I COULD insert a comment about certain members on a firearms related website... but I won't.

[;D]

[url]http://www.msnbc.com/news/911508.asp?0si=-[/url]

Typing monkeys, but no Shakespeare

‘Experiment’ modeled on aphorism yields a big mess

ASSOCIATED PRESS

LONDON, May 9 — Give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of typewriters, the theory goes, and they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. Give six monkeys one computer for a month, and they will make a mess.
 
       RESEARCHERS AT Plymouth University in England reported this week that primates left alone with a computer attacked the machine and failed to produce a single word.

       “They pressed a lot of S’s,” researcher Mike Phillips said Friday. “Obviously, English isn’t their first language.”

       In a project intended more as performance art than scientific experiment, faculty and students in the university’s media program left a computer in the monkey enclosure at Paignton Zoo in southwest England, home to six Sulawesi crested macaques.

       Then, they waited.

       At first, said Phillips, “the lead male got a stone and started bashing the hell out of it.

       “Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard,” added Phillips, who runs the university’s Institute of Digital Arts and Technologies.

       Eventually, monkeys Elmo, Gum, Heather, Holly, Mistletoe and Rowan produced five pages of text, composed primarily of the letter S. Later, the letters A, J, L and M crept in.

       The notion that monkeys typing at random will eventually produce literature is often attributed to Thomas Huxley, a 19th-century scientist who supported Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution. Mathematicians have also used it to illustrate concepts of chance.

       The Plymouth experiment was funded by England’s Arts Council and part of the Vivaria Project, which plans to install computers in zoos across Europe to study differences between animal and artificial life.

       Phillips said the results showed that monkeys “are not random generators. They’re more complex than that.

       “They were quite interested in the screen, and they saw that when they typed a letter, something happened. There was a level of intention there.”

the experiment was flawed. the saying is give an infinite number of monkeys an infinite number of [b]typewriters[/b]

everyone knows monkeys don't know how to use a computer......

MR. Burns:  "Look here; I have a million monkeys working at a million typewriters.  Eventually they'll produce the greatest novel ever written!  Here, let me see....."It was the best of times, it was the BLURST of times?!?!  You stupid monkey!"

So, for aforementioned researchers at Plymouth University in England, the value of "infinite" equals "six"?

I thought those 1000 monkeys on 1000 typewriters are what write these gun control laws.

Old quote:

"Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is *NOTHING* like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton',

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And for another more pertinant variation of that saying ...


If an infinate number of red-necks driving an infinate number of pickup trucks fire an infinate number of shotgun shells at an infinate number of street signs ... they will eventially produce the works of Shakespeare ... in Braille...

Later,

Apparently the monkeys were being made to used Windows based applications.

Now who could that be? [;)]

"Ford.......There's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to you about this script for [i]Hamlet[/i] they've worked out..."

"There's something very strange about this place......Maybe it's how the ocean stays steady as a rock and the buildings keep washing up and down...."

Pretty long read, but well worth it...

[url]http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2795.html[/url]