I've been a member here for a long time, but rarely ever post. However, I love watching threads on the basement. They provide me some good entertainment. So, I have a question to ask you all.

I work as a software engineer and also own my own software house. On the side, I teach a little bit. So, the other day I was teaching a class on programming and graphics generation using ActionScript 3. Graphics can be generated using fonts, drawing API's, existing images, etc. A couple of days ago, I presented them with a question. It goes as follows:

We all know that images shown on a computer screen are shown using pixels. Each pixel in a modern display unit can show roughly 16.8 million different colors. To show an image, each pixel on the screen has a certain color and opacity. Each pixel is also capable of showing only ONE color. It can't display gradients, etc.

Assume that you are given a blank canvas that is 1000 pixels wide by 1000 pixels high. If you wrote a program that would generate a 1000x1000 image using every single color combination possible (1,000,000 to the 16.8 million power, which is a shit load of images), would the program generate every single image possible? Would you be able to sort through the generated images and find images of yourself, your family, your friends? Would this generate pictures of the future? Would it generate images identical to pictures you have already taken or created? Would it generate images that are identical to images you will take in the future?

Discuss....

 

Need weed to answer.

 

Yes

 

As an Information Architect, sure you could find yourself, but the method / interface is unusable.

Don't forget, the legal issue of republishing images without concent.

Lastly, I'll have what you're having.

 

that's pretty interesting... but like LT said i wanna look at this thread again when i'm not sober.

but from the description you have, if seems as though it would be possible...

 

Yes, and not only that, but it would reproduce every piece of art ever created, and that could ever be created. Although depending on the quality of the original, it may be a smaller/crappier copy, or a larger, better copy.

a million monkeys at a thousand typewriters for eternity type thing.

Also, close to the "If the universe is infinite, then everything than is possible, has happened. And will happen again."

 

Of course this would work, but we wouldn't know what we were looking at. I mean in the first two frames we could see the beginning of the whole universe and never know. Something of this magnitude would require someone to watch a 60FPS film nearly their entire life to see the whole thing. Of course computer could help, first finding anything that resembles a face, then finding a particular skin tone and shape for a person

 

Actually, no. Because one of the images would be of Muhammad, and the Muslims would blow your ass up before anyone got to see the results.

 

Mind asplode

 

yup. need some sort of hallucinagen to think about this properly