Distributed.net Finds Optimal 25-Mark Golomb Ruler

kpearson writes "Distributed.net's 8-year-old OGR-25 distributed computing project has just proven conclusively that the predicted shortest 25-mark Golomb ruler is optimal. 'The total length of the ruler is 480, with marks at positions: 0 12 29 39 72 91 146 157 160 161 166 191 207 214 258 290 316 354 372 394 396 431 459 467 480. (This ruler may alternatively be expressed in terms of the distance between those positions, which is how dnetc displays them: 12-17-10-33-19-...).' 124,387 people participated in the project and two people found the shortest ruler, one on October 10, 2007 and the other on March 24, 2008."

Comments

wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

i know we're all supposed to be nerds here, but this is way left of field. dont supposed you could have included a LITTLE more info in the summary as to what the fuck you're talking about?

Re:proved?

[martin-boundary]

Did I fail math class?

Yes. Yes, you did.

Re:Story

[Raenex]

why the hell is everything tagged "story"?

I have another question. What happened to the option to turn off tags?

And one more: Is there any forum to discuss Slashdot issues? Seems like the only way is to bitch off-topic in the articles.

Hello, context???

[schamberlin]

That's got to be the most incomprehensible story summary I've ever seen posted to Slashdot, and that's saying a lot. Seriously. The predicted shortest 25-mark Golomb ruler is optimal? What on earth are you talking about? How about giving us the barest minimum of a context, so we might have some tiny clue what that spew of buzzwords is getting at.

Re:Hello, context???

[glwtta]

we should be eager to find out, and competent enough to take the simple step necessary to do so

Oh get off it. It's not about being "spoonfed", it's about writing a decent summary. When mentioning a relatively obscure topic (yes, yes, all real geeks know what a Golomb ruler is, etc) it's pretty much common sense to throw in a one-sentence description (so we at least know the general context), instead of, say, a useless list of numbers. I don't need you to tell me what I'm supposed to be eager to do, thank you very much.

As far as complaining goes, given that:
- that was a bad summary
- it is the job of an editor to improve on bad summaries
- Slashdot does have editors

It is at least theoretically possible that complaining can accomplish something. Theoretically.

Re:It hasn't been proven, it has been shown.

[gardyloo]

Yes, people routinely get this wrong. They're not wrong this time.

  In this case, the distinction between "it was proven" and "it was shown" is a distinction without a difference. In math, you can "show" something within a restricted domain; for example, that a postulated solution to a given equation really is a solution, without giving a complete family of solutions. One can show it numerically, or show it analytically. Here, a restricted set of postulated solutions over the only available domain (the positive integers) was exhaustively searched for actual solutions, and the set that satisfied the postulates was also shown to be optimal (in a well-defined sense for the problem).

    This is no more a "non-proof" than the proof of the 4-color map theorem in two dimensions, which was also "shown" using an exhaustive search.

Re:Story

[Zadaz]

Is there any forum to discuss Slashdot issues? Seems like the only way is to bitch off-topic in the articles.

No, you can directly email them but of course they will only use that as ammunition to be taken out of context and savaged via the poorly conceived "Disagree Mail" "Feature".

I'd leave, but there isn't really an alternative that's better. Instead I use adblock and suck off this teat without providing benefit to the site. (Unless you include this post as "providing benefit" which is dubious since it will almost certainly get modded down.)