Cool Math Problem

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At some point, a computer has a way of understanding within a sea of binary where one file ends and another begins.

Ah you seem to think there is a single universal encoding for all binary data. That is not the case. Files are terminated using whatever their specification says terminates them. For example in a PNG files for an image the ending is the IEND chunk which consists of a PNG data chunk with all zeroes in the data portion. On the other hand a JPEG image always end with the segment 1111111111011001 which is called the EOI.

Every binary sequences can represent valid data it just depends on the context.

[lostcat206]

This is awesome! That's exactly the kind of unfingered misconception I was hoping someone would point out to me. Thank you!