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."

Comments

cracked?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:cracked?

[Laxori666]

They had to figure out what the numbers meant.

Re:cracked?

[MokuMokuRyoushi]

You are. And most other people are missing something as well. Their highschool calc. If they're not using it regularly, it tends to leak into oblivion. It's worse than that actually - I work in the tile/flooring industry, and you wouldn't believe the number of people who call in telling me the dimensions of their bathroom floor, and could you please tell me how many square feet that is?
Actually, that's not entirely accurate, "please" is generally excluded. ...You see my point.

Re:cracked?

[Anonymous Coward]

True. Really the biggest point was noticing that 900.91 == goo.gl. The rest follows trivially.

Re:cracked?

[Anonymous Coward]

And most other people are missing something as well.

No, apparently something else is missing since the "solution" was to convert the digits to letters and go to the matching goo.gl url.

Re:cracked?

[zach_the_lizard]

If I have to guess, what they first did is solve for the various letters; in the video, each letter is given an equation, which resolves down to a number. Then they plug those into the equation at the bottom, resulting in X = 900.91/191605050401140404051920181525. Someone then had a flash of insight, noticed the 900.91 is similar to goo.gl, and thought that it could be a URL. But, just typing that in by itself would yield nothing. They had to get the random string of numbers to mean something. So they split it into 2 digits per character, 19 16 05 05.... and made the realization that those corresponded to a position of a letter in the alphabet. 19 is S, 16 is P, 5 is E, and so on. The final URL becomes: goo.gl/speedanddestroy. It's not impossible, it just takes some careful thought and attention to detail. I would have probably made it to the 900.91/number here stage if I had seen this beforehand, but the 900.91 is goo.gl insight probably would have eluded me, let alone dividing the numbers up like that.

Re:cracked?

[zach_the_lizard]

Not all of it is high school calc. IIRC the integral of 4sin(x)/x has to be solved with Taylor series, and I only got those in the second semester of university calculus. One then has to take the limit to infinity of the resulting series, which may or may not be doable for a high school kid (not sure how hard the limit is; I'm too lazy to solve / look up the series)

Re:cracked?

[MokuMokuRyoushi]

That's just geekiness. l337sp34k and all that jazz.

Re:cracked?

[jmerlin]

This has become the de-facto standard for e-puzzles these days. Step 1 - provide puzzle that results in very large number of some kind. Step 2 - have some kind of splitting and/or decoding step that's somewhat obvious that will convert the result to text. Step 3 - set up url, award prize of some kind to first N visitors. It's old and worn down, I would've expected better.

Re:cracked?

[JayRott]

I don't know why exactly but I really really want one myself. I registered for the pilot program, but at this point I think I just need to get in touch with one of the Google people and offer a hand job. I really have hit gadget rock bottom... is there a 12 step program or something?

Re:cracked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did solving this come with an award?

Because publicity. There's no point in requiring a significant contributions to the sciences for a giveaway.

Though I was hoping for something a bit more interesting when I clicked the link, I don't see the point in criticising Google for lack of originality here. It may be a familiar setup by this point, but it's still a cool thing to do. It's just a small bonus, it's not like we're entitled to have everything they do be completely awesome.

Re:cracked?

[ronocdh]

It's old and worn down, I would've expected better.

IOW: you didn't win, so you deride the contest rather than congratulate the winner.

Re:cracked?

[billcopc]

Despite the many who will criticize and berate you for stating the obvious, I was thinking the exact same thing as I was reading the article. It seems like even an aspiring geek would have figured this one out in a matter of minutes. Sure, it's harder than your average "skill-testing question", but hardly something to brag about. I mean, a lot of us decode (or create) far more intricate cyphers every day. Realistically, Google wanted it to be solved quickly, as it is a very inexpensive publicity stunt. Of course, the prize being a single $199 Google netbook, the bragging rights are quite minimal. It's not like Distributed.net was going to be involved...

Re:cracked?

[severoon]

Actually quite basic math there too. Why did solving this come with an award? I can point to several thousand problems in various books on my shelves that are orders of magnitude more difficult than that entire problem, all of which are commonly assigned as nothing more than homework problems. Hell, I just did it in Wolfram Alpha in 5 mins. The only really tricky part was the URL bit but EVERYONE does that these days so it's assumption #1. Old puzzle methodology is old. Come on Google, be original.

...says the one who didn't win...

Re:cracked?

[smash]

Did you think to go do the effort to solve the problem before realising what the consequences of doing so may be? The fact that someone bothered to go to the effort when seeing it on the ad is "worth" just as much, if not more than the actual ability to solve it.

It shows that they're a person who is willing/eager to work on problems "just because" (they have an active mind) rather than being forced to by an employer or similar.

Re:cracked?

[julesh]

This is what I get for making a factual and relevant comment.

No, it's what you get for thinking somebody's sexuality is (1) relevant to the conversation and (2) can be guessed based on what kind of portable computing device they like.

Or maybe it's for implying that /b/tards are gay. Not sure which.

Re:cracked?

[Patch86]

Why did solving this come with an award?

To generate PR, obviously. Why else do you think we're even talking about it? It probably amounts to some pretty dirt-cheap advertising.

Re:cracked?

[julesh]

Not all of it is high school calc. IIRC the integral of 4sin(x)/x has to be solved with Taylor series, and I only got those in the second semester of university calculus

My integration is a bit rusty, but I suspect it can be integrated by an appropriate substitution chosen to allow simplification using standard trig identities. OTOH, the Taylor series approach is probably easier.

At least here in the UK, BTW, Taylor series are part of the "further maths A level" syllabus, which is essentially equivalent to the last year of high school for students taking the most advanced maths courses possible.

Re:cracked?

[L473ncy]

If they encoded the resulting equation with base64 would that have made it a bit more challenging? I doubt many people would make it past that step, even I would find a message encoded in base64 meaningless.

Re:cracked?

[johanatan]

Social engineers need not apply.

Re:cracked?

[aussie_a]

which is essentially equivalent to the last year of high school for students taking the most advanced maths courses possible.

I don't know about UK schools, but at the school I went to such people would have numbered in the single digits.

Re:cracked?

[smash]

OK let me spell it out for you. The guy watched the ad and paid attention. Enough to actually go through and work out the easter egg. Google wants to encourage people to watch, and pay attention to their ads.

Re:cracked?

[hairyfeet]

Yeah it isn't like placing that few seconds in the video or giving away a single netbook for figuring it out is gonna cost Google squat, and it seems to be getting press, so hey? it looks like it did its job. So does anybody know what the actual specs of the thing are? All I've found is it is 12 inches and has flash. I'm assuming it is some sort of ARM CPU, yes? Anybody know which one? How fast? Because this thing MIGHT be fun to hack around on, key word might.

I've played with some of the low end Android tablets and frankly there gets a certain point where the specs get so low as to make the thing pretty much unusable. Try the $99 special they have at Walgreen's and you'll see what I mean. The thing is slower than molasses in January and even surfing the web on it is about as fun as a root canal. Since the video shows him hitting the web pretty quick I'm gonna assume it isn't as bad as that, but since they are going for the low end from what I've read it'll still be probably pretty anemic.

Anyway I'm sure the FLOSS guys will hack the hell out of it if it is at all possible and then we'll see what it can do. If the Linux guys can get a small and light Linux distro on this thing with VNC support I may have to go pick one of these suckers up. Being able to watch my videos and access my apps on my desktop via VNC on this would be pretty sweet if it is cheap enough.

Re:cracked?

[MMC Monster]

err... Or you can just google for the answer...

The first result is Wolfram alpha.

Where, if you put in the integral, you can pick out the answer: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=integral+of+(4+sin+x)%2Fx

Re:cracked?

[makomk]

In the few UK schools that offer it, the number of Further Maths A-level students is indeed usually in the low single digits. It works out as quite a good class size, actually.

Re:cracked?

[monkeyhybrid]

Sheldon?

Re:cracked?

[pla]

Or maybe it's for implying that /b/tards are gay. Not sure which.

Heh, inorite? Silly GP.

At 11, I still considered girls "icky"... Tough to know your sexual orientation at that age. So to call them "gay", well... At best, they might have an unhealthy interest in yaoi.

Re:cracked?

[owlstead]

Could you run that by me again?

Re:cracked?

[owlstead]

Hey, no cheating! Using Google to solve a Google puzzle. Shame on you!

Seriously, it is amazing how much time we (old) folks forget how much is on internet.
* I just looked up how long I can store stuff in the freezer on-line
* how to get rid of bugs (and which friggin' bug is this? hell, you've got bugs that walk & eat paper?)

Those are just things that I looked up lately. Most people even don't know that most manuals are online - I'm trowing out manuals each time I receive them after retrieving the digital version online.

Re:cracked?

[edumacator]

The reward is that we are all sitting around talking about Google Chrome OS, and the winner is...Google.

Re:cracked?

[TheRaven64]

...says the one who didn't win...

I didn't watch the advert, so I think I won. Unfortunately, I only won round 1. I lost in round 2 by clicking on the slashvert.

Re:cracked?

[TheRaven64]

I'm assuming it is some sort of ARM CPU, yes?

Nope, Atom. If it had an ARM CPU I'd be tempted to get one and put a real OS on it. As it is, it's uninteresting hardware running an uninteresting OS. And yet, in spite of that, we're all talking about it.

And some people still claim that Google isn't an advertising company...

Re:cracked?

[monkyyy]

hey anon what are u doing out of the /b/ cages?

Re:cracked?

[k8to]

I did this stuff my 3rd year in high school (not my last) in the united states. We called it "math seminar" and there were four of us total in the class, two 3 year students, and two four years.

The class size was useful for ensuring everyone was following a long, but worked poorly for maintaining focus. I would have traded it easily for a group of around eight or ten.

My fourth year in high school I simply stopped taking math. It would have been a class of two, which seemed awfully silly. I learned a great deal more taking more history classes and a theatre class than I could possibly have learning esoteric math I'd probably have never used again.

Re:cracked?

[e4g4]

the integral of 4sin(x)/x has to be solved with Taylor series, and I only got those in the second semester of university calculus

Fortunately (as is mentioned in the blog post), (working) knowledge of college level calculus is not actually required. You can pretty much plug and chug with wolfram alpha - it's got Mathematica baked into it.

Re:cracked?

[JayRott]

Geeze! This is apparently what I get for trying to be funny around here. Some of you really need to stop taking yourselves so seriously. It isn't good for the psyche.

Re:cracked?

[Skidborg]

In other words, Google was nerd sniping.

Re:cracked?

[ErikZ]

Highschool calc? I've yet to encounter a problem outside of the classroom that needed Calculus to solve.

It's sad that people can't figure out square footage though.

Want a fun question? Give people a cubic meter of concrete and ask them how much area that would cover. I've asked 4 people and have gotten 4 complete different approaches to it.

Re:cracked?

[tkalfigo]

Not all of it is high school calc. IIRC the integral of 4sin(x)/x has to be solved with Taylor series, and I only got those in the second semester of university calculus.

It's 2nd semester univ.calculus if you are from the US. In some countries it's indeed high school math.

Re:cracked?

[indi0144]

You referenced an Ad (the Ad) 5 times...

How do those Google psychos DARE to make us talk about their product, are they on an advertising campaign or something? /sarcasm

Re:cracked?

[Dahamma]

Well, that explains your comprehension problems - you just had to tell us upfront you were a math major! Now we know not to expect any understanding of pop culture, social interaction, or fun; nor should we attempt to explain it...

Re:cracked?

[Patch86]

It's my understanding that this netbook is a proof of concept and developer device, not intended for wide release or resale. Presumably they just went with something they could get supplied quickly and cheaply.

I'd be surprised if there aren't ARM models in the line-up when these things are actually on the shelves.

Re:cracked?

[dgriff]

Not all of it is high school calc. IIRC the integral of 4sin(x)/x has to be solved with Taylor series, and I only got those in the second semester of university calculus. One then has to take the limit to infinity of the resulting series, which may or may not be doable for a high school kid (not sure how hard the limit is; I'm too lazy to solve / look up the series)

Or you could just look up the answer on Wikipedia. Which is probably what the creators did when they were trying to come up with an alternative way of writing Pi.

BTW how did they find the factorials for such a big number?

Re:cracked?

[PowerKe]

The problem of factoring a large number is hard when it's a semiprime where both factors are very large numbers around the same magnitude as the square root of the semiprime. In this case 191605050401140404051920181528 can be factored into 2^3 * 3 * 23 * 222647 * 694079 * 8335727 * 269462689 which is easy to factor as the one but largest factor is only ~= 8 million. A naive program that just divides by 2 and all odd numbers up to 8335727 can give you the answer in less than a minute on a moderate computer nowadays. After finding the 8335727 factor you know that you will not have any more factors in 269462689 since sqrt(269462689) ~= 16415 which is the largest divisor you'd have to try to factor it.

Re:cracked?

[bberens]

Solving the puzzle doesn't seem nearly as difficult as having come up with it in the first place.

Re:cracked?

[osgeek]

RTFA

Re:cracked?

[Miseph]

Or selection bias... Unless the all-girls school in question was the only option, GP went there by choice for a specific purpose, and likely had to meet certain academic requirements to do so. That a school full of students who are strong academic achievers who take enough interest in their education to attend a special high school at demonstrable social cost (teens tend to like being around the opposite sex, tend to place high value on time spent thusly, and tend to place negative connotations on those who choose not to do so) would have an advanced academic course with well above-average enrollment is, frankly, unsurprising.

Of course, that all flies out the window if my earlier assumption that going to the all-girls school was entirely voluntary proves false.

Re:cracked?

[Dishevel]

2 can be guessed if you have an iBone.

Re:Er, what?

[Amorymeltzer]

Try watching the video.

solution

[roaringone]

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.

I solved it too!

[jkmartin]

To: alicethesurfer@gmail.com
From: alf@nbc.com

I found your cat. It was delicious.

Missing Missy

[PatPending]

Speaking of a lost cat: Missing Missy

Re:Missing Missy

[Zedrick]

Funniest thing I've read since I don't know when. Mod parent up!

Re:Er, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

A decent summary is too much to ask.

Re:Structual integrity

[angloquebecer]

Considering the Cr-48 is just a device Google is giving out for free to get user feedback, I don't think the structural integrity of the machine matters much. Google may sell them later on as developer machines but I hope nobody buys one to test whether it survives the kitchen sink falling on it.

Re:Structual integrity

[kimvette]

First look at the CR-48:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/213168/google_cr48_first_look_at_the_first_chrome_os_laptop.html?tk=rel_news

Working on the CR-48 can feel like walking a tightrope without a net (pardon the pun). If you're not connected to the Internet on this laptop, you're dead in the water. I wrote this article in Google Docs on the CR-48 during my commute. I should have been fine, because I had a Verizon Mi-Fi card for connectivity (our CR-48 arrived without a SIM card, so I couldn't test out the built-in 3G connection). But halfway through my commute, Chrome reported that it couldn't reach Google Docs. On any other laptop, this would be no problem. I'd copy my existing text into Word and continue working there. But on the CR-48, my options were severely limited. I pasted my changes into an Evernote note instead and hoped that I wouldn't lose my connection to that service.

That's the problem with the cloud. Any problems on your end, at google, or anywhere in between, or if you forget to pay your cellular bill, you're not getting that proposal out to clients, you're not getting your tax returns in on time, you're not getting your paper in on time, etc.

Re:Structual integrity

[angloquebecer]

Any problems on your end, at google, or anywhere in between, or if you forget to pay your cellular bill, you're not getting that proposal out to clients, you're not getting your tax returns in on time, you're not getting your paper in on time, etc.

I agree that the Google Apps definitely all need 100% working "offline mode" to make the CR-48 useful for the few periods when you don't have internet (and if you spend more than a small amount of time offline then cOS is definitely not for you). I don't have a device but I'd assume when you lose connection, Google Docs reacts about the same way as it does on any other OS/browser. The textbox remains editable and you can keep typing into it (unless the textbox suddenly becomes read-only or something crazy...). I realise it's not safe to keep working on something if you don't know when/if you can save it though, which is why offline mode is badly needed. I suppose the issue with the article's writer was that he didn't have the document open, then realised without internet access he couldn't open it. But the same issue would occur with any OS/browser that didn't have internet access.

Re:Structual integrity

[tpstigers]

Where's the -1 misinformed rating. People see "cloud" and they think OMG! Internet connection required! When in fact it's more of a background synchronization process.

So what you're saying is that in this case synchronization can occur without a connection.

Re:Structual integrity

[angloquebecer]

You're describing how the "cloud" should work. Unfortunately for Google, a lot of the core apps for cOS don't have an offline mode. Until web apps get to the level of only using your connection to sync with local storage, we're still in the "cloud == internet connection" stages.

25

[Anonymous Coward]

25 computers were harmed !!!

Think of the computers !

Re:Structual integrity

[kevinmenzel]

Though on any other OS, you would have an offline word processor available.

Year of Linux desktop

[peterindistantland]

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.

Let's have more of this in ads

[PatPending]

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.

Re:Let's have more of this in ads

[angloquebecer]

For some reason I just can't shake the idea you think Slashdot would be prime for this....

Free Replacements as-needed?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I dunno

[Crash McBang]

When I solved it, I got 42.

Re:I dunno

[j00r0m4nc3r]

When I solved it, I got 42.

Actually you didn't solve it. You forgot to convert to ASCII, for which 42 = * . So the real answer is *, which as we all know is a wildcard for "everything". So maybe you did solve it. Creepy...

Contest Incentives

[Tablizer]

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"

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.

Re:Contest Incentives

[Osgeld]

I tend to think we are undereducated, why else would they be selling 300$ netbooks with dinky storage, laughable ram and a gimped keyboard to us?

cause were stupid, that's why

Re:Contest Incentives

[haderytn]

So tempting....

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

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....

I don't know which iTunes songs you're buying but all of the ones I'm purchasing don't have DRM.

Perhaps you should look into that.

Stunned... No, I'm not. I lied.

[bitbucketeer]

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.

Re:Stunned... No, I'm not. I lied.

[jkmartin]

No no no, it's the X-terminal with WIRELESS!

If this is "winning" I want my million dollars too

[UBfusion]

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".

Wolfram|Alpha

[pgn674]

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.

Re:Wolfram|Alpha

[isorox]

Click "Go on computing"

You get the question
http://www3.wolframalpha.com/Calculate/MSP/MSP110419dbee2916i2669300001475f9963d9ebb46?MSPStoreType=image/gif&s=38&w=468&h=156
and result:
http://www3.wolframalpha.com/Calculate/MSP/MSP110919dbee2916i26693000026ffbg47b13125if?MSPStoreType=image/gif&s=38&w=403&h=37

Which is bloody impressive.

90091/191605......
Which we know from the story maps to
goo.gl/spe....

Re:Structual integrity

[julesh]

You're describing how the "cloud" should work. Unfortunately for Google, a lot of the core apps for cOS don't have an offline mode.

It's been a while since I worked with Google Apps (because I think the file management UI is shit), but when I tried it all the apps I tried were perfectly able to work offline once I had downloaded Google Gears. I assume Chrome OS comes with Gears preinstalled...

Re:Stunned... No, I'm not. I lied.

[julesh]

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.

Re:Structual integrity

[Pieroxy]

There is no google gears anymore. It's all in HTML5 now.

Re:Structual integrity

[Rich0]

Well, it seems the point is that "always-on" isn't as reliable as you might think it is. In this case the author of the commentary expected to have continuous service, and ended up not having it.

I do agree that a netbook really isn't suited for travelling businessmen in general. However, when you consider being ultra-light, long battery life, and fully automatic backups and data sharing they would be the most to benefit if it actually worked.

cheating wont work

[mshenrick]

confirmed: this doesnt work on google calc, or bing/wolfram alpha

he didn't win anything

[tommeke100]

the form clearly says you must be in the US to get the chrome pc. they are in France. FAIL!

Another ad begging to be made fun of

[GameboyRMH]

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."

Re:Structual integrity

[falc]

What he said. I just read that pc world article and saw a couple of web apps from that I hadn't noticed before, like the Evernote web app. I added it to chrome and logged in. My internet connection is just fine, but all I got was a message that the web app couldn't be reached right now (or something like that). I can't help but compare this to Nevernote (nevernote.sourceforge.net) running on my linux machine or the real Evernote running on my Mac, which are both working quite nicely right now, thankyouverymuch.

There are, however, a few reasons why I would otherwise consider a cheap chrome notebook. First, this would be the perfect computer for when my toddler wants to see Dora or Diego on my or my wife's laptops, which means watching videos or playing silly little flash games online. Second, I would get one for my mom, who wants to do basically four things with a computer: email, basic web browsing, sharing pictures with family and playing solitaire. For myself, this would be great as my "lunch break" computer at work - something I could leave at the office and use during my lunch break when I want to get other things done that require a computer (staying at my desk is increasingly fruitless - people just can't seem to stop asking me about work when I'm eating!)

...and for those of us not living in the US?

[Roger W Moore]

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.

Re:...and for those of us not living in the US?

[Skidborg]

Go for the win and be satisfied with the fact that you're denying a netbook to an American somewhere?

Re:...and for those of us not living in the US?

[kgwilliam]

The alternative is that a company who wants to do a marketing campaign with a prize has to spend hundreds or thousands of hours of legal time to research and comply with local laws in every country. In your scenario no company could afford to do a marketing campaign like this. Perhaps the local Google office (or name any other company) in your contry has run some sort of contest there? Shoud I be upset that I live in the US and can't win?

Re:Stunned... No, I'm not. I lied.

[TheRaven64]

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).

Re:SME here, all my docs are Google Docs

[TheRaven64]

Mod parent up. This is what a good troll looks like.

Physical danger

[Livius]

Wait, isn't 48Cr a radioactive isotope?

Re:Structual integrity

[TaoPhoenix]

SSH, you might be telling the emperor he has no clothes!

How hard is it to let the computer work using the offline copy of the actual software, and then simply realtime-save documents online (unless the Advanced Mode Opt Out is chosen)?

Does no one see the problem with "let's charge by the megabyte" merged with "we'll burn your cap pushing software internal data"?

Is it time for us to get out the Total Recall movie where some tycoon charges for air?

(Joke) I'm really starting to think the Year of the Linux Desktop will be like 2017, as a rebellion against the Now-Rainy Cloud. Take back your work! Use Linux! (/Joke)

Re:alicethesurfer

[TaoPhoenix]

Yeah, is that another easter egg?

I really wanna know who's behind that email address!

Re:Riddle

[TaoPhoenix]

However, there is one Riddle who shall not be named.

http://goo.gl/speedanddestroy

[TaoPhoenix]

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.

why did they not do the most important step?

[roman_mir]

Will the bloody thing survive a thorough blending?

Well, he clearly won't get the laptop.

[flimflammer]

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.

Re:SME here, all my docs are Google Docs

[rdebath]

Sure the internet is reliable in your basement and there's loads of open wifi's in the student block next door.

My DSL is pretty reliable too; no basements or students round here though so Wifi is in short supply. You could notice it too if you went further than the local Starbucks; not everywhere has internet connection in fact some of the best places to visit you don't get any internet connection for days.

Personally I thought the first GoogleOS netbook was going to be a Wavebox for just this reason.
But joined up thinking was never a corporate strong point.

Re:SME here, all my docs are Google Docs

[RMH101]

what happens if you lose access to your google account? good luck getting a human at Google to help you out with it. Expect multiple days of no access...

Re:Only one of the three Easter Eggs found

[bberens]

Speaking of spoon feeding, I'm still not getting where all of those constants come from.. I can't find any reference, for example, of G = 900.91. Much less the rest of the constants. I sort of expected them to be universal constants, but apparently not. Perhaps someone could inform a moron?

Re:SME here, all my docs are Google Docs

[rdebath]

That's the point; by a 'wavebox' I mean a machine that runs the wave locally so 90% (asstat) of the traffic doesn't even touch Google's servers. Google would be used mainly as the trusted third party to startup a wave.

That way when you lose access to the Google account it actually can be a few days before it gets to be a problem.

Though, that was probably the bit I wasn't thinking through. Expecting Google set up a communication link that they can't monitor ... what was I thinking, I'm not usually that dumb!