[net.nlang] How many text characters in a lifetime...

robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison) (08/16/84)

References:

Here is a question that should be dear to the hearts of confirmed
netnews readers.  How many characters of text (or bytes of text,
if you will) are you going to read in your lifetime?  Count EVERYTHING
that might apply: books, newspapers, subtitles, signs, license plates,
netnews, error mesages, roadsigns, skywriting...

The point is, it's a lot, if you are a confirmed reader.  Suppose you
read five 200-page books a week.  At 400 wds * 200 pgs * 5 chars * 52wks
that is 20 million characters.  Suppose that's half the daily total,
and you keep it up for 70 years.  That's about 1.4 billion characters.
there aren't too many interesting things that you can do 1 billion
times in your lifetime.

- Toby Robison (not Robinson!)
allegra!eosp1!robison
decvax!ittvax!eosp1!robison

barmar@mit-eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin) (08/19/84)

In article <1063@eosp1.UUCP> robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison) writes:
>there aren't too many interesting things that you can do 1 billion
>times in your lifetime.

Well, your heart beats around 3 billion times in your lifetime.
-- 
    Barry Margolin
    ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics
    UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar