- From: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>
- Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 07:06:46 -0500
- To: Xiaoshu Wang <wangxiao@musc.edu>
- Cc: John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>, John Black <JohnBlack@kashori.com>, Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>, noah_mendelsohn@us.ibm.com, Mikael Nilsson <mikael@nilsson.name>, "Sean B. Palmer" <sean@miscoranda.com>, www-tag@w3.org
Xiaoshu Wang scripsit: > But if cap the size, the implication is that web > is closed. The Web is indeed closed. There are roughly 10^79 particles in the universe, so it can be in at most 2^(10^79) possible states. After that, you either stop storing data or you figure out a way to break the conservation laws. (I am neglecting quantum effects here.) It's like the notion that there are an infinite number of sentences in a given language. For theoretical purposes we may postulate a grammar that can construct arbitrarily long sentences, but in fact even if you gabble at 100 words per minute for 150 years, which is beyond the limit of a human lifetime, you cannot utter a sentence of more than about 10^10 words. Information is inherently finite because its physical substrate is inherently finite. -- John Cowan cowan@ccil.org http://ccil.org/~cowan Big as a house, much bigger than a house, it looked to [Sam], a grey-clad moving hill. Fear and wonder, maybe, enlarged him in the hobbit's eyes, but the Mumak of Harad was indeed a beast of vast bulk, and the like of him does not walk now in Middle-earth; his kin that live still in latter days are but memories of his girth and his majesty. --"Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit"
Received on Tuesday, 8 January 2008 12:07:03 UTC