(no subject)
Just a random thought.
To get you started More Dinosaur Comics
I'm playing around with a digital IO module and was thinking of how you would send signals to someone you know who has no concept of time, i.e. the person in question are not able to just 'count the time' between two signals. Imagine that you have N light bulbs and can turn them on and off as you wish and want to comunicate a message to another person.
You might think that this could work with only one light bulb. Say you want to convey the number 97, so you blink the light 97 times. Now the reciever have gotten the message, right? No! He has no concept of time! He doesn't know that he should stop waiting for blinks just because none have come for several ages.
Now if you have two lamps, you could blink one of them on to signal a binary 1, the other to signal a binary 0, and have both on at the same time to signal EOT. If N > 2 you could use N-2 lamps to store N-2 bits of data in and the two remainder to set the final bit and send data / signal EOT. So, if you have 8 lamps you could send 7 bits of data using an expected 5 changes of bulb states.
To get you started More Dinosaur Comics
I'm playing around with a digital IO module and was thinking of how you would send signals to someone you know who has no concept of time, i.e. the person in question are not able to just 'count the time' between two signals. Imagine that you have N light bulbs and can turn them on and off as you wish and want to comunicate a message to another person.
You might think that this could work with only one light bulb. Say you want to convey the number 97, so you blink the light 97 times. Now the reciever have gotten the message, right? No! He has no concept of time! He doesn't know that he should stop waiting for blinks just because none have come for several ages.
Now if you have two lamps, you could blink one of them on to signal a binary 1, the other to signal a binary 0, and have both on at the same time to signal EOT. If N > 2 you could use N-2 lamps to store N-2 bits of data in and the two remainder to set the final bit and send data / signal EOT. So, if you have 8 lamps you could send 7 bits of data using an expected 5 changes of bulb states.