ASCII and BINARY code are almost impossible for humans to read btw - Infini (2015) Discussion

[–] JayFight 9 years ago

maybe for you or I, but there are people(some sort of genius or savant type) who could probably read either or both of those like they were just another language.

also i've never learned either of those so idk if i could learn to read them myself. but i presume if it's something you learned to code in and spent a week or so with nothing else to do then you might be able to learn to read them even if you aren't one of those genius or savant types

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[–] IvnSoft 8 years ago

You dont need to stretch that out.
Some programmers from the 80s (me included) can read ascii just fine, and even some binary code straight up the screen.
I used to do this when programming and hacking into the Atari programs.

But.. This is the least seemingly stupid thing about the movie. :)

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[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

Once you can get past the nonsense of Little Endian byte order. :(

Besides unless you hate your time I'm sure you had one of those assembler catridges.

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[–] bek-12 7 years ago

As a programmer who can do computational binary math, no problem, I can say that nobody I've ever met can "read binary" natively. You always do a mental translation, and it takes a few seconds even to translate a small number from binary to decimal. I haven't yet watched this show, but if it involves some guy saying, "Hey, I can read binary" and then spits out numbers instantly (or worse yet, sentences), then it's not realistic. :)

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[–] zanity 9 years ago

What are you DRIBBLING about. ASCII is the ordinary character set, so reading it is the same as any text. Even as Hex, most coders would do the translation in their head from Hex to ASCII.

As for binary, any assembly coder would trivially be converting in their head 8-digit binary to hex- and hex is what most coders use to recognise op-codes, data or whatever.

Just because you are a clueless no-nothing doesn't place everyone else in the same category. The Internet- where everyone thinks anonymity allows them to claim 'expertise' they'd be laughed at for trying in real-life.

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[–] alotanor 9 years ago

Read this without using a decoder then genius

011110010110111101110101001000000110000101110010011001010010000001100001001000000110110101101111011100100110111101101110

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[–] shystichu 9 years ago

01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010

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[–] simon-186-303310 9 years ago

The only moron in here is you that thinks nobody else can understand

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[–] FryHigh 9 years ago

001100010010011110100001101101110011

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[–] anders-225 9 years ago

As much as "this is important, someone on the internet is WRONG"... Yes, I was actually to read "you are a moron" without using a decoder. Yes, I translated all the binary to hex manually without a calculator or app. I did write down the relevant part of the ascii table to do the translation on a notepad, with a pen. I haven't worked with ascii in perhaps 10 years, so forgive the cheat of using a piece of paper.

As the poster above mentioned, I used to write assembly code. Dealt with low level computer code and hex files for a living, programming microcontrollers. Recognizing letters in hex isn't that hard once you're in the zone. Could I "read" it, as in leisurely, no, it's been 10 years since I focused on this area. However I can (just did) "translate it without a decoder".

Again, no google, no apps, no phone, no checking resources, no looking up the table anywhere. Just pen and paper and memory.

The take away lesson is probably "You would be amazed what a person can learn when they do just one thing for 10 years." If you're young, you probably haven't done anything for a decade yet. You'll surprise yourself with your skill if you stick to it.

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[–] alotanor 9 years ago

I stand corrected.
011101000110100001100001011011100110101101110011001000000110011001101111011100100010000001110011011010000110000101110010011010010110111001100111

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[–] DurakSuka 9 years ago

Don't be. Anybody who spends time can do what that moron above wrote. Nobody in the world can decode a stream of binary on the fly in real time whether you have spent 10 years or a 100 years working with binary code. The human brain is not designed to deal with that kind of input. That is why it's trivial to remember tens of thousands of words (characters), but most people cannot even remember 10 digit phone numbers, much less binary code with no separating spaces. That it utter *beep*

Hama cheez ba-Beer behtar meshawad!

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[–] anders-225 9 years ago

"Nobody in the world can decode a stream of binary on the fly in real time"

Bahahahaha!

It's me and the thousands of people who have learned Morse Code (single channel, three state signal) laughing at you. And then all the people who read Braille (three channels of binary signal being parallel processed!) hear us laughing, and they start laughing at you too.

These people are obviously processing binary and multi-state signals in a way that "the brain was not design for" all the time. Myself, I only ever got to about 10 WPM in Morse. That's not "fast" for Morse... but it's faster than some people type.

Typing: there's another communication method that the brain was not designed for but with practice it is very doable at high speed.

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[–] slickr12345 8 years ago

Morse Code is a lot easier and simpler to learn. Its like trying to compare learning English language to complex math. Both at the low end are basic and easy enough, but a lot less people can learn complex math, opposed to things like English grammar.

So yeah, morse code is a lot easier to learn.

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[–] shurbanm 9 years ago

Actually you are wrong there. We don't do it on the fly because we don't use it regularly. If you didn't use sybmolic representations in 3 dimension (letters) every day you would find it pretty difficult as well.
If you used binary rather than anything else in everyday you could easily do it on the fly. It may not be as fast as reading 2d text symbols but would be close. Whether it be a pattern in 2 dimensions or 1 dimension doesn't matter. The same letter can easily be represented and interpreted.
You seem to think binary is some sort of alien thing. Actually our brain itself is binary when you get down to the foundation of it. It works on electrical impulses - ones and zeros.
Morse code is pretty easy for a human to master (fundamentally not much different from binary) as well and use just about as fast as letters.

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[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

Technically its hexidecimal the guy is decoding. If you decode the strange sequence you get mangled up version of some ones name.

The name starts off as Josephine Chesher but then gets mangled up as the screen scrolls down.
Any one know who Josephine Chesher is?

hesher Josephine Chesher Tripitakaka Cheshe' KiziGo Mute&i Kiti&wa mutVbi Alln CherTripitka Che7her �e�niila �osqued CheshVr Josehine C�esher Eripita�a Ches�

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[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

Thats why we don't use machine code anymore. To save your sanity your first step is to write a decoder next step you would start working on an interpreter language. I know this is possible because I was forced to write an interpreter (I'm not advanced enough to write a compiler) in a computer science course. I agree binary is hard. Its easier to write a decoder program rather then decode the bytes by hand. See the following python code to decode the conversation.

http://docs.rackexp.org/bin2str.py

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[–] DurakSuka 9 years ago

Sorry, but that's not how the human brain works.
Hama cheez ba-Beer behtar meshawad!

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[–] cmlegend 9 years ago

I had to learn how to decode binary when I started my computer science courses 20 years ago... its actually pretty easy

You will rise... from the ashes... of this world !

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[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

I had to learn how to decode binary when I started my computer science courses 20 years ago... its actually pretty easy

And your second assignment was to write a decoder and encoder right?

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[–] kay_rock 9 years ago

One of the key factors in the destruction of the US is that we have given way too much power to stupid people: the kind of people who say "I can't do this so it must not be possible."

We need to stop telling every child how smart they are, and start a more honest form of education. Stupid people need to know they're stupid. They need to look at the world with wonder instead of derision, knowing that there are limitations to their own perceptions, developing gratitude that there are people out there who are smarter than they. As it stands now, stupid people think they're geniuses. They think that if they don't understand something, it must be "lame" or "boring," or even, ironically, "stupid."

Maybe if the OP had been told about his intellectual limitations from a young age, he might have spent more time trying to learn things and less time stomping on things and declaring them impossible.

What a world that would be.

Movies are IQ tests; the IMDB boards are how people broadcast their score.

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[–] punishable-by-death 9 years ago

AMEN!!!

"Some may never live, but the crazy never die"
www.epilepticmoondancer.net

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[–] ScottM2753 9 years ago

Wow, I could not have said it better. It's so sad, but this is sooooo true! The scary thing about that movie Idiocracy is at times I am afraid we are headed that way.

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[–] Dejay 8 years ago

I don't even think much of all that has to do with IQ just with simple training. The brain is a remarkable machine. Hex / Binary is just another alphabet and you could probably train yourself in less than 5 days with a few hours training each. Just like you learn to type on a qwerty keyboard it becomes "muscle memory".

So I kinda agree with you but worse then that it's just lack of interest or laziness. And lack of imagination.

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[–] khamier 9 years ago

Binary isn't that easy to translate without knowing the context it is being used in.

But ASCII is a very simple and straight forward translation. Morse code is harder to understand than ASCII.

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[–] soupphysics 9 years ago

What you wrote there, is just a number, until you specify some protocol for translating it to something else.

But if we agree that it's to be seen as bytes, and then translated into characters using a code table such as the ascii table, then with a little training, you can do it in your head fairly easily, but of course not very fast.

So while it's false, that nobody can read binary, it's probably fair to say that no normal human could do it fast, as reading regular text.

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[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

you could at leaste put delimeters between the bytes.

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[–] DurakSuka 9 years ago

You clearly have never coded in your life, or are a *beep* coder. What you write is just full of *beep* Stop living in a fantasy world where impossible things happen, boy.

Hama cheez ba-Beer behtar meshawad!

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[–] Sidewindr 8 years ago

What are you DRIBBLING about. ASCII is the ordinary character set, so reading it is the same as any text. Even as Hex, most coders would do the translation in their head from Hex to ASCII.

Actually ASCII is the numerical representation or encoding of plain text characters, symbols and codes. This encoding can be represented as binary, decimal or hexadecimal etc.

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[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

As for binary, any assembly coder would trivially be converting in their head 8-digit binary to hex- and hex is what most coders use to recognise op-codes, data or whatever.

Nah we never bother with binary. We only bothered converting decimal to hexadecimal like all the asemblers of the day understood. Unless your computer is so old that your litterally inserting one instruction at a time via a row of switches you used an assembler so you could use Text to represent CPU instructions. If you were wasting your time converting assembly instructions and numbers by hand your an unemployed sucker with too much time on your hands even for back then.

Raw hex editing was only fun when you were cheating with a game save file. And only after you learned that x86 and 6502 chips were little endian and you had to flip the bytes manually. I'm a big endian advocate just because of that alone.

Ascii is easy but slow and tedious. EBDIC was the real brain screw in those days.

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[–] xystophoros 9 years ago

Anyone can read binary provided they've been taught how, and they have a little time to "translate" the ones and zeros into letters. Reading it in real time would be a challenge for most people, but I'd imagine there are longtime coders, sysadmins and network engineers who can read it at a glance because they've been working with it for so long.

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[–] Paradox_01 9 years ago

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

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[–] 9 years ago

[deleted]

[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

coders have learned not to wast time converting. We actually use 0xHEX and 0bBIN instead when writing code. Sys admins only care about memorizing 3 bit binary(Octal) for posix permission bits. And network engineers may memorize rolling bitmasks for when they are calculating CIDR blocks but most use calculators and you only need to memorize the the rolling bitmasks right before a cisco test which bans calculators on the test.

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[–] Neuronhead 9 years ago

All of the characters in this thread are ascii characters.

"Read" is contextual. Binary is used for all kinds of things. You might know where the parity bit is in a byte. If it's 0 it's off if it's 1 it's on. Voila, you've read binary. Big deal.

I think you might be making a joke about one of the silly lines in the movie though. The dude says something like "it's just hex and ascii, i worked it out".

I choose to believe what I was programmed to believe

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[–] squireson2002 9 years ago

It is much more difficult to learn a foreign language than hexadecimal.

Think about it. Morse code is just a 3 digit representation of 26 letters.
Hex is just a two digit representation of , well, slightly more than just the 26 lowercase letters, but you get the idea.
It's simple substitution. I promise you that I can teach someone hex in 10 minutes and after there or four hours of practice, they will be able to read hex as quickly as they read Ascii.

It is much more difficult for us to learn an unfamiliar foreign language than it is to learn a simple substitution encoding. BTW What do you mean , "in real time". As fast as the computer processes hex ? No . As fast as a human can process ascii (reading and writing) absolutely people read and write hex in real time.

As for binary, I suspect that fact that all the lowercase letters would start with a string of space holding zeroes that I would go nutz trying to learn to read it. But again, simple substitution.

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[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

I can read ascii just by opening a text editor Its so easy. Why hell my text on this board is being stored in UTF-8 which is a subset of ascii (Don't set the highest bit). Which is why this movie is kindamisleading. Our computer guy woulden't bother reading raw Hex he'd have just used text. Speaking of the hexidecimal he was reading was just the name Josiphine Chesher written over and over with some charatcers occasionally borked.

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[–] gondigan 9 years ago

It was the 23rd century, they could beam themselves many light years away, they had implants at the base of their necks that interfaced with their biology so being able to read ASCII and binary seems beneath them if you put it in perspective.

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[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

Beneath them as in they used a text representation. Still though if they still have monochrome green screen computer terminals and still seem to be using IPv4 addressing makes me wonder when they started stepping backwerds.

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[–] jonathonwisnoski-856-217430 9 years ago

ASCII is standard text, just sayin...

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[–] gondigan 9 years ago

ASCII is plain text at a high level however how it is represented in low level is a number. The number can then be displayed in hex or binary (or something else), so basically knowing the number representation of the ASCII symbol and knowing hex or binary is what I was referring to.

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[–] AnonymousCritic 9 years ago

A lot of geeks use binary to pass messages in class these days. Once you understand the columns (http://www.instructables.com/id/Learn-Binary-The-easy-way-01000001-00000001/) it's not so hard.

a 1st 01100001
b 2nd 01100010
c 3rd 01100011
d 4th 01100100
e 5th 01100101
f 6th 01100110
g 7th 01100111
h 8th 01101000
i 9th 01101001
j 10th 01101010
k 11th 01101011
l 12th 01101100
m 13th 01101101
n 14th 01101110
o 15th 01101111
p 16th 01110000
q 17th 01110001
r 18th 01110010
s 19th 01110011
t 20th 01110100
u 21st 01110101
v 22nd 01110110
w 23rd 01110111
x 24th 01111000
y 25th 01111001
z 26th 01111010

*To signify that something is a letter, and not a number, you put the code 010 for a capital and 011 for lower case. So the letter 'A', is the code 01000001, and a lower case 'a' is 01100001.

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[–] metusbatmanv 8 years ago

No one uses binary to pass messages in class, you delusional person. Oh let me guess, you're going to tell me a story about how you pass notes in class in binary? Yeah, you're delusional.

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[–] crc32 (2584) 7 years ago

binary is too combersome. hex is tolerable if you have a decoder handy otherwise your wasting way to much time in class.

I didn't realize that thats why 'A' starts at 0x31 and 'a' tarts at 0x61 (which is make sure they line up with the prefix 011 for lowercase and 011 for lowercase). I had always wondered why they had that 7 character gape between the lowercase and uppercase. It always seemed so odd.

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