Binary Combination Lock

if you have one of those combination padlocks with three tumblers, each with the digits 0-9 on them that means that there are a possible 1o*10*10 combinations of numbers that can be displayed.

10*10*10 = 1000 (obviously)

In order to have at least 1000 different combinations using tumblers that only have the digits 0-1 on them (the binary digits) you would have to have sufficient tumblers to display the number 999 (this is the same for the 3 tumblers using base 10, i.e. You can display 1000 numbers, all those up to 999 plus zero)

You display 999 in binary like this:

1111100111

So you would need 10 tumblers.

BUT the advantage is, with 10 tumblers using binary you can display a possible 1018 combinations. (1111111111 which is 1017, plus 0000000000 which is zero)

Ergo 10 tumblers displaying 0-1 is much more secure and therefore sensible. QED


Comments

Anonymous said…
I just had this idea. Great minds think alike.

Jerseyanarchist
NJ, USA
3:54 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Never one to pass up a challenge...

It's 3:44am. You know what that means? Yes, it's another barely coherant blog post from your truely. *cheers* Alright, settle down. A few days ago I was sitting in my A.I. lecture and Sirob Venok* (the only russian computer scientist in the world) was talking about search engines. Specifically he was talking about how it is impossible to negate things in engines such as Google. (You can't search for 'all pages without any "e"s in them; for example.) And as an example he said 'You cannot search for all animals that use radar except for Dolphins and Bats' (actually he said 'RAD-dar' but that's beside the point). I disagree Mr. Venok, I disagree with every fibre of my being! Let me just fire up the old Google Box... Right, well, for starters no animals use radar (except humans of course) so I'm guessing he meant echo-location. He also mentioned Barn Owls, so we'll rule them out. Let the searching begin! 'echo location in animals
Read more

Learning C++ (or programming Conway's Game of Life)

Image
This post is about programming so if that doesn't interest you then fair warned be ye, says I. Been learning C++. Out of a book. I'm just up to getting methods to work, which if you are a programmer you will know is not that far in, but it's a start damnit! So I know from experience that it is much more fun to do this kind of thing if you are making something that is actually fun and you care about, so I had a crack at Conway's Game of Life, something that I'd always wanted to do since I first heard about it. The basic premise is that you have a field of cells. Each cell dies if it is overcrowded or too lonely and cells are born if there are a specific number of living cells nearby. This gives you a fairly rudimentary but funtastic life simulator. LET'S DO IT! Features of my version: Shitty coding. (hey I'm learning) My version features no methods classes or objects or anything fancy like that just good old fashioned loops and 'if' statements. Eye wa
Read more