h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well yes and no. I don't see much point in having people wandering through DNA unless they have at least some notion in entering into a community. After all communities is why the BBC owns this funny database orientated site.

You mean I'm supposed to know why I'm here?! That's a bit too existential. I think most people find h2g2 by accident rather than a desire to belong to a community (eg via a search engine). Some of them even seem to get stuck wandering around because they can't find the way out. I told one new researcher where the Logout link was and they promptly disappeared! I would also guess that most people round here are less likely to be the normal (real-life) community types.

Just out of interest, C0 = C1 = ... = C41, only C42 is different. The determination to use 42 is obvious, but are they saving all those other numbers for something (eg new meta categories or other planets)?

The early U-numbers are not repeats or redirections in this way. Though from cross-correlating them (old conversations etc) and sneaking into their supposedly disconnected articles, I've found out a few things...

* delurks *

Hi there!

Quite interesting what you're doing here


Have you tried out who U999999999999999999999999999999999 is ?
And did you see what you get when you add them to your Friends list ?

I can explain why it that is the same as U-1, after a certain U-number the researchers start repeating, for a little before that you get negatives. It was discussed in annother thread. When I added it to friends it said it had added me (but without my nickname) but actually didn't do anything. I'll look into it.

Tango

(The other thread was: F27584?thread=233831)

That was a bit bizarre, though, trying to add "Researcher 203385" in my case...

RhoMuNuQ

By the way, Sef, have you seen C28?

I missed that one. It must have been its base-17 42-ness that allowed it to obtain individuality. Have you checked all the others? I only noticed the C replications because I was starting to make a private catalogue of pages. I was beginning to think it was a waste of time, so I took a wild h2g2 guess and skipped ahead to 42.

Well, I just put in a few random numbers to test the theory...

And 9 times out of 10, a wild h2g2 guess is right, anyway!

RhoMuNuQ

Incidentally, although you've made it onto the Yahoo list, Tango has yet to update the h2g2 members list on the page above.

I'm sure he'll do it!

RhoMuNuQ

You have a lot of (misplaced) trust in me! Yes, I will update it, i'm just forgettful, sorry.

Tango

re post 45 - internally, U-numbers are obviously treated as 32 bit values. You arrive at the same number when adding MaxInt(2^32) to a number.

Yes. Sorry we didn't seem to be showing much interest in your post but we've been all through the maxint stuff quite recently on another thread or two. The only new bit was in attempting to add -ve numbers to friends (which Tango is apparently now investigating). I discovered the other week that one could befriend oneself on h2g2.

Do you want to be a Bugfinder then?

Who would befriend themself?

No-one's allowed to look at my Friends list!

RhoMuNuQ

Well, i will, investigate it when I have a chance, which may not be today. The thing i really want to work out (feel free to try and beat me to it) is how many U-numbers there actually are, ie. how high you can go before they start getting negative. My guess is that you just half the "maxint" as you call it, long numbers (in the c++ sense [I'm right in saying h2g2 is written in c++, aren't I?]) go the same distance into -ve as +ve, so it halfing it should work.

Tango

Well halving maxint isn't hard (and C++ is irrelevant to this). U2147483648 is -ve and U2147483647 is +ve.

Great! That's what i was going to work out. That means there are only 2147483647-119417=2147364230 users that can still subscribe!

Tango

There are somewhat less articles (A#) left though and what about forums/fora (F#) etc.

I don't think the site will collapse any time soon...