http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/toronto/story.html?id=702d1...
Insert your own joke here.
Ok. Those confusing verses of John's Revelation mention names, numbers, and numbers of names. Now, a name is a way of hailing someone (or some beast)...
... no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark... of the beast, or the number of its name. ... the number of the beast is a human number, ... 666 [or 616].
Aha. Maybe the mark is an advanced RFID chip, which has the beast's name, an (RSA?) public key. That key is an "inhumanly big" number, but its number of digits ("the number of its name") is humanly comprehensible, even to author John. And maybe the key has 2048 bits, and begins 00101111... or slightly less; so in decimal, it has (gasp) 616 digits!!! Or maybe the beast lives in Grand Rapids. -- Don Reble djr@nk.ca