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A geek rant from the year 2000!
15 years ago
General
I found this the other day, I wrote it in 2000!
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A rant by fmur321 (followed by geek talk) April 10, 2000
This is in the public domain. Copy me, I like to travel.
If there is one thing that annoys me, it's the following stupid fallacy:
'if you count the letter A as a small integer x and put small integer y difference between each letter so B is worth x + y etc then the letters in Z's name adds up to 666 so he's the Anti-Christ'.
I've had at least 5 well-educated huckleberries breathlessly inform me of this one.
People will grasp at any excuse for this crap too. I remember when Ronald Reagan became President of the United States. I had people who I knew were raving atheists assure me that Reagan was the Anti-Christ because Ronald Wilson Reagan has six letters in each word.
It's all political baloney. And worse – a lot worse - bad mathematics. Political baloney we can live with. Bad math can kill you.
Geek talk
After steaming about one particular instance of this barefoot hillbilly behavior out of a guy with a Masters Degree in Computer Science (Really!) I got to thinking that this whole thing is in fact a nice problem in linear algebra.
You see, if the name has N letters in it and you start with the letter A as x and put a difference of y between each letter then
A is x + 0 * y,
B is x + 1 * y,
C is x + 2 * y etc.
The sum is Nx + the sum of the differences from A times y, which we will call D.
So if the name is AB then the sum is 2x + (0 + 1) * y and D is (0 + 1) or 1. And if the name is ABC then the sum is 3X + (0 + 1 * y + 2 * y) and D is (0 + 1 + 2) or 3. Get it?
We want to solve for all solutions where x and y are integers.
Also, this forms a straight line of the form y = Mx + B where M is the slope of the line and B is the y intercept.
Solving for y for 666 = Nx + Dy y is (666 – Nx) / D or y = –N / D x + 666 / D
Because all terms of 666 = Nx + Dy are to the first power and integer results are desired, this is a linear Diophantine equation.
So, all we have to do to prove that someone is Satan's Son is to solve a linear Diophantine equation for 666 = Nx + Dy which shows you how reliable an indicator THAT is.
I had this idea at least twenty-five years ago and I NEVER saw a computer program for it, an article, a BBS text file, NOTHING. So I decided to write one in Qbasic for my state of the art 286 running Dos 3.1 (or was it 3.3 ?) in the early 80s.
It worked, but it used trial and error and I didn't like that. Also sometimes it didn't produce any answer at all and I didn't know why.
So I recently decided to move it to VB 6 and do some research to solve it properly.
Luckily, I still had my Chemical Rubber Company Standard Mathematical Tables 20th Edition that I bought for Grade 13 in 1973. You cannot get a better Geek Icon than this book, I mean it.
Page 166 (hmmm… exactly 500 pages short of Satan's Page… I'm sure that's significant somehow) is the section on continued fractions – how to solve a Diophantine equation of order 1.
First, x and y must be made relatively prime. This is done by dividing them by their GCD (Look it up. The algorithm is at LEAST 2,500 years old.)
You also have to divide 666 by the GCD of x and y and guess what? If it doesn't come to an integer your subject is bailed! No solutions in integers!
So THAT'S why my old program sometimes delivered no answer!
Now you have to express x / y as a continued fraction. <q0, q1, q2 etc> These q terms are called convergents.
The algorithm for this is pretty straight foreword.
Divide the fraction and check the remainder. Replace the numerator of the fraction with the previous denominator and the denominator with the previous remainder. Divide again.
The convergents are the integer results of this continued division and you quit when the remainder is zero.
So 241 / 37 = < 6, 1, 1, 18 > which is 6 + ( 1 / ( 1 + 1 / ( 1 + 1 / 18)))
A number n is set by this procedure that is distinct from the length of the name N. It is four in our example as four convergent terms were found before the remainder zeroed.
Now what we do with these numbers is pretty wacky.
We define An and Bn using (I love this) a *recursive* formula! How cool!
An = QnA(n-1) + A(n-2) and Bn = QnB(n-1) + B(n-2)
The n, (n-1) and (n-2) terms are subscripts and are NOT multiplied by anything.
Also - we start with term n = 0 yet use term n-2. That implies that there are negative terms of A and B and here they are.
A(-2) = B(-1) = 0 and B(-2) = A(-1) = 1
(Note from April 20 2001 – VB.NET wont be able to run this elegant solution in it’s present form as it does not support the dim (from to) statement – no negative subscripts…. I hope Bill changes his mind on this.)
So – for ax + by = c when a b and c are all integers and a and b are > zero and relatively prime and n is the number of convergent terms of the continued fraction x / y, all the x's and y's are found by these formulae
x = (-1) ^ (n-1) * B(n-1) * c + t * b and
y = (-1) ^ n * A(n-1) * c – t * a
Where ^ is 'to the power of' and t is any integer.
The problem is solved now. But for the sake of convenience I solve for t with x = 5 and print the 5 before t and the 5 afterwards. That shows all our small starting values.
I just have to say before I go that I love this stuff. It's so good and truthful, as opposed to the Number of the Beast from the name crap.
Notice that if your name is nine digits long – or any factor of 666 - that you automatically lose as you can set the diff to zero and let A be the quotient of 666 and the name length. Makes you wonder if in the old days people's lives and careers were ruined because their name added up wrong…
Post Rant
All this and other evidence beyond the scope of this document lead me to believe that the highest form of human behavior is ethical behavior. Not intellectual behavior but ethical behavior. To decline to do wrong even if you can get away with it.
As we become more and more powerful in our individual scope of movement, it is more and more imperative that we voluntarily stop doing bad things, like packet bombing eBay for instance.
I am not an atheist. However, I totally dislike irrational behavior, especially among educated people. It's dangerous, and as computers become more powerful, it becomes more dangerous, as the recent DDOS Internet attacks demonstrate.
(That's it – inconvenience the rich – THAT was a clever way to keep out of trouble…)
And if you think THIS is something - wait until the new GENETICS stuff kicks in. It's the next Geek Territory, let me tell you.
It's actually COOLER THAN COMPUTERS. Kids will be building REAL virii at home in 10-15 years on the outside. Sure, most of their stuff will die as soon as they take it out of the test tube but some of it won't and THEN we will have a problem.
The human race may go extinct because we can't handle this. People thought it would be The Bomb that did it, but the Bomb was never popular culture and the gene stuff will be. Kids could wind up trying to show how bad they are by making plagues, especially if some fools make it look cool in the movies or popular songs.
Suppose the Columbine kids got their hands on this. And there's no stopping it. Are we going to have to have a conflagration before we learn?
Personally, I'm looking forward to the day some 16 year-old clones a porn star for his very own. It'll hit the fan then. You think the press and government are irrigating their trousers NOW?
2020 on the outside. Remember I told you so.
Have fun with this – if you change it just send me a copy at (account long gone) and remember – if you meet the Buddha in the street, kill him but if you meet ME, buy me a beer!
----
A rant by fmur321 (followed by geek talk) April 10, 2000
This is in the public domain. Copy me, I like to travel.
If there is one thing that annoys me, it's the following stupid fallacy:
'if you count the letter A as a small integer x and put small integer y difference between each letter so B is worth x + y etc then the letters in Z's name adds up to 666 so he's the Anti-Christ'.
I've had at least 5 well-educated huckleberries breathlessly inform me of this one.
People will grasp at any excuse for this crap too. I remember when Ronald Reagan became President of the United States. I had people who I knew were raving atheists assure me that Reagan was the Anti-Christ because Ronald Wilson Reagan has six letters in each word.
It's all political baloney. And worse – a lot worse - bad mathematics. Political baloney we can live with. Bad math can kill you.
Geek talk
After steaming about one particular instance of this barefoot hillbilly behavior out of a guy with a Masters Degree in Computer Science (Really!) I got to thinking that this whole thing is in fact a nice problem in linear algebra.
You see, if the name has N letters in it and you start with the letter A as x and put a difference of y between each letter then
A is x + 0 * y,
B is x + 1 * y,
C is x + 2 * y etc.
The sum is Nx + the sum of the differences from A times y, which we will call D.
So if the name is AB then the sum is 2x + (0 + 1) * y and D is (0 + 1) or 1. And if the name is ABC then the sum is 3X + (0 + 1 * y + 2 * y) and D is (0 + 1 + 2) or 3. Get it?
We want to solve for all solutions where x and y are integers.
Also, this forms a straight line of the form y = Mx + B where M is the slope of the line and B is the y intercept.
Solving for y for 666 = Nx + Dy y is (666 – Nx) / D or y = –N / D x + 666 / D
Because all terms of 666 = Nx + Dy are to the first power and integer results are desired, this is a linear Diophantine equation.
So, all we have to do to prove that someone is Satan's Son is to solve a linear Diophantine equation for 666 = Nx + Dy which shows you how reliable an indicator THAT is.
I had this idea at least twenty-five years ago and I NEVER saw a computer program for it, an article, a BBS text file, NOTHING. So I decided to write one in Qbasic for my state of the art 286 running Dos 3.1 (or was it 3.3 ?) in the early 80s.
It worked, but it used trial and error and I didn't like that. Also sometimes it didn't produce any answer at all and I didn't know why.
So I recently decided to move it to VB 6 and do some research to solve it properly.
Luckily, I still had my Chemical Rubber Company Standard Mathematical Tables 20th Edition that I bought for Grade 13 in 1973. You cannot get a better Geek Icon than this book, I mean it.
Page 166 (hmmm… exactly 500 pages short of Satan's Page… I'm sure that's significant somehow) is the section on continued fractions – how to solve a Diophantine equation of order 1.
First, x and y must be made relatively prime. This is done by dividing them by their GCD (Look it up. The algorithm is at LEAST 2,500 years old.)
You also have to divide 666 by the GCD of x and y and guess what? If it doesn't come to an integer your subject is bailed! No solutions in integers!
So THAT'S why my old program sometimes delivered no answer!
Now you have to express x / y as a continued fraction. <q0, q1, q2 etc> These q terms are called convergents.
The algorithm for this is pretty straight foreword.
Divide the fraction and check the remainder. Replace the numerator of the fraction with the previous denominator and the denominator with the previous remainder. Divide again.
The convergents are the integer results of this continued division and you quit when the remainder is zero.
So 241 / 37 = < 6, 1, 1, 18 > which is 6 + ( 1 / ( 1 + 1 / ( 1 + 1 / 18)))
A number n is set by this procedure that is distinct from the length of the name N. It is four in our example as four convergent terms were found before the remainder zeroed.
Now what we do with these numbers is pretty wacky.
We define An and Bn using (I love this) a *recursive* formula! How cool!
An = QnA(n-1) + A(n-2) and Bn = QnB(n-1) + B(n-2)
The n, (n-1) and (n-2) terms are subscripts and are NOT multiplied by anything.
Also - we start with term n = 0 yet use term n-2. That implies that there are negative terms of A and B and here they are.
A(-2) = B(-1) = 0 and B(-2) = A(-1) = 1
(Note from April 20 2001 – VB.NET wont be able to run this elegant solution in it’s present form as it does not support the dim (from to) statement – no negative subscripts…. I hope Bill changes his mind on this.)
So – for ax + by = c when a b and c are all integers and a and b are > zero and relatively prime and n is the number of convergent terms of the continued fraction x / y, all the x's and y's are found by these formulae
x = (-1) ^ (n-1) * B(n-1) * c + t * b and
y = (-1) ^ n * A(n-1) * c – t * a
Where ^ is 'to the power of' and t is any integer.
The problem is solved now. But for the sake of convenience I solve for t with x = 5 and print the 5 before t and the 5 afterwards. That shows all our small starting values.
I just have to say before I go that I love this stuff. It's so good and truthful, as opposed to the Number of the Beast from the name crap.
Notice that if your name is nine digits long – or any factor of 666 - that you automatically lose as you can set the diff to zero and let A be the quotient of 666 and the name length. Makes you wonder if in the old days people's lives and careers were ruined because their name added up wrong…
Post Rant
All this and other evidence beyond the scope of this document lead me to believe that the highest form of human behavior is ethical behavior. Not intellectual behavior but ethical behavior. To decline to do wrong even if you can get away with it.
As we become more and more powerful in our individual scope of movement, it is more and more imperative that we voluntarily stop doing bad things, like packet bombing eBay for instance.
I am not an atheist. However, I totally dislike irrational behavior, especially among educated people. It's dangerous, and as computers become more powerful, it becomes more dangerous, as the recent DDOS Internet attacks demonstrate.
(That's it – inconvenience the rich – THAT was a clever way to keep out of trouble…)
And if you think THIS is something - wait until the new GENETICS stuff kicks in. It's the next Geek Territory, let me tell you.
It's actually COOLER THAN COMPUTERS. Kids will be building REAL virii at home in 10-15 years on the outside. Sure, most of their stuff will die as soon as they take it out of the test tube but some of it won't and THEN we will have a problem.
The human race may go extinct because we can't handle this. People thought it would be The Bomb that did it, but the Bomb was never popular culture and the gene stuff will be. Kids could wind up trying to show how bad they are by making plagues, especially if some fools make it look cool in the movies or popular songs.
Suppose the Columbine kids got their hands on this. And there's no stopping it. Are we going to have to have a conflagration before we learn?
Personally, I'm looking forward to the day some 16 year-old clones a porn star for his very own. It'll hit the fan then. You think the press and government are irrigating their trousers NOW?
2020 on the outside. Remember I told you so.
Have fun with this – if you change it just send me a copy at (account long gone) and remember – if you meet the Buddha in the street, kill him but if you meet ME, buy me a beer!
Perhaps the most famous use of this would be with those two anticipated that Jesus was giving short-term predictions, and that the Number of the Beast refers to none other than the Emperor Nero, and truth be told, it was enough prejudice and bigotry on both sides of the ideological spectrum, to make it a rather popular heresy.
Alas, Gaiuss Claudius Nero doesn't quite work out appropriately to the 666 standard. What a pity, what a shame, but fortunately this work is being concocted by ignorant foreigners unskilled in the proper use of Latin, or perhaps just creative enough in their spelling to refer to the Emperor of Rome as Gaiuss Claudius Nero[b]n[/b]. There, tack on the occasional letter, appropriately located at the end to serve as a checksum bit.
I see no reason why we should restrict ourselves to anyone face of numbers, either. Six hundred three score and six can be interpreted in any combination of real, imaginary, modular, or hallucinatory system of reference, which can then of course be passed off as practical math. Knowing something about your bogeyman obviously gives you power over him, and if that power is derived by an obscure, arcane, and inevitably faith-based, logic evading system of reference known only to the faithful, well, that'll sell a few more E-meters or rosary beads, depending upon what the market will buy.
Linking details to preconceptions is always a delicate art, since one may have to do a serious mangling of reality to get the "right" answer... but then again, in this case, the devil is all in the details.