Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site eosp1.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!princeton!eosp1!robison From: robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison) Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: How many text characters in a lifetime... Message-ID: <1063@eosp1.UUCP> Date: Thu, 16-Aug-84 13:05:31 EDT Article-I.D.: eosp1.1063 Posted: Thu Aug 16 13:05:31 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 17-Aug-84 01:19:55 EDT Organization: Exxon Office Systems, Princeton, NJ Lines: 18 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