Well I said I sampled them. I have taken a longer look and some of them are hard and some appear time-consuming, but I don't see that any of them are impossible. I solved a few and posted them... The fork in the road I is quite simple, and that is listed in the "truly sexy" section.
Criminal cupbearers: Let's assume we only have 10 prisoners and that they each drink from up to 512 bottles. Number the bottles from 0 to 999. Prisoner 9 samples 0 to 511. Prisoner 8 samples 0 to 255 and 512 to 999. Prisoner 7 samples 0 to 127, 256 to 383, 512 to 639, etc. (prisoners alternating between sampling and not sampling blocks of wine in decreasing powers of 2 -- prisoner 0 drinks from every other bottle) Now line up the prisoners after onen month and treat corpses as ones and living prisoners as zeros and you have your answer in binary.
Mysterious Triangle area Well, to make a long story short, they're not triangles.
100 Prisoners and a Lightbulb Well if we assume they can all see the bulb every day, they can just toggle the bulb iff this is the first time they've been selected. If the last prisoner has counted the number of times the bulb has been toggled, he can assert that he is the last one to be selected.
Square Formation Move the "notched" piece to teh righth of the current larger square and put the small square piece in the notch. put the larger of the triangular pieces at the top, horizontal edge of the new formation.
Calendar Cubes I like this one. You need all the numbers from 0 through 9 plus 0 through 3. That's 14 faces. You will never need 00 though, so you can remove one of the 0s. Also, you will only ever need the 3 with 0 or 1, so you can remove it from one of the blocks. The solution: the numbers 1-6 on one block, and 7-9 and 0-2 on the other. Yeah it works.
Mystery Matrix 4. Entry from row plus Entry from row 2 plus 1 mod 10.
Fork in the road I "is that the city you come from?" If the response is yes, go there, otherwise turn away.
Fork in the road II Assume each person is standing on his respective road. "Is one of you a liar?" Yes means he's a truth teller, no means he's a liar.
Egg Dropping 18. Drop from the 10th, 20th, 30th, etc. After it breaks, go back 9 floors and start dropping every floor. You use 18 drops if it can drop from the 98th or 99th floors.
Greedy Pirates It's not apparent to me that this is the intended answer, but "Throw pirates 3 and 4 overboard and divide up the rest between 1,2, and 5. Pirates 1 and 2 will agree to the largest share, and pirate 5 always has a say after that, since 3 and 4 can't agree to anything, so he's needed for the majority.
Hmm, well it's getting late so I'll just do one more: Card Game Bob takes any card over 9. The probability that none will show up is roughly.2 with an average payoff of $5. That means that the probability of getting a face card is.8 with a payoff of 11.5. Using more precise figures, i.e. not.2 and.8, the average payoff is about 10.0857 (706/70)
I sampled a few of the "relatively hard" puzzles... They're interesting, but they only take a minute to figure out. Am I correct in thinking that these are relatively easy, or am I being an ass and flaunting my ability to solve little puzzles?
(In case of the latter, do you want to hire me? I live in Cleveland and go to Cornell University...)
i guess it's a little off topic, but that's actually a pretty good idea... hook up a computer to your phone line (with caller ID) and have it filter known telemarketing agencies. maybe it wouldn't work if they blocked the caller ID-ness, but you could block some people, most notably large companies (like those bastards at MCI that keep calling me)
of course nvidia would make the compiler free, because they make hardware, not software. Think of the compiler as a "marketing vehicle." They make this really cool cg compiler, so everybody uses it to make some sweet graphics, and consumers need to buy new hardware to get 8 billion (or 40) frames per second.
well of course it's an absurd law. Anything you can do that is illegal online that would merit any such sentence is already illegal, but you already knew that. It's rather predictable in light of the demands for hate crime legislation and the like. It's always illegal to kill someone, even if you kill that person because of some ethnic bias. Imagine that. This law is foolish and ought simply to read "crimes committed electronically should be held to the same standard as crimes committed in the flesh", but whatever. People are stupid.
I don't see a problem. A patent infringement is only a problem if the patent owner has a legitimate patent with no prior art (which seems unlikely considering the ridiculously broad scope of the patent) and they take legal action (of which I see no mention here).
The only improvement in technology is probably the bonding process. Clearly the Faraday cage has been around for a while, but making metal-wood laminates that will last is suprisingly difficult.
It's interesting... at my high school anyone caught with a phone or pager got it confiscated. Repeat offenders were suspended. Perhaps this might be a better idea for cinemas (or even for movie theaters for us americans). Simply post a sign saying that persons whose cell phones sound during a movie will be escorted out of the room.
Re:READ THIS -Very Off Topic-
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: 1
The reason it's important is that most slashdot readers are not just interested in computers, but also in constitutional rights. Much of what you see here has only a shred of connection to nerds, but more importantly has to do with things nerds tend to be interested in... More important, it's not very off topic, as the title says, because the movie review is about people getting stripped of their rights without actually doing anything. It has to do with the article and with slashdot because slashdot is a stronghold of those who believe in freedom of thought and information.
You're right though: your palestine story has nothing to do with slashdot.
False. Just a few weeks ago, a US CITIZEN was arrested and sent to a MILITARY DETAINMENT facility on charges of terrorism. He will be tried in military court, not by a jury of his peers as the constitution guarantees. Here's the story from abcnews.com. He has also been denied access to a lawyer.
Re:READ THIS -Very Off Topic-
on
Minority Report
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Yes, the national news media (that is the American television media) seems to think this is a big deal. They fail, however, to realize that this is simply the ruling of an appeals court. The appeals court does not have the power to rule things unconstitutional unless the Supreme Court signs off on it, which they won't. The Supreme Court is perennially conservative, and will not strike down the pledge of allegience or any part of it. They will declare the pledge constitutional, just as they did with "In God we trust."
Wouldn't it just make sense to reverse-engineer this stuff and post it on the internet? I mean it can't be that difficult as far as reverse engineering goes...
This is quite understandable, considering the increasing population of computer-confident consumers, who are no longer worried that they don't have 80 years of tech support and a pretty logo (though some of the white boxes come with pretty logos now). My father is convinced that for his needs, a big national manufacturer is the best way to go, but as for me, I want more bang for my buck, a sentiment I think is becoming more common.
To attempt to "out" a secret organization is silly, simply because the organization then ceases to be secret. Espionage is a vital part of any modernized nation's defense and no nation will allow its spies to be watched (therefore, a wise prince will allow some of his spies to be watched, but not the important ones).
It's a neat idea, but I don't think it will be as useful as one might hope. Anything in the computer image would still have to have a direct line of sight to a camera. It sounds like a great tool, but remember computers can't do *everything*
I guess this is a *little* off-topic, but this really bugs me. They're building this really cool supercomputer, and they list the memory with base-10 prefixes instead of the standard base-2. I mean I can almost understand when dell does that with hard drives (it pumps up the number for advertising purposes), but it's just silly in a scientific arena.
"Earth Simulator" is a rather bold name for a supercomputer, especially when you consider it probably can't even simulate the global weather fast enough to predict it (or even tell you what the weather is in real time). The computer looks impressive, but I think they should have stuck to a more abstract name rather than what I see as false advertisement.
You're wrong on the mp3 part... Technically, they didn't sell you the intellectual property contained in the CD, but rather the physical copy of the cd itself. Although it is technically in violation of copyright laws, you are allowed to make a copy of the intellectual property as long as you only use said copy in place of the original, e.g., you have the CD on your desk but you're listening to it via mp3. The courts allow this and call it "fair use." If you were to keep the mp3 after selling the CD, you are still in violation of the copyright law as you were before, but now there is no fair use to hide behind.
That being said, however, there is no legal basis for charging royalties on the resale of the copy.
(IANAL, but I live with one who specializes in intellectual property, so I'm pretty sure I'm right)
I'll not make a statement as to whether the second amendment is actually good or not, but the fact is that the way the constitution is written, the only way I -- or most other americans -- would allow "really big guns" to be outlawed is if the constitution were changed, and that's not bloody likely.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I said I sampled them. I have taken a longer look and some of them are hard and some appear time-consuming, but I don't see that any of them are impossible. I solved a few and posted them... The fork in the road I is quite simple, and that is listed in the "truly sexy" section.
Some answers from the hard section:
.2 with an average payoff of $5. That means that the probability of getting a face card is .8 with a payoff of 11.5. Using more precise figures, i.e. not .2 and .8, the average payoff is about 10.0857 (706/70)
Criminal cupbearers:
Let's assume we only have 10 prisoners and that they each drink from up to 512 bottles. Number the bottles from 0 to 999. Prisoner 9 samples 0 to 511. Prisoner 8 samples 0 to 255 and 512 to 999. Prisoner 7 samples 0 to 127, 256 to 383, 512 to 639, etc. (prisoners alternating between sampling and not sampling blocks of wine in decreasing powers of 2 -- prisoner 0 drinks from every other bottle) Now line up the prisoners after onen month and treat corpses as ones and living prisoners as zeros and you have your answer in binary.
Mysterious Triangle area
Well, to make a long story short, they're not triangles.
100 Prisoners and a Lightbulb
Well if we assume they can all see the bulb every day, they can just toggle the bulb iff this is the first time they've been selected. If the last prisoner has counted the number of times the bulb has been toggled, he can assert that he is the last one to be selected.
Square Formation
Move the "notched" piece to teh righth of the current larger square and put the small square piece in the notch. put the larger of the triangular pieces at the top, horizontal edge of the new formation.
Calendar Cubes
I like this one. You need all the numbers from 0 through 9 plus 0 through 3. That's 14 faces. You will never need 00 though, so you can remove one of the 0s. Also, you will only ever need the 3 with 0 or 1, so you can remove it from one of the blocks. The solution: the numbers 1-6 on one block, and 7-9 and 0-2 on the other. Yeah it works.
Mystery Matrix
4. Entry from row plus Entry from row 2 plus 1 mod 10.
Fork in the road I
"is that the city you come from?" If the response is yes, go there, otherwise turn away.
Fork in the road II
Assume each person is standing on his respective road. "Is one of you a liar?" Yes means he's a truth teller, no means he's a liar.
Egg Dropping
18. Drop from the 10th, 20th, 30th, etc. After it breaks, go back 9 floors and start dropping every floor. You use 18 drops if it can drop from the 98th or 99th floors.
Greedy Pirates
It's not apparent to me that this is the intended answer, but "Throw pirates 3 and 4 overboard and divide up the rest between 1,2, and 5. Pirates 1 and 2 will agree to the largest share, and pirate 5 always has a say after that, since 3 and 4 can't agree to anything, so he's needed for the majority.
Hmm, well it's getting late so I'll just do one more:
Card Game
Bob takes any card over 9. The probability that none will show up is roughly
I sampled a few of the "relatively hard" puzzles... They're interesting, but they only take a minute to figure out. Am I correct in thinking that these are relatively easy, or am I being an ass and flaunting my ability to solve little puzzles?
(In case of the latter, do you want to hire me? I live in Cleveland and go to Cornell University...)
Now let's capture mother nature and all her cohorts and deny them the right to an attorney and jury by her peers!
i guess it's a little off topic, but that's actually a pretty good idea... hook up a computer to your phone line (with caller ID) and have it filter known telemarketing agencies. maybe it wouldn't work if they blocked the caller ID-ness, but you could block some people, most notably large companies (like those bastards at MCI that keep calling me)
hmm, it's a hack and it replicates by email... sounds like a virus to me...
of course nvidia would make the compiler free, because they make hardware, not software. Think of the compiler as a "marketing vehicle." They make this really cool cg compiler, so everybody uses it to make some sweet graphics, and consumers need to buy new hardware to get 8 billion (or 40) frames per second.
OK let's suppose the research methods actually are reasonable and those bar charts represent the actual response rate to spam.
THERE'S ONLY A 10% DIFFERENCE
Hence, as long as you send it to 11% more people (or, as is more likely, 100,000% more people, you still get more responses.
well of course it's an absurd law. Anything you can do that is illegal online that would merit any such sentence is already illegal, but you already knew that. It's rather predictable in light of the demands for hate crime legislation and the like. It's always illegal to kill someone, even if you kill that person because of some ethnic bias. Imagine that. This law is foolish and ought simply to read "crimes committed electronically should be held to the same standard as crimes committed in the flesh", but whatever. People are stupid.
I don't see a problem. A patent infringement is only a problem if the patent owner has a legitimate patent with no prior art (which seems unlikely considering the ridiculously broad scope of the patent) and they take legal action (of which I see no mention here).
I don't have anything productive to say, but I like the don quixote reference
The only improvement in technology is probably the bonding process. Clearly the Faraday cage has been around for a while, but making metal-wood laminates that will last is suprisingly difficult.
It's interesting... at my high school anyone caught with a phone or pager got it confiscated. Repeat offenders were suspended. Perhaps this might be a better idea for cinemas (or even for movie theaters for us americans). Simply post a sign saying that persons whose cell phones sound during a movie will be escorted out of the room.
The reason it's important is that most slashdot readers are not just interested in computers, but also in constitutional rights. Much of what you see here has only a shred of connection to nerds, but more importantly has to do with things nerds tend to be interested in... More important, it's not very off topic, as the title says, because the movie review is about people getting stripped of their rights without actually doing anything. It has to do with the article and with slashdot because slashdot is a stronghold of those who believe in freedom of thought and information.
You're right though: your palestine story has nothing to do with slashdot.
False. Just a few weeks ago, a US CITIZEN was arrested and sent to a MILITARY DETAINMENT facility on charges of terrorism. He will be tried in military court, not by a jury of his peers as the constitution guarantees. Here's the story from abcnews.com. He has also been denied access to a lawyer.
Yes, the national news media (that is the American television media) seems to think this is a big deal. They fail, however, to realize that this is simply the ruling of an appeals court. The appeals court does not have the power to rule things unconstitutional unless the Supreme Court signs off on it, which they won't. The Supreme Court is perennially conservative, and will not strike down the pledge of allegience or any part of it. They will declare the pledge constitutional, just as they did with "In God we trust."
Wouldn't it just make sense to reverse-engineer this stuff and post it on the internet? I mean it can't be that difficult as far as reverse engineering goes...
This is quite understandable, considering the increasing population of computer-confident consumers, who are no longer worried that they don't have 80 years of tech support and a pretty logo (though some of the white boxes come with pretty logos now). My father is convinced that for his needs, a big national manufacturer is the best way to go, but as for me, I want more bang for my buck, a sentiment I think is becoming more common.
To attempt to "out" a secret organization is silly, simply because the organization then ceases to be secret. Espionage is a vital part of any modernized nation's defense and no nation will allow its spies to be watched (therefore, a wise prince will allow some of his spies to be watched, but not the important ones).
It's a neat idea, but I don't think it will be as useful as one might hope. Anything in the computer image would still have to have a direct line of sight to a camera. It sounds like a great tool, but remember computers can't do *everything*
I guess this is a *little* off-topic, but this really bugs me. They're building this really cool supercomputer, and they list the memory with base-10 prefixes instead of the standard base-2. I mean I can almost understand when dell does that with hard drives (it pumps up the number for advertising purposes), but it's just silly in a scientific arena.
"Earth Simulator" is a rather bold name for a supercomputer, especially when you consider it probably can't even simulate the global weather fast enough to predict it (or even tell you what the weather is in real time). The computer looks impressive, but I think they should have stuck to a more abstract name rather than what I see as false advertisement.
You're wrong on the mp3 part... Technically, they didn't sell you the intellectual property contained in the CD, but rather the physical copy of the cd itself. Although it is technically in violation of copyright laws, you are allowed to make a copy of the intellectual property as long as you only use said copy in place of the original, e.g., you have the CD on your desk but you're listening to it via mp3. The courts allow this and call it "fair use." If you were to keep the mp3 after selling the CD, you are still in violation of the copyright law as you were before, but now there is no fair use to hide behind.
That being said, however, there is no legal basis for charging royalties on the resale of the copy.
(IANAL, but I live with one who specializes in intellectual property, so I'm pretty sure I'm right)
I'll not make a statement as to whether the second amendment is actually good or not, but the fact is that the way the constitution is written, the only way I -- or most other americans -- would allow "really big guns" to be outlawed is if the constitution were changed, and that's not bloody likely.
of course this also gives the possibility of a gravity chamber a la dragonball Z... I want to be super saiyan!