Re: [XPOST] A unique number for every "person" - can it be done?

From: TGOS (tgos_at_invalid.invalid)
Date: 02/28/05 

Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 22:59:30 +0100

On 27 Feb 2005 18:23:10 -0800 spinoza1111@yahoo.com wrote in
comp.programming:

> Doesn't a suitable encoding of the name, coupled with the date, place
> and time (down to second) of birth, form your identifier?

I don't know my exact time of birth and how exact is the time of birth
anyway? Have hospitals atomic clocks? Most doctors just say 11:30, even
it was 11:28.354.

Date itself is not very accurate. At least our date. We actually live in
days, but a year can't be expressed in days, because days are integer
and a year is not exactly measurable in full days. So we use leap years
to fix that. But this is inaccurate, too. So we leave it out every x
years. But this is also not accurate, so we don't leave it out every y
years. And not even that is accurate.

The only unit that is really accurate are seconds, because they have a
definition not based on earth, our solar system, the moon or the stars.

But who can say for sure how old he is in seconds, with a tolerance of
less than 10 seconds?

> Encode place as a GPS coordinate. You said we can assume Earth-bound
> people.

Not too bad, but complicated to find out. You'd need a GPS database for
every location on earth. How big would such a database be? Or you need a
GPS navigator and drive there, to measure yourself.

If you use a coordinate system for earth, it must be much courser than
the GPS system, so we can divide earth in maybe 100,000 squares and
figuring out in which square you were born is not such a big deal. Of
course the squares are huge.

> My number would be the string "Edward George Nilges <gps coordinate of
> the Boston Lying-In Hospital> Nov 9 1949 AD 0215 AM".

This is too long. 92 chars. A number with 92 bytes, 763 bits, is far
more than necessary to create a unique id. How much is 2^763? More than
the galaxy has atoms? 

-- 
TGOS

Relevant Pages

  • Re: [XPOST] A unique number for every "person" - can it be done?
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  • Re: [XPOST] A unique number for every "person" - can it be done?
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