Be Excellent To Each Other

Who can tell me what's going on here:

Is that a basic sprite character sheet?

As the URL for the image has 'yak' in it - is it Jeff Minter's prescription?

I know the answer. Do you want telling it, or is it to test us?

Is it an 8 bit version of Chinese?

Is it Frank Drake's transmission to extra terrestrial life forms in 1974?

Is it Dimrill?

Well ok it's a numbers thing, a glyph to represent 0-15, then the sequence 2 3 5 7 11 14 17 19 ..

Go on, what is it?

The o and x is cleqrly binary representation
The squiggles appear to be 0-9 too, so the bottom is a load of numbers that I can't be arsed translating.

Which probably then need another translation step.

It's a boat!

It's more to see if people can figure it out if they don't already know. Kalmar got close, although he made a bit of a vital error with the list of numbers at the bottom.

Here's page 2!

Is it a list of prime numbers, then?

13 called. He disagrees.

Ting!

Prime numbers are boring.


00000010101010000000000
00101000001010000000100
10001000100010010110010
10101010101010100100100
00000000000000000000000
00000000000011000000000
00000000001101000000000
00000000001101000000000
00000000010101000000000
00000000011111000000000
00000000000000000000000
11000011100011000011000
10000000000000110010000
11010001100011000011010
11111011111011111011111
00000000000000000000000
00010000000000000000010
00000000000000000000000
00001000000000000000001
11111000000000000011111
00000000000000000000000
11000011000011100011000
10000000100000000010000
11010000110001110011010
11111011111011111011111
00000000000000000000000
00010000001100000000010
00000000001100000000000
00001000001100000000001
11111000001100000011111
00000000001100000000000
00100000000100000000100
00010000001100000001000
00001100001100000010000
00000011000100001100000
00000000001100110000000
00000011000100001100000
00001100001100000010000
00010000001000000001000
00100000001100000000100
01000000001100000000100
01000000000100000001000
00100000001000000010000
00010000000000001100000
00001100000000110000000
00100011101011000000000
00100000001000000000000
00100000111110000000000
00100001011101001011011
00000010011100100111111
10111000011100000110111
00000000010100000111011
00100000010100000111111
00100000010100000110000
00100000110110000000000
00000000000000000000000
00111000001000000000000
00111010100010101010101
00111000000000101010100
00000000000000101000000
00000000111110000000000
00000011111111100000000
00001110000000111000000
00011000000000001100000
00110100000000010110000
01100110000000110011000
01000101000001010001000
01000100100010010001000
00000100010100010000000
00000100001000010000000
00000100000000010000000
00000001001010000000000
01111001111101001111000


What's going on there then?

That's not the answer, that's just what the things at the bottom of the first page are. Why are they there, is the question.

Exactly the same thing

I know!
You put them there as a test, is the answer
I'll have a look at page 2 tomorrow unless someone gets it.

Is this like the alien spaceship thing in Diamond Dogs? That story terrified me.

Is this going to end up like Cube, and we all think it's prime numbers until someone dies?

No it's like that one fucking Mafia game. Brrrrr!

So you've got page numbers top right and left. Top third of the page is 0,2,4,6,8 and 1,3,5,7,9 all in dots, binary, and some random script. Below that is 11-15 and 20. Below that is all the primes from 2-89, then a big-ass random number at the bottom. Why? Fuck knows.

The second page is a series of sums. First column is adding, second subtraction, third is multiplication and the bottom half is dividing.

However the significance of this is lost on me.

Aliens.

Ting!

Is it the stuff we transmit so that aliens will know we're intelligent?

I'm going to try to translate it into Earth-speak, as it looks like utter nonsense to me.

It's their reply...

Math is the universal language...




... dude.

But why invent a character set for numbers, instead of using the perfectly good one we already have?

Arabia disagrees.

*one of the perfectly good ones we already have*

Because this version is much closer to the alien character set you see in spaceships.

Don't you watch any movies?

I've just amused myself with an image of a maths class full of baby xenomorphs.

*chuckles*

We should have used one of the crazy, illogical, unintuitive number systems we already have. Let's see those aliens work out the ancient Egyptian number system, if they think they're so darn smart. If they can work out that tadpoles, squiggles and flowers are prime numbers, then we can talk.

Also, the '2' is totally counterintuitive, because it looks like a '1'. And the first prime number is blatantly '1', too.

Ohh, you're one of "them", are you?

* stares at Craster with suspicion *

Definition of a prime number is a number that is only divisible by itself and one, surely?

<backs away>

How exclusive is that and?

Not exclusive, obviously.

Pfft. Wikipedia adds 'greater than 1' to the definition of a prime number. LAME.

Interesting. Both I AND Wikipedia seem to disagree with you...

I disagree with your face.

I think there's a lot missing from that definition.
Let's start with the fact that 1 can be divided by 0.9...

Wholly divisible then. Or divisible leaving an integer. Anyway, there's no reason for one not to be a prime other than 'it isn't'.

It's much more important than a prime number, is why.

http://primes.utm.edu/notes/faq/one.html

Euclid was a dick.

Ain't that the truth.