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

From: Dave Rusin (rusin_at_vesuvius.math.niu.edu)
Date: 03/01/05 

Date: 1 Mar 2005 18:01:24 GMT

In article <khNUd.310$q3.20510@news7.onvoy.net>,
gerard46 <gerard46@rrt.net> wrote:
>| Dave Rusin wrote:
>| Combining these guesstimates puts an upper bound well short of 10^68
>| for the number of humans there will ever be, and the hypotheses necessary
>| to get anywhere close to that are frankly ridiculous. If every person
>| were assigned a 100-digit number there would never, ever be need to
>| have duplicate numbers.
>
>I don't know why you'd want to go overboard and assign such a large
>number

1. I suppose it never hurts to have a cushion in your planning for data space.
   We're all going to regret 4-digit year fields when the Y10K problem strikes.

2. ID numbers need to include check digits for precisely the reasons you
   mentioned later in your post. It's really unfortunate that none were
   included in SSNs (and phone numbers, for that matter) because it means
   it's very easy to mistake a digit or two and suddenly have a pointer
   which is valid but incorrect.

But of course this is really silly. I doubt we'll ever have more than
10^20 humans in the universe; moreover, any scheme we concoct now would
surely be dropped before 10^3 years have passed, having touched no more
than 10^14 lives or so. A couple dozen digits would surely be sufficient.

Yours, as sincerely as ever,

12573232849530602941305

PS. 31020290780903692131355 says Hi.

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