New year, new number?

Something brief and nerdy trivia for ya while you watch football, nurse your hangover, or just relax (or, if you're in news like me...working in the newsroom).

The new year marks the use of a new number on our calendars, but did you know there are such thing as "illegal numbers?" Yes, in the United States.

It sounds like a communistic concept, but it exists for a couple reasons. for one example, HD and Blu-Ray DVDs are encoded using a process that requires both the DVD and the player to be able to communicate and ensure that you're using the genuine article. Hackers figured out what that number was, so that they could make free copies of HD and Blu-Ray DVDs and distribute them online. They even created the flag shown to the right to tell people what it is (The code for the color values in the flag combines to create the number). Eventually, DVD equipment manufacturers and DVD makers had to change the number because it'd been publicized.

You may be wondering: what's the number? Well, it's normally shown in hexadecimal (or Base 16 for the math inclined) but in standard decimal notation the number is:

13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,704,640

Another example is in the instance of child porn. Digital files, including pictures, are just a series of zeroes and ones...so if you have child porn images on your computer, you are in possession of an illegal numbers (and you deserve to be shot in the crotch and bled out until dead).

Here's more info on illegal numbers, and the DVD encryption key discussed above.