[OT] Destroying all human life on Earth AT THE SAME TIME

[superdan]

Gregor Richards Wrote:

> John Reimer wrote:
> > Hello Gregor,
> > 
> >> You want to destroy all life on Earth. However, you don't want people
> >> panicking as this could alter the result, so you want all humans to
> >> die at the same instant. To do this, you're creating nano-robots. A
> >> single nano-robot cannot control a persons mind: Seven are required
> >> (three in each half of the brain and one in the brain stem).
> >> Nano-robots can harvest material from their host to build new
> >> nano-robots, but the host will die after approximately twenty
> >> nano-robots-worth of material has been harvested (they require
> >> particular rare particles that can only be harvested from the heart
> >> and lungs). Nano-robots may communicate with one-another via
> >> broadcast, but the range is limited to 1 mile. Nano-robots do not have
> >> unique identification globally, but do have unique identification
> >> within a body (that is, nano-robots in the same body can distinguish
> >> each other, but broadcast messages from a nano-robot in one human
> >> cannot implicitly be distinguished from broadcasts from another).
> >> These broadcasts travel at the speed of light (seeing as that they are
> >> light). Nano-robots harvest energy from their host, and as such can
> >> survive indefinitely. A nano-robot in a dead host survives long enough
> >> that this variable is not relevant for this problem.
> >>
> >> Robots can only be spread by direct physical contact from an infected
> >> host to an uninfected one, and the process of transferring one
> >> nano-robot destroys two nano-robots (that is, the infected host loses
> >> three robots in the process but the new host only gains one).
> >>
> >> Devise an algorithm for these nano-robots that will destroy all human
> >> life on Earth in a minimum amount of time, but with which all humans
> >> will be destroyed within five minutes of each other. That is, minimize
> >> the time from deploying the first nano-robot to the initial human life
> >> being exterminated, and minimize the time from the initial human life
> >> being exterminated to all human life being exterminated. You may
> >> assume a maximum of twelve degrees of separation between average
> >> industrialized people and that even the most remote tribe is connected
> >> by at least one human to the industrialized world.
> >>
> >> Bonus: How would you change this algorithm if you wanted to destroy
> >> all animal life? All life? How would you change it if astronauts were
> >> considered?
> >>
> >> - Gregor Richards
> >>
> > 
> > 
> > Ok, Gregor.  I'll bite.  What's your fascination with this problem?  Are 
> > you trying to make a point about something?
> > 
> > If "yes", you may as well be direct about it.  If "no", then why the 
> > thread hijacking?  Come on... help me out... I'm a little slow 
> > sometimes. :)
> > -JJR
> > 
> > 
> 
> Thread hijacking? Seriously? This isn't a forum, there are totally 
> disconnected subthreads within any thread.
> 
> This is what we call a "joke".

no pal. this is what /you/ call a "joke". wasn't funny the first time. second time looks stupid.

> On the one hand it's a parody of the 
> always-annoying real-life-algorithm thread, on the other hand it's a 
> parody of the needlessly-loaded choice of settings for the 
> oh-didn't-I-mention-it's-always-annoying real-life-algorithm. This 
> problem could be formalized as a simple tree-based message-passing 
> communication problem, but instead we've gone political. Well, so long 
> as war is involved, let's step it up and destroy everything. Yeeee haw.

so ur the sharpest tool in the shed eh. why don't you send in your solution. tree-based message-passing sounds like bullshit you'd say when you have no idea. this is a classic signal propagation problem in circuits, i solved it all the time when i was working on async vlsi. and tree-based message-passing has nothing to do with it. the man made it a story. that /is/ funny. if it annoys u piss off.