Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 19:30:18 -0600 From: Jim Bryant <kc5vdj@yahoo.com> To: Lamont Granquist <lamont@scriptkiddie.org> Cc: Stephen Montgomery-Smith <stephen@math.missouri.edu>, "Nicpon, John" <John.Nicpon@SouthTrust.com>, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Unix Philosophers Please! Message-ID: <3BE0A5AA.1010902@yahoo.com> References: <20011031170629.C865-100000@coredump.scriptkiddie.org>
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Lamont Granquist wrote:
>
> On Wed, 31 Oct 2001, Stephen Montgomery-Smith wrote:
>
>>>"Nicpon, John" wrote:
>>>
>>>Please specifically define where data goes that is sent to /dev/null
>>>
>>Answer 1. Data is not like energy. There is no "conservation of data"
>>law. So the data simply "disappears".
>>
>
> Doesn't thermodynamics second law actually imply that data has to
> disappear and that with the heat death of the universe data will be at a
> minimum? For meaningful data to exist there needs to be order, while the
> 2nd law requires that systems evolve to less ordered states.
>
> The only uncertainty about this that I've got is that random systems can
> actually be very dense with data. Think about a compressed and encrypted
> file, which should be indistinguishable from /dev/random output.
>
> I guess the difference between those two is that there is only a single
> state which validly represents the comprssed and encrypted file. On the
> other hand there may be many states which represent the valid output of
> /dev/random (of course you only obtain one of these states). Since there
> are more states for /dev/random there is more entropy (and actually the
> compressed file having only one valid state would have minimal entropy).
>
> Did I get that right? My thermodynamics and info theory are a little
> rusty...
>
> Contribute to the Heat Death of the Universe! pipe everything to /dev/null!
Nah, you have it all wrong...
The data goes into a wormhole, much similar to the one that splits up your pairs of socks in the dryer, and the data wormhole simply
sucks it into another universe.
No need to worry about the collapse of our universe because of /dev/null
BUT...Piping all that data to /dev/null MAY destroy the universe that keeps sending flying saucers to the houses of Art Bell fans in
places like Lockjaw, Kentucky or Moose Turd, Montana...
jim
--
ET has one helluva sense of humor!
He's always anal-probing right-wing schizos!
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