war story: parallel(1) command

[James Knott]

Eric wrote:
> To make it clear, consider an extreme example:
> If an event has a probability of
> occurring once in a googolplex universe lifetimes, will that
> occur in reality?  Of course, not.

And I suppose the Leafs may win the Stanley Cup some day.   ;-)

However, my understanding about probabilities says that while something
may be unlikely, it's not impossible and, according to chance may even
happen immediately.  The astrophysicist Brian Greene has some
interesting comments on this sort of thing, in the realm of infinite
universes.  One thing he mentions is that if the universe is truly
infinite, then some subset of it, such as the portion within our
obversable limits, must be repeated an infinite number of times. 
Another thing he mentioned was if you shuffle a deck of cards, while
highly unlikely, one possible outcome is all the cards will be properly
sorted.  This is because no matter how many there are, there are a
finite number of possible combinations.  Once you've shuffled past that
number of times, and likely well before it, then repeat sequences are
inevitable.

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