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ChromeOS Laptop-Smashing Ad Equation Solved
An anonymous reader writes "Google's latest marketing video for Chrome OS is interesting to watch for the laptop-smashing amateurs or the slow motion fans, but the real fun may be at 2:24 in the video where a X=G/(CHROM-3) equation is displayed on a chalkboard. Only 20 hours later, it has already been cracked by Jamendo founder Sylvain Zimmer and his team. They posted details on how they did it and won a Cr-48 netbook, which may not even be delivered because they are not in the US."
I think you mean solved... and, well, it's not exactly a challenge to anyone who's had highschool calc, unless I'm missing something.
I've read that summary three times now and I still cannot figure out what the fuck it is talking about. Except it's probably some kind of advertising for something called a Jamendo, whatever the hell that is.
Truly a new low for Slashdot "journalism".
It's fun to watch the lappy get trashed in creative ways, but especially with the tea/toaster/kitchen sink I think the machine really showed itself to be a bit flimsy. I'm all for cheap and light, but I don't want it to feel cheap. That kind of sheet plastic has a weird feel and look to it, and speaking strictly in terms of aesthetics, it's hard to catch on when the product looks and feels cheap. One of Apple's hallmarks has been being able to create a light product that still feels very structurally sound and rigid in your hand.
I live in constant fear of the Coming of the Red Spiders.
It looks like the board has the equation X = G/(CHROM - 3). Each of the variables is defined on the blackboard. So it's just simple calculus to get the numerical values. The url just came from the numerical answer, where the numerator references goo.gl, and the denominator gave the shortened url in letters represented as pairs of numbers (a=1 b=2...) The bit about Chromium and Uranium was interesting, as it gave meaning to what X meant, but it wasn't important to finding the prize.
To: alicethesurfer@gmail.com
From: alf@nbc.com
I found your cat. It was delicious.
Speaking of a lost cat: Missing Missy
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
If I had known about the contest, I would have easily solved it in 5-10 min. Any competent high school graduate could do the same.
25 computers were harmed !!!
Think of the computers !
After seeing this video, I'm finally convinced that Chrome OS has absolutely nothing to do with the cause of desktop Linux adoption, except in a technical sense. Another blow to those endless advocates.
Surely other "high-tech" companies shouLd hide puzzles in their AdS--let us Have some Daily fun Out There--it's a clever and inexpensive way tO get tech-savvy people to pay Really close attention to ads, and Garner free publicity.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
So what the promo is saying is that if I break or lose my ChomeOS laptop, Google will automatically replace it for me?
That sounds like a sweet deal.
When I solved it, I got 42.
To put a witty saying into 120 characters, jst rmv ll th vwls.
This reminds me how free-trade lobbyists claim that the US is losing jobs because we are "not educated enough" as allegedly demonstrated by our programmers not winning international contests.
However, they fail to mention that the prizes are worth far more under third-world salaries. Thus, a third-world programmer has a much bigger incentive. A laptop may be equivalent to 2-days' wages in the US, but a month's-worth overseas. Thus, contest rankings are a poor metric of national skill.
Table-ized A.I.
The 'cloud' is dumb. The only point is to take away your ownership of anything so it makes it cheaper for a company to sell you something. They don't have to produce any cd's or dvd's or packaging, they just send you your copy which ofcourse you can't make into a hardcopy that you can save somewhere.
How will anything ever be saved from here on out? No one owns anything they just have a license to use bits....40 years from now what if I want to listen to one of my iTunes songs? Won't be possible...and it's pretty likely that it won't exist anywhere because it only existed with digital copies with super drm....
You can keep your cloud, I like to be able to own something I paid for...
How to use the Cloud:
Buy a device that can access it
Pay a monthly subscription for a connection
Pay a monthly subscription for storage
They just turned a single transaction for a set price into monthly charges forever....thats the cloud
How long, exactly, did it take Google to re-invent the X-terminal? Good thing they aren't hiring old-farts like me, or they'd fire me for laughing at their history-repeating ignorance.
No no no, it's the X-terminal with WIRELESS!
I faintly remember from school that "winning" means actually getting ownership and physical access to it, so according to Google's thin print he can't and didn't "win" anything, and probably won't in the future ("would you perhaps a like free Google account instead?").
I don't really get why he'd actually want that netbook in the first place, I am betting its EULA says "you are allowed to use it only within the USA border and only if you have an American passport".
Here's what the whole thing looks like in Wolfram Alpha all at once: (9*10^4+3^4+10)/100/((2^8-10+4*6!+17^4+11!/5+integ(3x^5,x,1,9))(2*23^6-((2^28+4)/10-(22^4+3*70-sqrt(81))))(3*17^4-(sqrt(256)+31*30^2))(17*8!+93^2-10)(12*(11^2-6)/(5*pi)integ(4sin(x)/x,x,0,inf))-3) - Wolfram|Alpha
The 200 character limit in the input box is annoying, and it seems that you can't get around it by creating a URL manually. Managed to get it from 220 characters to under 200 by using valid shortened stuff like "integ" instead of "integral", and removing * and () where possible.
I assume you mean Xnest or something. :)
Anyhow, there is a huge difference between something being in 'the cloud' and something being 'on the server'. The server may crash. Or someone might spill coffee in it. Or drop an ice cream into it. or something.
The point of an OS authenticating you against the cloud instead of single servers is that you'll have your data no matter what.
(Except if you break the AUP/ToS, or Google somehow manages to lose your data.. which doesn't happen often, but .. heh .. )
How long, exactly, did it take Google to re-invent the X-terminal?
An X terminal requires a central X server to run your apps on. AIUI, on a chrome OS device, the apps are downloaded and run locally (as they are essentially javascript on web pages). It's a pretty fundamental difference.
How long, exactly, did it take Google to re-invent the X-terminal?
An X terminal requires a central X server to run your apps on. AIUI, on a chrome OS device, the apps are downloaded and run locally (as they are essentially javascript on web pages). It's a pretty fundamental difference.
Wrong at several counts.
First, the X terminal is (or rather, runs) the X server. But that's the nitpicking part. The more important part is that while having an X terminal connecting to a certain central server may have been a quite common setup, it's far from a requirement. Indeed, the only X terminal I've ever worked on did not connect to a central server, but allowed me to connect to any of a set of ca. 100 workstations throughout the institute, and in addition allowed me to give an explicit hostname, which enabled me to log in to a Linux computer which was located there, but not properly integrated into the pool. The only ways the X terminal would have become unusable would be if either the terminal itself were broken, the network was down, or all the workstations I were allowed to log in were down.
Also, with web apps, only part of the apps runs on the local computer (although I'll grant that it's still a difference to X terminals, where almost nothing runs on the local computer). But apart from performance, this doesn't make a big difference from the user's point of view: If the network is down, you cannot work using either web apps or X terminals.
Honestly, I wonder how far back in the stone age a lot of posters here are. I've got a stupid, cheap, no-guarantees (like, say, no SLA), low-end consumer ADSL connection here for my SME... And I've got a hard time remembering when was the last time I couldn't reach the Internet. All my taxes + invoices + project tracking and whatnots are *all* done using Google Docs. No more versioning issues (still stuck in the "doc created with Word version 'x' won't open unless the people you send it too also have Word version 'x' ?), I worry way less about backups (sure, once in a while I still download the docs and burn them to archive), I can *TRIVIALLY* share any of them with colleagues.
The only reason not to work with Google Docs is if you're doing top-secret research / development containing way too sensitive data (and, no, neither your SME's work nor most of your Fortune 500's work ain't top secret enough to warrant worrying about storing at Google and having competitors/gvt gain access to it).
I can see a few valid concerns, but living in 2010 and saying "but you need an Internet connection" or "but it won't work when I don't have Internet access" is really retarded. You may be living in the stone age but most of the world ain't. There's freaking ADSL and freaking (free) WiFi connection covering, what, 90% of the people having Internet access 99.9% of the time.
So the "but you need Internet access" argument is really, really, utmostly retarded.
No sh!t Sherlock, you also need Internet access to mod this flamebait ;)
confirmed: this doesnt work on google calc, or bing/wolfram alpha
the form clearly says you must be in the US to get the chrome pc. they are in France. FAIL!
Like the ancestry.com ads that beg for a joke version where a person finds that their ancestor was not the town doctor, but perhaps a war criminal or slave trader, this Chrome ad is begging for a version where Google's offices are burned down or raided by the authorities.
"Unfortunately this Chrome laptop stores everything on the web, so you're absolutely fucked and there is nothing you can do."
Also it's chilling how they consider eveything between the computer's OS and Google to be "extra baggage."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Good job on finding one of the Easter Eggs, but there are still two left!
Best of luck everyone!
cardinal sine, you have my respect - you just beaten mathematics and won the level.
I suggest you work on beating Turing's thesis then
Fnarr, fnarr, fnarr. Really? How about:
"All your documents are stored online, and available to you according to our whim"
I think Franklin needs are re-write
"Those who would sacrifice ownership for convenience deserve neither"
Good job on finding one of the Easter Eggs, but there are still two left!
So what? For the vast majority of the world not living in the US we apparently can't win anything. In terms of a marketing campaign it is a really great way to alienate the majority of your customers.
It's closer to NeWS than X11. It runs code for defining the UI locally, rather than on the server, and only does the back-end processing on the server (not sure if it still does, but the Google spreadsheet used to evaluate formulae on the client too, meaning that everything was treated as a double because that's the only type of number JavaScript understands).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Wait, isn't 48Cr a radioactive isotope?
Yeah, is that another easter egg?
I really wanna know who's behind that email address!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
However, there is one Riddle who shall not be named.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Now it says:
Chrome
You deserve a Chrome notebook.
Thank you for your interest. The form you are trying to access has either expired or reached its maximum registration limit.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Mom and Dad will be so impressed by this. Keep up the incredible, marginalizing work, Google. Let us know when you're ready for the mainstream.
Will the bloody thing survive a thorough blending?
You can't handle the truth.
It says in black in white that they only send laptops to people in the United States. If he's not in the US, they won't send one to him.