Here is a thought experiment that I was trying out today.
Question
Assume that we are in a society where there is no concept of time.
You have to meet a friend. How do you two sync up so that you can
meet each other. Remember that you do not have a concept of time,
hence you cannot tell him 'meet me below the fourth coconut tree at 3
PM today'.
Answer (one of the many)
One answer that I think might be feasible is that you tell your
friend that you will let off a firecracker (or some signaling device)
when you leave your home and you will let off a firecracker after
every 500 meters.
Applications of this problem
How do ants sync up between themselves ? i.e. how do they decide
'this is the time the house owner makes tea and spills some milk on
the counter'
I found your blogs from more than TWO years ago on working for
small companies very funny and interesting. I am getting ready to
switch jobs from a large office (60 people in my department alone)
to a very small institute (6 people). Your insights will be useful
to keep in mind!
Sweet! Thanks. The reader was referring my blog posts my perspectives on working in a small company
Toilet paper use flags inequities - Indians consume toilet paper
worth $7.7 million each year, according to an assessment made by
the World Watch Institute, which has concluded that toilet paper
use reveals the inequities in access to sanitation
globally. ..... [snip] .... When these figures are juxtaposed with
the numbers of people who do not have access to proper toilets, the
inequities in terms of services and basic amenities are evident,
according to World Watch. The U. S. and Canada enjoy 100 per cent
access to sanitary toilets. In India 67 per cent of the people do
not have access to them. Africa is even more pathetic.
Americas' "earliest recorded gunshot victim" - A 500-year-old human
body sports a wound believed to have been caused by a Spanish
firearm, in the first documented gunshot victim in the New World,
found in an Inca cemetery near Lima, Peru.
Hugh McGuire is the founder of LibriVox.org. LibriVox is a volunteer
project to make great books available to everyone as free audiobooks.
A few weeks back, I listened to an interview of Hugh McGuire (the
interviewer was Jon Udell) and it is quite interesting to see how a
part time project grows into a major project involving so many people.
Hugh mentioned that most of the work for LibriVox is done using forums.
I am downloading books from libriVox and listening them on the weekend
on my ipod.
I was reading the Top Five Scale-Out Pitfalls to Avoid article. I
knew about 4 of the 5 techniques that they mentioned, however, this
one was new to me
Avoid Mixing Hot and Cold Data
Similar to #3 is mixing hot (frequently-changed) and cold (more
static) data, especially when it comes to write activity. Since
database writes are more difficult and expensive to scale, it is
advisable to keep this type of data away from data that does not
change that often. Again, separating the data onto different
databases and/or servers can significantly enhance your
application's performance.
