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On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:50:38 -0800, Darren New wrote:
> scott wrote:
>> Wow that's a good one.
>
> That was fun, wasn't it? :-) It took me a while to come up with the
> "only way", and then another moment to figure out I needed the initial
> instructions of your first loop (cleverly avoiding spoilers), but once
> you see the answer, it all falls together in an "of course that's how
> you have to do it" sort of way.
What was along the way I was thinking as well, after initially realising
I couldn't use variables (my first thought was to do an increasing number
of L/R moves in each iteration, but without a variable to track how many
times to loop, that doesn't work so well).
Jim
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Darren New wrote:
>
> You have an infinitely long line. Two robots are dropped on parachutes
> onto the line at random, and each drops its parachute (leaving it
> behind) where it lands. Your task is to crash the two robots into each
> other.
>
I like this puzzle. It's one of just a few that quickly go from seeming
impossible to having a nice satisfying solution.
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> of L/R moves in each iteration,
which also fails because the other robot will move in sync. :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Forget "focus follows mouse." When do
I get "focus follows gaze"?
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On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:53:42 -0800, Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> of L/R moves in each iteration,
>
> which also fails because the other robot will move in sync. :-)
I had thought about introducing a "skip next change in direction" if the
parachute was found - I think that would put it on an alternating course,
but you're right, otherwise it would be perfectly synchronized. :-)
Jim
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On 01/20/10 09:32, Captain Jack wrote:
> I've got a quiz I made that I run candidates (for programming jobs) through
> now, and the first one I put on there is "How does an e-mail system work?
> What happend from the time one person hits 'Send' and the other person sees
> a message in the In-Box?" I get the most amazing amount of hemming and
> hawing over that one.
I hope someone mentioned something about a series of tubes...
--
I'm addicted to placebos. I'd give them up, but it wouldn't make any
difference. - Steven Wright
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On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:21:37 -0800, Neeum Zawan wrote:
> On 01/20/10 09:32, Captain Jack wrote:
>> I've got a quiz I made that I run candidates (for programming jobs)
>> through now, and the first one I put on there is "How does an e-mail
>> system work? What happend from the time one person hits 'Send' and the
>> other person sees a message in the In-Box?" I get the most amazing
>> amount of hemming and hawing over that one.
>
> I hope someone mentioned something about a series of tubes...
LOL
As it happens, there was a problem with my last paycheck's direct deposit
(we changed providers, and my bank had been bought, so the routing number
changed, but the old DD provider didn't seem to mind; the new one,
however, did), so I had to go to the office to pick up an actual paper
paycheck to take to the bank.
We hit the drive-through to make the deposit. And we saw one of the
actual "tubes" used in the early Internet! No kidding! It uses a vacuum
to suck a packet that's got a payload in it into the bank. I was really
surprised at how primitive the checksum system was (well, OK, there
wasn't one, but a voice spoke through a magic box and confirmed delivery
of the packet).
But man was it slow compared to the modern Internet. But it was quite
nostalgic. :-)
Jim
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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospam com> wrote:
> But man was it slow compared to the modern Internet.
Those old-school tubes get more efficient the more data you have to send. Say
you put a harddrive in the tube, the effective bandwidth would be vast compared
to even the fastest LAN... ;-D
>But it was quite
> nostalgic. :-)
Ah, nostalgia. Whatever happened to that?
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> Those old-school tubes get more efficient the more data you have to send.
> Say
> you put a harddrive in the tube, the effective bandwidth would be vast
> compared
> to even the fastest LAN... ;-D
What about ping time? :-)
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>> Those old-school tubes get more efficient the more data you have to
>> send. Say
>> you put a harddrive in the tube, the effective bandwidth would be vast
>> compared
>> to even the fastest LAN... ;-D
>
> What about ping time? :-)
Transfer rate /= latency. ;-)
Somebody suggested that by burning data onto a CD-ROM and getting
students to cycle to the other side of Cambridge with the CDs in
backpacks, you could achieve several GB/s mean transfer rate. Of course,
the packet latency would be about 25 minutes each way…
(Of course, use DVD-ROM - or BluRay - and it improves even more!)
I wonder - what happens if you combine RFC 1149 with USB flash drives?
Required XKCD reference:
http://www.xkcd.com/691/
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Invisible wrote:
> the packet latency would be about 25 minutes each way…
You know you've been blogging too long when you start typing HTML
character entities in normal text! o_O
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