one is truly vile!
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
I thought (perhaps erroneously?) that the number after a monarch's name was the number of monarchs of that name that have ruled a particular country. Wouldn't that make Elizabeth QE II of the UK, but QE I of Canada?
From Wikipedia:
By way of example, Louis VIII of France was also known, albeit more obscurely, as Louis I of England, which he actually did rule for around one year, May 1216 to August 1217. This was in between the unpopular John of England and the more familiar Henry III. Terry Jones (yes, that Terry Jones) makes a fun and well-annotated argument for recognizing King Louis the First in his book, Medieval Lives. More also over at Wikipedia.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
I dont see what all the fuss is about people have been putting ROT26 and above on coats of arms for years.
In Google we trust.
Students graduating from the University of Waterloo's Math Faculty are invited to make one or more graduating pledges to support U(W). One of those pledges is the Dean's Prime Number Club, which confers upon you your very own Prime Number.
As others have noted, the binary sequence is a palindrome prime number in base 2. David Johnston is U(W)'s out-going President. It's likely that the Math Dean's Office has awarded him his very own Prime Number as an honorific (or for completing the pledge!) and he has chosen to incorporate it into his personal Coat of Arms.
I am unable to find the Prime Number registry online or in fact any mention of it at all, U(W) web pages about pledges aside. Digging out my old papers I see that the letter awarding one's Prime Number merely says "Here it is in the box at the bottom. Congratulations!" Perhaps the Dean's Office will confirm tomorrow.
...Stu, hopefully not the only member of the Dean's Prime Number Club reading Slashdot...
ATNO time?
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
It sounds to me like you suffer from a degree of political chauvinism, though I can't tell if its also cultural chauvinism.
You're right. I jumped on his comment with both boots on. Comments about Canada being less than a nation or less than a democracy because of our form of government do bother me, but I shouldn't have been so touchy here.
-Gareth
As an addition to the other people who already pointed out the existence of not-america, wouldn't you think that if they did so in the interest of mirror reading, that they would have, you know, MIRRORED the N ?
What a depressingly stupid machine.
If they did that, the French would start whining because they're always put second.
What a depressingly stupid machine.
If you look at it as three lines of 11 bits each, placed below each other, you get 3 groups of 4-3-4 blocks that are bit masks for a slash, a circle, and another slash:
1100 101 1100
1001 010 1001
0011 101 0011
Um, what?
The de jure head of state is the Queen of Canada. The de facto head of state is the Governor General. The head of government is the prime minister.
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
I tried it out and got a very cranky middle age woman who's first question was an abrupt "where did you get this number!?" She calmed down and explained how long it took her to get her number changed from 867-5309. She's saddened that she would have to go get a new number now. I told her to stop writing it on bathroom walls and she hung up on me. Was I being insensitive?