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Too Much Free Time

by Mike Masnick

Fri, May 9th 2003 12:57pm





Six Typing Monkeys - No Shakespeare

from the fun-for-the-whole-family dept

I guess it was only a matter of time (and having too much of it free - along with a few extra monkeys). Building on the famous (and overused) saying about infinite monkeys with infinite time and typewriters banging out the works of Shakespeare, someone stuck a computer in the monkey cage at a zoo. Now, it wasn't an infinite number of monkeys (only six) - nor an infinite amount of time (just a month), but the monkeys didn't get very far. They apparently were big fans of the letter "s" (I like it, too). But, before they got around to that, they proceeded to beat on the computer, followed by a session of defecating and urinating on the keyboard. Maybe they are closer to being human than we thought. The monkeys weren't completely random, though. Once they realized that pressing a key on the keyboard caused the screen to change, they became more interested. Luckily, the researchers who spent good money doing this project have put the pre-Shakesperian output online. I don't think it's going to win many awards.

4 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    Shakespeare

    identicon
    Burt, May 10th, 2003 @ 2:12am

    It is remarkable that folks could have gotten things quite so wrong. The point of the original comment is something like "if you have an infinite time to generate all the possible combinations of letters and spaces, some of those would be the works of Shakespeare". Of course actual Monkeys (and a very short time span) means you'll get crap (apparently literally and figuratively). Unless this was done with tongue in cheek from the gitgo, this is a remarkable waste of time.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Monkey Business

    identicon
    The Anonymous Fool, May 10th, 2003 @ 8:57pm

    The results may not be Shakespeare, but they are probably better than some of the scripts Hollywood is currently producing.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Ok, assuming the scientific method meets proof the

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, May 11th, 2003 @ 4:56pm

    They tested n=6 without success. Now time to start air-dropping typewriters and supplies over the tropical regions.

    ...ah, but I hear some mutterings that continuting the experiment is uncecessary, as the proof is already know true by inspection.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    wasn't there some guy in russia...

    identicon
    Anonymous Coward, May 11th, 2003 @ 4:58pm

    ...that wrote a "novel" by typing the same word over and over again? In which case the monkies must be having a great deal of fun at our expense by noting that it took the human race 1000s of year to do what 6 monkies accomplished in a few months.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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