Virtual Thought

I enjoyed this post too much to not repost it on the new blog…

Really quick… ever thought about the amount of media that is open source? Music, itself, is an Open Source medium. Books are Open Source as well… paintings, too. Movies, not so much… and, of course, computer software isn’t Open Source without some soapboxy, high-horsey effort (aw, heck, c’mere Dick Stallman… we love ya!).

The reason is because the presentation is not separated from the production. After the author is done writing a book, the book’s production is identical to its presentation: words. Ditto for music: production = presentation = notes.

Movies are different because what you see isn’t what went into the movie… what with sets, post-production CGI, and Will Smith music (even though I’ll hate it, I have to see “I, Robot”), it’s harder to fuse production and presentation. Software, of course, resembles almost nothing of what was used to produce it… RAD development aside, since that generates code anyway.

I’m a huge brainteaser fan… thus, I was looking at Joel Spolsky’s blog and I came across a nice one: the 23 Prisoners and the 2 switches riddle.

I figure that this is one of those brainteasers whose answer depends both on the current state of the switches and the prisoners’ memories of the switches; thus, the position of the switches does not comprise the entirety of the state of the problem. That said, I think some base cases would help:

• The answer for one prisoner is trivial. On the first day, after visiting the switch room, the prisoner knows that all the prisoners have visited the switch room. The prisoner is therefore free.


• The answer for two prisoners goes like this: the two prisoners confer, and decide that Prisoner A is given Switch A, while Prisoner B is given Switch B. The first important information point comes when the warden takes the other prisoner to the switch room: if for the last n times Prisoner A has been going, the first time that Prisoner B goes to the switch room, we have a good starting point. Prisoner B notices the position of the switches, and flips the designated switch (switch B). On any further visits, Prisoner B flips switch A. When Prisoner A gets a turn, Prisoner A will notice that Switch B has been flipped, and therefore Prisoner B has visited the switch room. Thus, Prisoner A knows for sure that both prisoners have visited the switch room. The reverse situation works as well…

That’s all well and good, but for three or more it starts getting more fiendish… what a great puzzle!

I added the pictures for Terra’s Buffy movies so far. She’s got a really great one ready to go, here at home… I won’t spoil it for those fans of Terra’s movies… but I’m a big fan. I think this one’s right up there with The Other Side. Terra doesn’t think they’re art, but I think she’s wrong.

I’m experimenting with Google AdWords on my site, to see what they look like and how they work. I can’t wait to get my checks for $0.01 every month. How exciting!

Sweet. Some cool guy came up with a plug-in that almost, almost mimcs a wiki by linking blog entries through the use of strong brackets (these things—>[

A character study of Faith set to Tori Amos’ Precious Things. Download it here.

An exploration of Willow and Tara’s relationship set to David Gray’s The Other Side. Download it here.

An ensemble montage set to Poe’s Haunted. Download it here.