>>I was inspired by Carl Sagen's "Contract". In the book, top computers were set to working out the value of Pi to the highest degree of accuracy. Towards the end, the decimals all started to be 1s and 0s, untill their display on the VDU became a circle of 0s in a sea of 1s (or vice versa). I know it's never yet been worked out but that idea of such symetry in numbers, in maths, inspires me: fibinacci series: related to spirals, how many things, from sea-shells to the arrangement of branches and leaves on a plant that obey it; its relationship to the golden rectangle/proportion (or whatever it's called), how classical architecture adhered to this, and, later, the relative sizing of the windows of different storeys in Georgian architecture.
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>Did you ever see the star trek episode where captain kirk outsmarted a computer by asking it to divide a number by 0?<g>

Computer were sooooo dumb back then in the distant future! I'll bet it caused fireworks in the console too (Geez SOME computer engineer didn't cover all the bases, eh?) :-)

At the end of the 60s series "The Prisoner", with Patrick McGooan, No 6 thwarted the computer there (resulting in EVERYTHING blowing up) by typing in the question "Why?".

On the subject, I saw one film where a whole plant blew up cos someone spilt coffee in a keyboard.