Infinity

:For the automobile brand, see Infiniti. For the radio company, see Infinity Broadcasting.

Use of infinity in common speech

In common parlance, infinity is often used in a hyperbolic sense. For example, "The movie was infinitely boring, but we had to wait forever to get tickets."

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In video games, "infinite lives" and "infinite ammo" usually mean a never-ending supply of lives and ammunition. An infinite loop in computer programming is a conditional loop construction whose condition always evaluates to true. As long as there is no external interaction (such as switching the computer off, or the heat death of the universe), the loop will continue to run for all time. In practice however, most programming loops considered as infinite will halt by exceeding the (finite) number range of one of its variables. See halting problem. These terms describe things that are only theoretically infinite; it is impossible to play a video game for an infinite period of time or keep a computer running for an infinite period of time.

Related Topics:
Video games - Infinite loop - Computer programming - Heat death of the universe - Halting problem

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The number Infinity plus 1 is also used sometimes in common speech.

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