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Tuesday, March 18, 2008

WHAT is THIS??

As a matter of idle curiosity I'd like to know what the material is that I have posted below. I have no use for it; it merely piques my curiosity.

When I was doing some research for the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province for one of my personal blogs, a modern photo was used to illustrate in a very tiny way how a magma fissure appeared. I clicked on the pic but instead of an enlargement, I pulled up a page with these characters. The page went on and on and on and there were many more different characters further down, although much repetition of these also.

Does anyone know what this mess is and why? It surely does not appear to have anything to do with vulcanism.
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COMMENTS:
Blogger Progressive Traditionalist said...

Hello, Worried.
That stuff is known as "extended characters."
It's machine code.

It's possible that you could reduce those into a programming language with the proper editor or a disassembler.

There's also a way of doing that by calling up specific areas of memory with DOS commands.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 6:17:00 PM

Blogger Kvatch said...

Worried... To add to what PT said, this may actually be the "raw" data of the photo. A browser won't render a photo (a JPEG file or a GIF file, both photo formats BTW) unless it knows that the files are, in fact, photos. And the way that a browser tells is by the extension on the file that is being served by the site that it comes from. A photo without the ".jpg" extension in the name may be treated as raw data as you saw above rather than as a picture to be rendered.

Know that might be somewhat hard to follow. If you want a more detailed explanation, please email me.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008 8:48:00 PM

Blogger Worried American said...

Ye gods! Thank you, gentlemen. This info is sufficient to satisfy my curiosity and solve the mystery. I have no need of an in depth education as I still wouldn't understand it. I do not comprehend computer language although I understand the machines speak quite a different one from humans. That was a looooong page of characters just to reproduce a simple photo.
I am awed by the minds of theoretical physicists; the minds of computer people who create computer-speak is beyond me. Gads! How did you know all that??

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 2:20:00 AM

Blogger Daniel said...

I thought it was page 1 of George's Presidential Memoirs!

All the question marks gave me the clue!

Wednesday, March 19, 2008 3:27:00 AM

Blogger Worried American said...

Daniel/David G: LOL !

Labels:

5 Comments:

  • At Tuesday, March 18, 2008 6:17:00 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

    Hello, Worried.
    That stuff is known as "extended characters."
    It's machine code.

    It's possible that you could reduce those into a programming language with the proper editor or a disassembler.

    There's also a way of doing that by calling up specific areas of memory with DOS commands.

     
  • At Tuesday, March 18, 2008 8:48:00 PM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

    Worried... To add to what PT said, this may actually be the "raw" data of the photo. A browser won't render a photo (a JPEG file or a GIF file, both photo formats BTW) unless it knows that the files are, in fact, photos. And the way that a browser tells is by the extension on the file that is being served by the site that it comes from. A photo without the ".jpg" extension in the name may be treated as raw data as you saw above rather than as a picture to be rendered.

    Know that might be somewhat hard to follow. If you want a more detailed explanation, please email me.

     
  • At Wednesday, March 19, 2008 2:20:00 AM , Blogger Unknown said...

    Ye gods! Thank you, gentlemen. This info is sufficient to satisfy my curiosity and solve the mystery. I have no need of an in depth education as I still wouldn't understand it. I do not comprehend computer language although I understand the machines speak quite a different one from humans. That was a looooong page of characters just to reproduce a simple photo.
    I am awed by the minds of theoretical physicists; the minds of computer people who create computer-speak is beyond me. Gads! How did you know all that??

     
  • At Wednesday, March 19, 2008 3:27:00 AM , Blogger Daniel said...

    I thought it was page 1 of George's Presidential Memoirs!

    All the question marks gave me the clue!

     
  • At Wednesday, March 19, 2008 6:21:00 AM , Blogger Unknown said...

    Daniel/David G: LOL !

     

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