Oops, I dual-posted, because I screwed up the forms and thought my first post didn't stick. This one was the one I didn't want, feel free to mod it down.
Have they finally reached the level of that old shell, whatchyacallit, DOS?
I forget what company it was that made that, but I'm sure we can all agree that if they were around today they'd be teaching Microsoft a thing or two.
(in all seriousness, I think a problem with Microsoft's approach to the desktop is that they've largely reversed the rule "graphics for getting information from the computer to the user, command line for getting it from the user to the computer")
Perhaps the Windows shell has finally reached the levels of goodness of that old shell, whatchyacallit. DOS, I think it was.
I forget what company it was that made that, but I'm sure if they were still around, they'd be doing amazing things. We can certainly agree that they'd without a doubt have a command line that would blow Microsoft's right out of the water.
The news story mentions that "[e]ventually the researchers want to build tiny trucks that could carry atoms and molecules around in miniature factories."
The obligatory joke to make here would be that if they think they've made this truck small, wait 'til they see what happens when the Japanese get their hands on it.
Or maybe, because the researchers are in Texas, I could suggest that they are now embarking on a program to make the biggest nano-car in the 50 states. Or that maybe they didn't insist on sticking a pickup bed on the back. Or "wow, have we discovered the only Texans who are secure about their penis size?"
But I'm not going to make any of those jokes. I'm not even going to make any potentially +1 insightful comments about how the real-world applications of this in terms of actual trucks in little tiny factories are clearly pretty silly from where I'm sitting, because things work totally differently on the nano scale, and that's just clearly grasping at some sort of relevance (though obviously, the construction methods are important).
Know why I'm not going to make any of those comments? Because I just don't care anymore. I try so hard to be interested sometimes, studying toward a Ph. D in physics and engaging in interesting slashdot debate day after day, and sometimes I sit here and realize that I don't really care about any of it. I want to go outside. I hate this damn computer, this damn internet, all you moderators, and myself for posting here seeking approval for these stupid, inane remarks and pseudointellectual commentary I barf up, seeing it moderated to +5 by people who don't know any better. Deliver me from this, merciful God. My soul is devoid of humor, and my life is an empty, broken shell.
there exists some specific minimum number of people with blue eyes, who, upon seeing each other, all know that the knowledge of blue-eyed people is universal to the requisite degree. Then: Each perfect logician can conclude that if there were only one blue-eyed person, he would leave on the first night.
I agree except for this last part. That's like saying "if there are enough people together, one person can be a football team." Doesn't really make sense. If there were only one blue-eyed person, he would not be privy to all this knowledge, and he would NOT leave the first night. You can't transmit information up through the hypotheticals like that.
In related news, India, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the Maldives, Gambia, Canada, Hong Kong, and all the other former British colonies banded together to send a message to the moon, Mars, and the other planets. It read "Watch out for these guys! They've got a flag!"
It isn't just the starting point. They cannot act on that information. One way or another (I like the mind-bending way involving tracing the nested hypotheticals), they need the information that "if there is exactly one blue-eyed person, he will leave at midnight".
Also, heh, you've been modded up. But I WROTE this version of the puzzle! And Slashdot has voted your revision correct! Not fair!:)
Your version is interesting, but I think it does not fundamentally change the solution. Until someone leaves, if she could see someone with blue eyes yesterday, she obviously still can today.
I've become very familiar with this puzzle in years of correspondence over it now with all sorts of people. The version on my website has undergone constant revision to be precise and to handle all the confusion I've gotten from people looking at it. It's as good as I am able to make it.
Quick disclaimer: As has been pointed out to me, it's not the 'right-wingers' spouting what I said, for the most part. I used that phrase with a specific group of people I know in mind. Ignore it.
The government has begun teaching abstinence from sex while dating, and it is catching hold in the youth culture as well.
I'd like to see statistics, though, on whether the declining pregnancy rates are correlated with increased abstinence or not.
Please - It's not just the right - it's also the *left* that rant about sex and violence.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to be partisan. I just had in mind this specific right-wing group on campus who is always spouting gloom and doom about the decline of society. It was just a poor phrase to refer to people that I didn't think about at all.
Good lord, I'm sorry, when I said "in conversations with right-wingers" I was referring to the local moral crusaders in my area, the Young Constitutionalists, who I think of as characteristic of the far right wing. I'm sorry if my labeling was more broadly incorrect, but thank you so much for addressing the other stuff I had to say and not just getting mad about the one partisan phrase in my post. Poor labeling. I'm sorry. I don't care who the people are who spout that stuff, I was just trying to find an appropriate term to refer to them. You can drop it without changing my meaning.
Scratch the "right-wingers" from that line. I wrote it thinking of the Young Constitutionalists on my campus who are always sending me news of our moral decline and the collapse of society. I really wasn't thinking in political terms. It was a poor choice of words, and I forgot how angry people get about when something sounds partisan. I just meant "those moralizing society-going-to-hell folk", and the examples I have around me were pretty right-wing, so that phrase seemed appropriate. But I ended up getting tons of replies to that one phrase (please, my point was to make a joke about The Sims, people, and to mention those teen pregnancy stats).
I will make a point not to use "right-wing" or "left-wing" in a slashdot post when referring to social attitudes, and to try to be specific about who I'm talking about. I'm sorry.
They will not use your personal information except to "ensure that its network continues to function"
Haha, what they mean is that if one day they're low on cash, they need some new servers to handle a spike in traffic . . . they're guarenteeing they'll take your personal data and do whatever's necessary to get the money to keep the place running.
I was casually referring to specific conversations I've had with the local moral crusading "society is falling apart" group, who happen to be far right-wing. I didn't mean it to be a partisan post, but those two words are the only thing being siezed upon.
Of course I mean my comments to apply to everyone holding those attitudes.
Oops. I didn't mean this to be partisan. I said "right wingers" because the people I was thinking of were the campus's Young Constitutionalists, the only moral crusaders you'll find around here. My focus wasn't on the censorship, but on the attitude that we're suffering societal decline. And the only times I have those conversations are with right-wing moralists (contrasted to my cousins, Dean activists who are basically in favor of sex and violence in all media), so that's what I said. But that wasn't the focus of my post. I didn't mean it to be partisan. But that's the only thing getting replies.
I always like to ask right-wingers ranting about games and sex causing social decline, "Yeah! I mean, do you know what's happened to rates of violent youth crime and teen pregancny in the last ten years?" They always answer that they're at unprecedented levels, and then are thrown off when I tell them that they've actually been falling quite steadily. Teen pregancy is even at its lowest rate since we began taking statistics in the '40s, down from the all-time high in 1991.
What would be really amusing to me is if they discovered, in 20 years, that untold psychological damage to children was done by The Sims. People spending all day running households like gods, torturing and killing families and developing these horribly twisted personalities. I mean, take a horribly violent, depraved movie -- for example, Saw, and ask what game the creators would probably enjoy playing?
In all seriousness, I think people are both more fragile and more resiliant than they're usually credited with. We handled torturing animals with sticks in the backyard 50 years ago, and we'll handle GTA. And I was going to say something about child-rearing, but then I realized that the last thing anyone wants is more advice on raising kids from a childless twentysomething, so I'll leave it at "the world is probably not coming to an end".
When I interned at NASA/Langley Research center, I heard constantly about the ARES Project, which they're going to use to survey Mars's magnetic field in much greater detail than the global surveyor (among other things).
And it will be the first airplane flight over another planet's surface, just 100 years after the Wright brothers first did it here.
To me, the best evidence for water is this map, which they always show at NASA presentations on Mars. It's a topographic map colored by altitude, and you see that the areas below a certain depth are almost completely crater-free, contrasted strongly with the areas above that depth. This, to me, is a really, really strong argument that it was once covered in water and had a coastline.
Looking at that map always makes an Earth-like Mars seem much more real to me.
They do NOT know how many of each eye color there is. If they did, it'd be trivial to solve.
I've been rewording the puzzle each time I discuss it. In this round, I've gotten that question a lot, so you'll see the version on my webpage is updated to make this clear.
Slashdot Mirror
Oops, I dual-posted, because I screwed up the forms and thought my first post didn't stick. This one was the one I didn't want, feel free to mod it down.
Crap.
Have they finally reached the level of that old shell, whatchyacallit, DOS?
I forget what company it was that made that, but I'm sure we can all agree that if they were around today they'd be teaching Microsoft a thing or two.
(in all seriousness, I think a problem with Microsoft's approach to the desktop is that they've largely reversed the rule "graphics for getting information from the computer to the user, command line for getting it from the user to the computer")
Perhaps the Windows shell has finally reached the levels of goodness of that old shell, whatchyacallit. DOS, I think it was.
I forget what company it was that made that, but I'm sure if they were still around, they'd be doing amazing things. We can certainly agree that they'd without a doubt have a command line that would blow Microsoft's right out of the water.
I dunno, know any good places?
The news story mentions that "[e]ventually the researchers want to build tiny trucks that could carry atoms and molecules around in miniature factories."
Which sounds awfully sketchy to me.
The obligatory joke to make here would be that if they think they've made this truck small, wait 'til they see what happens when the Japanese get their hands on it.
Or maybe, because the researchers are in Texas, I could suggest that they are now embarking on a program to make the biggest nano-car in the 50 states. Or that maybe they didn't insist on sticking a pickup bed on the back. Or "wow, have we discovered the only Texans who are secure about their penis size?"
But I'm not going to make any of those jokes. I'm not even going to make any potentially +1 insightful comments about how the real-world applications of this in terms of actual trucks in little tiny factories are clearly pretty silly from where I'm sitting, because things work totally differently on the nano scale, and that's just clearly grasping at some sort of relevance (though obviously, the construction methods are important).
Know why I'm not going to make any of those comments? Because I just don't care anymore. I try so hard to be interested sometimes, studying toward a Ph. D in physics and engaging in interesting slashdot debate day after day, and sometimes I sit here and realize that I don't really care about any of it. I want to go outside. I hate this damn computer, this damn internet, all you moderators, and myself for posting here seeking approval for these stupid, inane remarks and pseudointellectual commentary I barf up, seeing it moderated to +5 by people who don't know any better. Deliver me from this, merciful God. My soul is devoid of humor, and my life is an empty, broken shell.
Anyone want to go out for a drink?
there exists some specific minimum number of people with blue eyes, who, upon seeing each other, all know that the knowledge of blue-eyed people is universal to the requisite degree. Then: Each perfect logician can conclude that if there were only one blue-eyed person, he would leave on the first night.
I agree except for this last part. That's like saying "if there are enough people together, one person can be a football team." Doesn't really make sense. If there were only one blue-eyed person, he would not be privy to all this knowledge, and he would NOT leave the first night. You can't transmit information up through the hypotheticals like that.
In related news, India, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the Maldives, Gambia, Canada, Hong Kong, and all the other former British colonies banded together to send a message to the moon, Mars, and the other planets. It read "Watch out for these guys! They've got a flag!"
It isn't just the starting point. They cannot act on that information. One way or another (I like the mind-bending way involving tracing the nested hypotheticals), they need the information that "if there is exactly one blue-eyed person, he will leave at midnight".
Also, heh, you've been modded up. But I WROTE this version of the puzzle! And Slashdot has voted your revision correct! Not fair! :)
Your version is interesting, but I think it does not fundamentally change the solution. Until someone leaves, if she could see someone with blue eyes yesterday, she obviously still can today.
I've become very familiar with this puzzle in years of correspondence over it now with all sorts of people. The version on my website has undergone constant revision to be precise and to handle all the confusion I've gotten from people looking at it. It's as good as I am able to make it.
No, that's not at all true -- my wording is right.
The Guru speaks only on day X and never again.
Quick disclaimer: As has been pointed out to me, it's not the 'right-wingers' spouting what I said, for the most part. I used that phrase with a specific group of people I know in mind. Ignore it.
The government has begun teaching abstinence from sex while dating, and it is catching hold in the youth culture as well.
I'd like to see statistics, though, on whether the declining pregnancy rates are correlated with increased abstinence or not.
Please - It's not just the right - it's also the *left* that rant about sex and violence.
Sorry, I wasn't trying to be partisan. I just had in mind this specific right-wing group on campus who is always spouting gloom and doom about the decline of society. It was just a poor phrase to refer to people that I didn't think about at all.
Good lord, I'm sorry, when I said "in conversations with right-wingers" I was referring to the local moral crusaders in my area, the Young Constitutionalists, who I think of as characteristic of the far right wing. I'm sorry if my labeling was more broadly incorrect, but thank you so much for addressing the other stuff I had to say and not just getting mad about the one partisan phrase in my post. Poor labeling. I'm sorry. I don't care who the people are who spout that stuff, I was just trying to find an appropriate term to refer to them. You can drop it without changing my meaning.
Scratch the "right-wingers" from that line. I wrote it thinking of the Young Constitutionalists on my campus who are always sending me news of our moral decline and the collapse of society. I really wasn't thinking in political terms. It was a poor choice of words, and I forgot how angry people get about when something sounds partisan. I just meant "those moralizing society-going-to-hell folk", and the examples I have around me were pretty right-wing, so that phrase seemed appropriate. But I ended up getting tons of replies to that one phrase (please, my point was to make a joke about The Sims, people, and to mention those teen pregnancy stats).
I will make a point not to use "right-wing" or "left-wing" in a slashdot post when referring to social attitudes, and to try to be specific about who I'm talking about. I'm sorry.
They will not use your personal information except to "ensure that its network continues to function"
Haha, what they mean is that if one day they're low on cash, they need some new servers to handle a spike in traffic . . . they're guarenteeing they'll take your personal data and do whatever's necessary to get the money to keep the place running.
I was casually referring to specific conversations I've had with the local moral crusading "society is falling apart" group, who happen to be far right-wing. I didn't mean it to be a partisan post, but those two words are the only thing being siezed upon.
Of course I mean my comments to apply to everyone holding those attitudes.
Oops. I didn't mean this to be partisan. I said "right wingers" because the people I was thinking of were the campus's Young Constitutionalists, the only moral crusaders you'll find around here. My focus wasn't on the censorship, but on the attitude that we're suffering societal decline. And the only times I have those conversations are with right-wing moralists (contrasted to my cousins, Dean activists who are basically in favor of sex and violence in all media), so that's what I said. But that wasn't the focus of my post. I didn't mean it to be partisan. But that's the only thing getting replies.
Ah, well. Such is life.
I always like to ask right-wingers ranting about games and sex causing social decline, "Yeah! I mean, do you know what's happened to rates of violent youth crime and teen pregancny in the last ten years?" They always answer that they're at unprecedented levels, and then are thrown off when I tell them that they've actually been falling quite steadily. Teen pregancy is even at its lowest rate since we began taking statistics in the '40s, down from the all-time high in 1991.
What would be really amusing to me is if they discovered, in 20 years, that untold psychological damage to children was done by The Sims. People spending all day running households like gods, torturing and killing families and developing these horribly twisted personalities. I mean, take a horribly violent, depraved movie -- for example, Saw, and ask what game the creators would probably enjoy playing?
In all seriousness, I think people are both more fragile and more resiliant than they're usually credited with. We handled torturing animals with sticks in the backyard 50 years ago, and we'll handle GTA. And I was going to say something about child-rearing, but then I realized that the last thing anyone wants is more advice on raising kids from a childless twentysomething, so I'll leave it at "the world is probably not coming to an end".
Proper link here.
When I interned at NASA/Langley Research center, I heard constantly about the ARES Project, which they're going to use to survey Mars's magnetic field in much greater detail than the global surveyor (among other things).
And it will be the first airplane flight over another planet's surface, just 100 years after the Wright brothers first did it here.
To me, the best evidence for water is this map, which they always show at NASA presentations on Mars. It's a topographic map colored by altitude, and you see that the areas below a certain depth are almost completely crater-free, contrasted strongly with the areas above that depth. This, to me, is a really, really strong argument that it was once covered in water and had a coastline.
Looking at that map always makes an Earth-like Mars seem much more real to me.
That's correct -- except I would say they leave on the Nth day -- it's the Nth midnight to pass. But that's just an off-by-one convention thing.
Why is it that so many computer geeks don't get dates again?
At the moment, I'm blaming DRM.
They do NOT know how many of each eye color there is. If they did, it'd be trivial to solve.
I've been rewording the puzzle each time I discuss it. In this round, I've gotten that question a lot, so you'll see the version on my webpage is updated to make this clear.