Riddle 6 - Numbers numbers...

And here we go again - another riddle.

But first - what's the solution to the last riddle http://omer-behindthelines.blogspot.com/2008/08/riddle-5-doorway-to-heaven.html? The answer is that you should always pick the door that was left behind and not the door you originally picked. This is because there was a 33% chance for you to be right in the first place, meaning that there was a 66% that the right door is one of the other two doors. Since the gnome has helped you to throw away one of these two doors, all the 66% chance went to the door he left behind. So there is a bigger chance that that door is the correct one.

Riddle 6 - what is the next number?
Look carefully at the following list of numbers and please write down the next one to follow:
1
1 1
2 1
1 2 1 1
3 1 1 2
1 3 2 1 1 2
3 1 1 3 2 2
2 3 2 1 2 2
4 2 1 3 1 1
1 4 1 2 3 1 1 3
???

One small hint - no need for mathematics at all, a 8 year old kid can solve this...

The McGurk Effect

What is the man in the next video saying?


Did you hear "Da Da"? Try again, this time without watching the video, only listening... This is called the McGurk effect.

In this video the phenomenon is explained:



Interesting, isn't it?
You can read more about it in here McGurk effect .


Thanks Moran and Yaron for the very interesting item.

Have you heard about the Mojave experiment?

When I first heard about this, I couldn't think about anything but the Matrix ("Do you know what's the Matrix?") or the "Dharma initiative" from Lost. Well, it has nothing to do with either of them. Basically it is just another commercial of Microsoft for the notorious Windows Vista.

So what's it all about? Microsoft claims to have done the following experiment: They interviewed more than a hundred non-Vista users that have heard about Vista and did not like what they heard. They were asked to grade Vista (giving an overall 4.4 grade on average). Then they were shown "the next Microsoft OS" codenamed "Mojave". Most of them were very impressed and liked what they saw and gave the overall 8.5 grade on average. It was then they were told that actually what they saw was Vista and nothing else.

I said Microsoft claims this. I am not accusing Microsoft of anything, but it is still a commercial and probably not a lot more. You can see for yourself in http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/

And now the punch line – looking at the website and at all the screens shown (as seen above) does again make me think about "the Dharma initiative" – so maybe there is more here than meets the eye?!?

A house in Detroit was baught for 1$

Believe it or not, a house in Detroit was recently bought for 1$ (not 1 million dollars, 1 dollar)!

Just two years ago the same house was bought for 65,000$, and for the last 19 days the house was for sale for 1$ until it found a buyer.

How come? Well first of all this house is near the airport in Detroit in a poor neighborhood. Second, you probably already guessed it - the owner could not pay the mortgage and the house was taken by the bank. The bank tried to sell it since January for 1,100$ but could not find anyone interested. During this time the property started to owe debts in the size of 4,000$ and the bank decided to lower the price for 1$.

There is more. After the original owners of the house were evicted, steel thieves stole all they could from the property, including the sinks. When the bank asked a guarding company to guard the property, they put some wooden boards to protect it, but these were stolen too...

Seems like this house does not have a very promising ending.

The full (in Hebrew) article can be found here: http://www.themarker.com/tmc/article.jhtml?ElementId=nh20080817_06

21

Yesterday I saw the movie "21" with Kevin Spacey. In the beginning of the movie he asks a student of his a riddle, which is exactly the same as riddle #5 (only with a different story). The answer gave in the movie is correct - so you can copy it if you'de like.

P.S. I didn't like the film - everything was too obvious...

Riddle 5 - doorway to heaven

It's time for a new riddle, but let's first solve the last one.

How many times do you need to break the chocolate bar to get 24 sqauares? Well I am going to show you that it doesn't matter how you break it, it will always be 23 times. How come? the simple fact is that every time you break a piece of the bar, you actually add another piece to your collection (breaking a bar creates two parts of that bar). So, if you start with 1 piece - the whole bar - then after exactly 23 breaks you will have 24 pieces - exactly the 24 squares of chocolate we wanted.

Doorway to heaven

You are standing in front of three doors.

You know that one door leads to heaven, while the other two lead to hell. You have no way of knowing which is which, and running out of time, you pick one (doesn't matter which one) and go towards it.

Suddenly there appears a gnome.

He sees that you were going to open the door you picked and says:

"I know which door leads to heaven and which don't. Believe me when I say that this door is a door to hell" and while he is saying that, he is pointing to one of the other two doors (and not to the door you chose).

The gnome tells the truth (it doesn't matter which door you picked in the first place, he will always have a door that he can point out that leads to hell), so the door he pointed out is out of the question.

The riddle is: which door should you choose now? The door you chose in the first place, or the door that the gnome has left out of the two?

There is no right door or wrong door, but maybe there is a difference in the probability between the two?

Plasma or LCD?

I currently have a 29 inch CRT TV at home. I think it's time for an upgrade - a 42 inch flat screen.

But is it a real upgrade? Every time I walk into a shop, all the screens look unclear and blurry. Is that what's the future holds for us? Blurry pictures? I hope not.

Let's assume not - that a 42inch flat screen is indeed an upgrade. Now I need to pick my choice out of literally hundreds of choices.

First choice is LCD of Plasma. I have read a lot about the differences but haven't yet decided what is best for me. To tell the truth, I can't even tell the difference in appearance between the two - can you?

Which of the above pictures is an LCD and which is Plasma? Difficult to say, isn't it?

Here is a movie trying to answer the question - Plasma or LCD?

Even if I did decide which of the technologies I am going for, there are too many parameters to look at to decide which specific module will get the privilege to get into my saloon. One solution to this is to get advice from a professional - but I always have the feeling I am being hassled. Maybe that's why the movie below was created - to guide you towards buying a flat screen in Israel:

If you can't see the movie from here, you can go directly to http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7379854967753847285&hl=en

So what to do? Maybe you can help?! If you have an opinion, please let me know by commenting or voting in the poll.

Thanks anyway...

The Dark Knight

As I promised, here is my thoughts on "The Dark Knight" - the latest Batman movie. I am not going to reveal anything critical if you haven't seen the movie yet - and I urge you to see it.

A few days ago I had lunch with a couple of friends. We all saw the movie seperately and wanted to discuss it. The notion that Batman did not have the leading part in the movie, like all comic films are built, was agreed on everyone. One of my friends even said that he could not sympathise with Batman since he wasn't as important in the movie as his evil counterpart - the joker. We then understood that he didn't yet see the first "new" movie Batman - "Batman Begins". This was probably why he could not understand Batman and could not identify with him.

I also read a lot of articles from critics, stating that this movie is better (or much better) than the earlier one. I tend to partially agree - I do see why they would think it is a more meaningful film, but I think that it doesn't hold without its origin. "The Dark Knight" should not stand on its own. I think it is very important to first see "Batman Begins" in order to understand the new concept of Batman and enjoy the new blockbuster.

In the past, I didn't understand how come people could mention Superman, Spiderman and Batman in the same sentence. Superman and Spiderman are "real" super heroes whereas Batman is just a rich fellow with no special abilities what so ever. The new series of Batman movies had changed all that. Batman may not be a super hero like others, but he is definately a hero as well as a great fiction figure.

Curse on the dark knight?

I was about to publish a post about "The Dark Knight" (and I will) when I read in the news about Morgan Freeman's accident. He is in bad condition hospitalized and I am crossing my fingures he will make it out.

So, is there a curse on the dark knight? Heath Ledger dies of accidental overdose of prescription drugsChristian Bale was arrested for hitting his mother and now Morgan.

Is someone behind all these accidents?

Could it be, the joker?

יאאאאניבבבבב

אני משער שרובנו מכירים את החוויה של משחק קלפים משעשע במקום אקזוטי ברחבי הגלובוס. תאילנד, נפאל, הודו ואפילו במערב - בכל מקום בו תמצאו צעירים ישראלים, קרוב לוודאי שגם תשמעו את קריאת הניצחון "יאאאניבבבבב!!!" בשלב זה או אחר. ובכן עכשיו יוצא המשחק (המפגר מה אם יורשה לי לומר) כמשחק משווק לכל דבר, להלן "סופר יניב". אני רק מקווה שלא הפכו את המשחק האינפנטילי גם כך למשחק טיפשי עוד יותר. תהנו

http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3577654,00.html

Cuil vs. Google (#2)

Continuing the comparison between the two search engines, here is a small experiment I made trying to find pictures for chocolates (I needed them for the new riddle - http://omer-behindthelines.blogspot.com/2008/08/riddle-4-piece-of-chocolate.html).


I typed in "chocolate pictures" in both search engines and clicked on the first link I was given.


The results

In Google I got the following page:

















In Cuil, they must have thought I was referring to a horse named 'chocolate':

Chocolate Pictures

2:0 to Google, and I think that Cuil might have a great way of handling requests with much less hardware - but they must improve their engine for the end-user to find anything relative.

Riddle 4 - a piece of chocolate

It's time for the next riddle, but before that, let's examine the last one (http://omer-behindthelines.blogspot.com/2008/07/riddle-3-ants-everywhere.html). Alex suggested that it will not take more than 2 minutes for the ants to fall off. The fact is that it will take 1 minute, maximal, for all the ants to fall. The way to prove this is to take a look at what happens when two ants meet (see illustration below). As I said, each ant turns around instantly and goes back to the direction it came from. However, since ants have no names and ant #1 is, for the sake of the riddle, just the same as ant #2, we can imagine that instead of turning around, each ant replaces places with the ant that it met and continues in its journey. Taking this into account, it is obvious that each ant, no matter how many ants it meets in its way, will go in one direction until it drops off - meaning that all the ants will drop after at the most 1 minute.

Riddle 4

In this riddle we have a bar of chocolate. This bar has 6 columns and 4 rows of chocolate, making 24 squares or pieces of chocolate.

The question is - how many times, minimal, do I need to break the bar until I get 24 separate pieces of chocolate (assuming that each break is along a line that separates between two rows or columns and there is no additional breaks)? Please explain why your answer is the lowest number of breaks that can actually give the wanted result.