ZGeek - General

Worlds first competent programmer?

Spades — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:41:19 GMT

from http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd05xx/EWD594.PDF

Years ago a railway company was erected and one of its directors -- probably the commercial bloke -- discovered that the initial investments could be reduced significantly if only fifty percent of the cars would be equipped with a toilet, and, therefore, so was decided.

Shortly after the company had started its operations, however, complaints about the toilets came pouring in. An investigation was carried out and revealed that the obvious thing had happened: despite its youth the company was already suffering from internal communication problems, for the director's decision on the toilets had not been transmitted to the shunting yard, where all cars were treated as equivalent, and, as a result, sometimes trains were composed with hardly any toilets at all.

In order to solve the problem, a bit of information was associated with each car, telling whether it was a car with or without a toilet, and the shunting yard was instructed to compose trains with the numbers of cars of both types as equal as possible. It was a complication for the shunting yard, but, once it had been solved, the people responsible for the shunting procedures were quite proud that they could manage it.

When the new shunting procedures had been made effective, however, complaints about the toilets continued. A new investigation was carried out and then it transpired that, although in each train about half the cars had indeed toilets, sometimes trains were composed with nearly all toilets in one half of the train. In order to remedy the situation, new instructions were issued, prescribing that cars with and cars without toilets should alternate. This was a move severe complication for the shunting people, but after some initial grumbling, eventually they managed.

Complaints, however, continued and the reason turned out to be that, as the cars with toilets had their toilet at one of their ends, the distance between two successive toilets in the train could still be nearly three car lengths, and for mothers with children in urgent need -- and perhaps even luggage piled up in the corridors -- this still could lead to disasters. As a result, the cars with toilets got another bit of information attached to them, making them into directed objects, and the new instructions were, that in each train the cars with toilets should have the same orientation. This time, the new instructions for the shunting yard were received with less than enthusiasm, for the number of turntables was hardly sufficient; to be quite fair to the shunting people we must even admit that according to all reasonable standards, the number of turntables was insufficient, and it was only by virtue of the most cunning ingenuity, that they could just manage.

With all toilets equally spaced along the train the company felt confident that now everything was alright, but passengers continued to complain: although no passenger was more than a car length away from the nearest toilet, passengers (in urgent need) did not know in which direction to start their stumbling itinerary along the corridor! To solve this problem, arrows saying "TOILET" were fixed in all corridors, thereby also making the other half of the cars into directed objects that should be properly oriented by the shunting procedure.

When the new instruction reached the shunting yard, they created an atmosphere ranging from despair to revolt: it just couldn't be done! At that critical moment a man whose name has been forgotten and shall never be traced, made the following observation. When each car with a toilet was coupled, from now until eternity, at its toileted end with a car without a toilet, from then onwards the shunting yard, instead of dealing with N directed cars of two types, could deal with N/2 identical units that, to all intents and purposes, could be regarded as symmetrical. And this observation solved all shunting problems at the modest price of, firstly sticking to trains with an even number of cars only -- the few additional cars needed for that could be paid out of the initial savings effected by the commercial bloke! -- and, secondly, slightly cheating with regard to the equal spacing of the toilets. But, after all, who cares about the last three feet?

Although at the time that this story took place, mankind was not blessed yet with automatic computers, our anonymous man who found this solution deserves to be called the world's first competent programmer.

facebook trick...

hymartin — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:35:23 GMT

Press Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, enter key then right click, then press up then down. Magic circles will appear.

To stop this, you might need to reload the page or log off.

It works for me.:whistle:

Henry Rollins rant

Marchpig — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:37:08 GMT

It's a coupla years old, but his message is more than current...

preach it Henry.

We have a winner

ewe2 — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:07:49 GMT

from the twitternet

I have an exam today

twistoffate — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:53:18 GMT

Economic Modelling - aka, advanced stats + economic theory, with a side of rape.

Wish me luck and pray for me at 8.30

Theme song of this stupid company I work for;

foolish42 — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:05:28 GMT

Click image to play video

Move
Close

It's new rick roll.

Design fail

Gesthemene — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:15:40 GMT

Ladies and gentlemen,

I give you, the Cisco Wireless ...buttplug? :S

http://accessories.ap.dell.com/sna/p...1&sku=A3250214

Seriously, who the fuck designed this and thought it had a great look about it for a networking device?

Still, I suppose if they wanted to branch out into that range of products, they could claim that they have more experience developing wireless devices than anyone else in the industry :P

Wanna punch out Lindsey Lohan?

Marchpig — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:12:23 GMT

http://www.i6.com/game/3538/brooke-v...ity-girl-fight

Bitch Fight!

Big Hailstones Pelted my place!

hymartin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:24:19 GMT

It was like all of a sudden...around 3:30pm in Nov 9th, it was warm!

Photobucket hasn't been working properly recently...no idea why...I can still login thou...

The video is in here, from the balcony.

Pics(in the backyard), the lotuses in the pools on top of the house were all destroyed into pieces, lol

Attached Images

	P1050535.JPG (1,011.1 KB)
	P1050536.JPG (992.3 KB)

The Fucking Show Off Thread.

carls — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 19:29:29 GMT

You know how the bad stuff in life steamrolls / snowballs, but so does the good stuff? Well, when it doesn't rain good stuff, but pours, post here and boast.

Google wave users

and3w — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:59:19 GMT

Anyone wanting to hook up, I'm there as 'andywebber59'. There aren't that many of us yet so post an account & I'll wave at you. Maybe.

Sydney's Western Suburbs

Blink — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:29:11 GMT

So...as someone who lives in the Western Suburbs, what the fuck is the matter with people who have grown up out here? A couple of examples (both involving traffic...maybe that's some sort of catalyst?).

Yesterday crossing the road near a roundabout, hilux driver without indicating turns right round the roundabout so I quicken my pace to get to the median well before he gets anywhere near me. As he roars past he shouts something (and it wasn't pleasant by the tone) at me.

Today, same spot...after having successfully crossed the road I see a motorist beeping his horn at the guy in front of him who obviously doesn't meet his high driving standards. He glances over, sees me looking and gives me the finger.

Just two out of a million examples. Please tell me if I'm wrong, but are some of Western Sydney's suburbs just packed full of c**ts?

Hunter S. Thompson...

stimpy — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:45:40 GMT

From Halloween 2009:

and MOAR HERE

NaNoWriMo

AhhDiddums — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 21:53:08 GMT

Hey all...

I don't know if you've heard of National Novel Writing Month, but I just wanted to share it for anyone who is interested. As an aspiring writer, I like to do it, just because having the concrete deadline and such makes it more of a challenge for me, and makes writing that much more fun.

The whole thing behind it is to force people to write that novel that they always had in the back of their mind... and to inspire people who have always wanted to try writing to do it. It says "national," but theres no reason Aussies or anyone else couldn't participate.

I hope this isn't considered spam... if so, sorry about that (I'd totally understand if you delete this), just wanted to share. I just think it's a neat idea, and maybe some of you would be interested. You don't have to pay to get involved or anything, and nobody wins anything... it's just about the satisfaction of actually having pushed yourself to write a novel, and succeeding.

http://www.nanowrimo.org

Kraft Easy Mac

skylar — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:05:03 GMT

My colleague and I were given Kraft Easy Mac as part of a goodie bag at Armageddon. Eating plastic cheese with noodles laden with additives was never our thing, so we tried to give them away to at least 10 people.

We still have them. Why is this thing on the market if no one actually eats it?