Day: December 1, 2007

Heh.

I’ve been reading through Richard Dawkins’ books and am currently half way through The Blind Watchmaker (2006 paperback edition) and on page 119 he writes:

In my computer’s ROM, location numbers 64489, 64490 and 64491, taken together, contain a particular pattern of contents—1s and 0s which—when interpreted as instructions, result in the computer’s little loudspeaker uttering a blip sound. This bit pattern is 10101101 00110000 11000000.

Of course, this piqued my curiosity. Did Dawkins just make that up, or is this really the contents of a specific bit of memory on a specific computer?