Have Virtual Monkeys Infiltrated Foxestalk?

[davieG]

BBC

Virtual monkeys write Shakespeare

A few million virtual monkeys are close to re-creating the complete works of Shakespeare by randomly mashing keys on virtual typewriters.

A running total of how well they are doing shows that the re-creation is 99.990% complete.

The first single work to be completed was the poem A Lover's Complaint.

Set up by US programmer Jesse Anderson the project co-ordinates the virtual monkeys sitting on Amazon's EC2 cloud computing system via a home PC.

Mr Anderson said he started the project as a way to get to know the Hadoop programming tool better and to put Amazon's web services to the test.

It is also a practical test of the thought experiment that wonders whether an infinite number of monkeys pounding on an infinite number of typewriters would be able to produce Shakespeare's works by accident.

Mr Anderson's virtual monkeys are small computer programs uploaded to Amazon servers. These coded apes regularly pump out random sequences of text.

Each sequence is nine characters long and each is checked to see if that string of characters appears anywhere in the works of Shakespeare. If not, it is discarded. If it does match then progress has been made towards re-creating the works of the Bard.

To get a sense of the scale of the project, there are about 5.5 trillion different combinations of any nine characters from the English alphabet.

Mr Anderson's monkeys are generating random nine-character strings to try to produce all these strings and thereby find those that appear in Shakespeare's works.

Mr Anderson kicked off the project on 21 August using Amazon's cloud computers. Each day of virtual monkey keyboard mashing processing cost $19.20 (£12.40).

http://www.bbc.co.uk...nology-15060310Full report -

[Rincewind]

Romeo and Juliet

hjreutiutip eipw]ijwefl behggcw]jf [pfwjuiupieuy3 kjfdslkdyoe wikjfjkyyrfhfhyu4

Eek Eek!

[The Doctor]

Pah, what happened to real life monkeys and type-writers?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcSUWP0QNeY

[Bellend Sebastian]

I think it's more likely to be actual ones

[Rincewind]

the keyboard is arranged to make it easier to type if using two hands (not one or two fingers like me) so I would think that at some point in time, randomlly smashing a keyboard may produce a word or two. An whole book? The funding for the project will run out first. Can anyone do the math?

Just read a bit more of the OP. So the monkeys do not write the words in sequence as it appears in the original? Like looking for words in a linkword puzzle.

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

We could become the first club to have a monkey for a manager. Sorry, I forgot Peter Taylor.

[Bob Weasel Fox]

We could become the first club to have a monkey for a manager. Sorry, I forgot Peter Taylor.

[purpleronnie]

This will blow karl pilkingtons mind.

[Daggers]

Have Virtual Monkeys Infiltrated Foxestalk?

It's as if no one has read the forum.

Ever.

[Rincewind]

Monkeys can press a sries of buttons to receive rewards such as apple or banana but cannot hold conversations. Strangely enough I have noticed some posts in this forum may be posted solely for the purpose of receiving the award of a reply be it negative or positive so in that respect there are several monkeys hanging around on foxestalk.

Eeek eek ook ook as the libraian would say.

[The Doctor]

So then, which posters are secretly monkeys?

I reckon:

lcfcstu

DT

[Rincewind]

I will not discriminate against monkeys but the difference in interlect between a monkey and Einstein is vast..

[Daggers]

Monkeys can press a sries of buttons to receive rewards such as apple or banana but cannot hold conversations. Strangely enough I have noticed some posts in this forum may be posted solely for the purpose of receiving the award of a reply be it negative or positive so in that respect there are several monkeys hanging around on foxestalk.

Eeek eek ook ook as the libraian would say.

I may be wrong, but I imagine your kitchen table is glorious for fruit.

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

So then, which posters are secretly monkeys?

I reckon:

lcfcstu

DT

lol

[ozleicester]

More to the point...if they already have, would we notice?

[foxile5]

So then, which posters are secretly monkeys?

I reckon:

lcfcstu

DT

I feel too much credit is being given here. You're tarnishing the good name of Monkeys.

[Trav Le Bleu]

Mr Anderson's virtual monkeys are small computer programs uploaded to Amazon servers. These coded apes regularly pump out random sequences of text.

Each sequence is nine characters long and each is checked to see if that string of characters appears anywhere in the works of Shakespeare. If not, it is discarded. If it does match then progress has been made towards re-creating the works of the Bard.

This is misleading.

It's not randomly completing whole works of Shakespeare; it's randomly completing nine character strings of parts of Shakespeare and then checking them against source... which a monkey would never do.

Ask me if a room full of monkeys could ever complete the entire works of Shakespeare and I'd say, realistically, "no" (unless they were immortal monkey's with specially adapted keyboards - but I said realistically.) Ask me if I thought a room full of monkeys could randomly type a nine character snippet of Shakespeare and I'd say, "sure, the odds can't be too great."

It's a bit of a non-story really.

[Trav Le Bleu]

Monkeys can press a sries of buttons to receive rewards such as apple or banana but cannot hold conversations. Strangely enough I have noticed some posts in this forum may be posted solely for the purpose of receiving the award of a reply be it negative or positive so in that respect there are several monkeys hanging around on foxestalk.

Eeek eek ook ook as the libraian would say.

DON'T CALL HIM A MONKEY!

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

I feel too much credit is being given here. You're tarnishing the good name of Monkeys.

I agree 100% lol

[leicsmac]

DON'T CALL HIM A MONKEY!

And the next time we see Nightguard he will smell strongly of bananas and have numerous bruises on his head, due to the Librarian finding him and proving to him that monkeys cannot pick grown men up, turn them upside down and bash their heads repeatedly on the floor, but a orang-utan can.