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Jan 03 2009

you won’t see four hexadecimal dollars again

Published by davidgerard at 11:23 pm under Uncategorized Edit This

A cheque from Donald Knuth

Don Knuth, the world’s most frighteningly advanced computer scientist, used to send out cheques as rewards for finding bugs in his software (TEX or METAFONT) or errors in his computer science books: US$2.56, or one “hexadecimal dollar.” (Errors in 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated get US$3.16.)

He can’t send any more, though, due to international bank fraud: personal cheques are now obsolete as they’re ridiculously easy to commit fraud with. So he now posts a list of balances at the Bank of San Serriffe.

For your further amusement: Knuth 3:16.

Photo: “A reward from Sir Donald Knuth” by Baishampayan Ghose. Taken 9th June, 2008. CC by-sa 2.0.

One Response to “you won’t see four hexadecimal dollars again”

  1. # maninthemoonon 09 Jan 2009 at 12:21 am edit this

    And I thought that my binary tie was pretty nerdy.

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