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04:10:43 <SamB> are you going to spout something esoteric for me?
04:36:38 <lament> When you reach level OT III
04:39:05 <SamB> OT III? is that scientologist or something?
04:40:11 <lament> On how much you're willing to pay.
04:44:28 <dbc> # ## # ## ##### #
04:44:28 <dbc> # ## # # ## # # #####
04:44:28 <dbc> # # # # # # # ## ## # ##
04:44:28 <dbc> # ## # # ## # # # # ## ## ### #
04:44:28 <dbc> # #### # #### # # # # ###### ## ## #
04:44:29 <dbc> ## # # # ##### ## #
04:44:37 <dbc> # # # # # # ### ## #
04:44:37 <dbc> # # # ## # # # #######
04:44:37 <dbc> # # # # ## # # # ### ## #
04:44:37 <dbc> ##### # ## # ## # # # # #
04:44:39 <dbc> #### # # # ## # # # # # # ## # #
04:44:41 <dbc> #### ############ ### ######## ## # #
04:44:43 <dbc> ## # ## # # # ##### ## # #### # ###### # ## # ##
04:44:45 <dbc> ## # ## ######## ## # #
04:44:47 <dbc> # ## # ## ### # # # # ## # #
04:44:49 <dbc> # ## # # # # # # # # ##
04:44:51 <dbc> # # # # # # # # # # # ## #
04:44:53 <dbc> # # # # #######
04:44:55 <dbc> ### # ## # ## # # # # ### ## #
04:44:57 <dbc> ## # # ## # # # # # # ### ## #
04:44:59 <dbc> # # # # # # # # # #### # ### ### ## #
04:45:01 <dbc> # ## # # ## # ## ### #
04:45:03 <dbc> ## #### # #### # #
04:45:36 <dbc> In what sense?
04:46:24 <SamB> it sure looks funny
04:46:25 <dbc> lament, in what sense?
04:46:32 * SamB knows what lament means
04:47:29 * SamB wonders if dbc will stop asking "in what sense" soon
04:47:29 * dbc thought lament might mean "is that written in Wierd", but thought he would ask
04:48:12 <lament> no, it was a rhetorical question
04:49:06 * SamB wants an `esoterica' task in debian
04:49:24 <dbc> If you can't figure this out, the aliens haven't a prayer of doing so :/
04:50:12 <SamB> oooooh, its part of the message to the aliens?
04:50:33 <SamB> or is that the *whole thing*?!!!
04:51:08 <SamB> we should send them rosetta disks instead
04:51:31 <lament> better yet, the easter island statues
04:51:48 <lament> dbc: can you translate that?
04:51:59 <SamB> we couldn't get those off the ground...
04:52:27 <dbc> Sort of. at left we have binary numbers up to ten.
04:52:55 <SamB> being written in binary, its practically illegible
04:53:07 <dbc> Then a list of the atomic numbers of those elements involved in DNA...
04:54:11 <dbc> then a little chunk of DNA, with sugar-phosphate backbone at top and bottom, and base pairs in the middle.
04:55:13 <dbc> (not the structure, of course...just an inventory of atoms, counts in positions that match the list to the left.)
04:56:18 <SamB> we should really send them some mostly analog info...
04:56:57 <dbc> Then a rough image of the helical shape of DNA, combined with (I think) the length of a human's DNA...let me check.
04:57:31 <dbc> Male or female, I wonder?
04:57:32 <SamB> and then theres the little man...
04:58:18 <SamB> undifferentiated due to miniscule size, I think
04:58:40 <dbc> Right. A little man between the human population of the Earth, and the height of a human in radio wavelengths.
04:58:57 <dbc> I mean is the count of DNA length for male or female. The female one is longer, right?
04:59:26 <lament> I feel really dumb. I don't even see the binary numbers.
04:59:40 <SamB> X is much bigger then Y
05:00:03 <dbc> Then we have a very crude depiction of the solar system, and a picture of the Arecibo dish with a number specifying its diameter.
05:00:08 <SamB> the numbers are horizontal in this view?
05:00:14 <dbc> (in radio wavelengths, again.)
05:00:44 <SamB> how do we know where the numbers start and stop?
05:00:48 <dbc> Yes. And are terminated with 1 digits.
05:02:01 <SamB> how would you know that ## # was 6 and not, for example, 1 followed by 0?
05:02:57 <dbc> Well, they usually put one number per line. Though they may go to the next line if they run out of space...
05:04:22 <dbc> It's not the clearest imaginable system...
05:04:28 <SamB> its indecipherable, I tell you
05:04:43 <SamB> unless you already know the data, of course
05:05:57 <dbc> Yes and no. I think it's decipherable by some people who've never seen it but have a good knowledge of biology. Not by people who don't.
05:06:00 <lament> "height in wavelengths"? What the fuck.
05:06:12 <dbc> wavelengths of the radio wave used to send the message.
05:06:27 <dbc> I suppose that's the measurement of length they thought would be clearest :/
05:06:39 <SamB> thats what I meant by "know the data"
05:08:07 <lament> Why is our height even important to aliens?
05:08:12 <dbc> Clear enough.
05:08:23 <dbc> lament it probably isn't :/
05:10:11 <lament> or the length of our DNA - that's not even important to humans.
05:10:28 <lament> IIRC the length of the dna is absolutely meaningless
05:10:41 <dbc> lament right.
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05:11:41 <dbc> Besides, they just zapped this off once. You'd need steady transmission to have a hope of having it received. The thing was really just proof-of-concept...
06:34:19 <exarkun> not -absolutely-, but it is only weakly correlated with organism complexity
06:35:40 <SamB> they would probably have more luck with TV signals!
06:36:00 <exarkun> tv signals are pretty straightforward
06:36:35 <exarkun> any alien life that can pick up em radiation in the same spectrum as us (not necessarily without mechanical aid) could probably decipher them pretty quickly
06:36:39 <SamB> right back now == be back in a nour and a half or more?
06:37:06 <SamB> yeah, much easier then binary nonsense like that, eh?
06:37:20 <exarkun> yea.. analog is too easy :)
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06:49:36 <SamB> deltab_: what is meaning of "deltab"?
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07:26:05 <lament> 11:35:04 <exarkun> esoteric programming languages
07:26:05 <lament> 11:42:24 <tav> does that generally mean languages like brainf*ck or the likes of oz, ocaml, etc?
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