Fabulous Adventures In Coding : Riddle Me This

Riddle Me This, Google, Part Three

Eric Lippert — Wed, 05 Jan 2005 21:37:00 GMT

Happy New Year everyone! Let's start 2005 off with another episode of Riddle Me This, Google.

Yes, once more, I've looked through the 43500 google queries that have resulted in page hits on my blog in the last six months. (Over 200 a day!) For most of those hits, Google delivered the searcher to a page that had something to do with their query. But several of the questions typed into google got referred to pages which did not answer their questions. As a public service, I'll answer those questions now.

I've added capitalization, etc, but otherwise these queries are pretty much as they were typed into Google. As usual, we'll start with...

Agony

How do you know when a 12 year old girl has a crush on you?

Does she giggle when you walk by? Whisper? Point? Chase you around at recess yelling "girl germs! girl germs!" ?

If you answered "yes" to any of those questions then she's a 12 year old girl who may or may not have a crush on you.

Remember, the only sure way to tell is to send a note that says "Do you love me? Check one: yes [] no []"

How the heck do I ask a girl out?

Studies show that "Would you like to go to the movies with me some time next week?" has significantly better chance of success than "Hey baby, how about a scotch and sofa?"

If a picture paints a thousand words then why can't I paint you?

I'm not sure. Perhaps you need more practice. But I do know that if the world should stop revolving, spinning slowly down to die, I'd spend the end with you. And when the world was through then one by one the stars would all go out. Then you and I would simply fly away.

What does 'it's not you, it's me' mean?

It means it's OVER, kiddo. Sorry.

What does it mean when an ex calls?

Either they want you back, or they want their CDs back.

Why doesn't Google love me?

I know you're bummed out now, but that company was never any good for you. You were just bickering all the time, and ever since Google went public, you just didn't get the attention you deserved. Spend some time by yourself for now and maybe you two can be friends again soon.

Politics

What's the difference between a Canadian and an American?

The biggest difference is that Canadians think there's a difference. Americans don't.

How are Newfoundlanders different from other Canadians?

Newfies wear skates when they play street hockey.

Language

Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz. What does it mean?

Well, why wouldn't jackdaws love your big sphinx of quartz? It's a lovely sphinx of quartz.

(This is a pangram -- a sentence which contains all 26 letters. "Quick zephyrs blow, vexing daft Jim" is even shorter, but that proper noun is irksome.)

What is codified orthography?

A codified orthography is an organized system for standardized spellings of words.

Science

How to change Celcius to Kelvin, for kids?

Adding 273 is the same whether you're a kid or a grown-up.

If you flip a coin x number of times what are the chances you get y heads?

I assume that you mean "exactly y heads", not "y or more heads", and that the coin is fair. In that case, it's a binomial probability distribution. Chances are x! in y! (x-y)! 2^x. So, for example, the chances of 3 heads in 5 tosses are (5x4x3x2x1) in (3x2x1) (2x1) 2⁵, which is 120 in 344, or 5 in 16.

What makes the giraffe a mammal?

Giraffes are warm-blooded, give birth to live young, produce milk, and are covered with hair; that makes them mammals.

What is the different between finite automata and non determinate finite automata?

As far as their expressive power goes, there is no difference. Every NDFA has an equivalent DFA which can be constructed algorithmically from the NDFA specification. We can therefore reason about regular languages using NDFAs when it is convenient, knowing that we can construct an equivalent DFA automatically. That's the only difference -- NDFAs are simply easier to think about. (Now, as a practical matter, there are n-state NDFAs where the smallest equivalent DFA has 2ⁿ states -- which isn't so bad, that's just n bits. But listing the state transition rules would be a pain in the rear!)

The same is NOT true for nondeterministic pushdown automata. There are NDPDAs that cannot be turned into deterministic PDAs.

Nondeterministic Turing machines are simulatable by universal Turing machines, but the simulation can take a long time. It is unknown whether polynomial-time nondeterministic Turing machines are simulatable by polynomial time deterministic Turing machines; it is widely believed that they are not. Proving this conjecture is one of the major unsolved problems in the theory of computability.

Oddly enough, I've been working on a series about exactly this topic, which I may blog later this year.

Practical Advice

Why is it not good to drive slow?

Driving slow is fine. But if you are going to drive slow, for crying out loud, stay in the right-hand lane already!

How to tell if your modem is going bad?

Squeeze it. Does it feel pleasantly firm, like a ripe melon, or is it squishy and gross? Does it have a pleasant, fresh smell? How far past the sell-by date is it?

I hope that clears a few things up.

[This is Riddle Me This, Google Part Three. See also Part One and Part Two.]

Riddle Me This, Google: Part Two

Eric Lippert — Fri, 27 Aug 2004 17:29:00 GMT

I knew this would end up being an agony column.

Of the 29950 Google-referred hits since the last time I analyzed the logs, a significant fraction of them were variations on "how do I get a boy to like me?" Thank goodness I've already answered that one, but what about all the questions that didn't get answered?

Once again, I'll answer some of the questions that people typed into Google and ended up referred to my blog.

(A number of people have asked me how this works. When you get a list of query results from Google and click on one of them, the browser can send the URL of the referring Google page to the referred page. The referring page URL contains enough information to deduce what the query was. The blog server software records which referrers went to which pages, so I can recover that information. But note that it requires someone to actually click on a link that goes to my blog -- just seeing it on the list of results (or looking at Google's cache) doesn't transmit any information to the blog server.)

Let's start with the agony:

How do you forget about a girl you get over vacation?

It just takes time, kiddo.

What to do if he doesn't propose?

Take the initiative already! This is the 21st century!

Is it good if I want it real bad?

I'm not touching that one.

On to some more practical questions:

Why can you see better from the edge of your eye at night?

The retina has two kinds of cells: brightness-detecting rods and colour-detecting cones. There are more cones in the center of the retina and more rods on the edges. That means that in bright conditions, you get really good colour vision when you're looking straight ahead. At night, when it is hard to see colours, the rods along the edge are more sensitive to low light than the cones in the middle, so it sometimes gets easier to see things "out of the corner of your eye" than straight on.

How long does it take to spend 1 billion dollars?

It depends on how fast you spend it. Microsoft spends that much in a few weeks probably. If you're the United States government, not long at all.

Does anyone in Microsoft get the blame for the bugs?

Oh yeah! You haven't lived until you've woken up to the headline on ZDNet being "Worst Internet Explorer Security Flaw Ever Found In [Code Eric Wrote Last Week]".

how much does a hermit crab weigh?

Up to five kilograms! That's a heavy crab.

How to make the dead the undead?

There are many techniques, but for safety, I recommend using one that does not produce contagious or uncontrollable undead. Vampires are right out -- you don't want powerful, intelligent, flying undead creating their own army of slave vampires and rising up against you. Same with all forms of liches -- they're just too hard to control. Stick to low-level stuff -- ghasts, ghouls, skeletons and voodoo zombies. It is vitally important to realize that there is a big difference between voodoo zombies and virus zombies. You do not want virus zombies under any circumstances. (See Max Brooks' excellent book "The Zombie Survival Guide" for a ten-point checklist on differentiating voodoo from virus zombies.)

Where do I buy dead trees?

Costco? Office Depot's photocopy paper department?

Why can you not see an object that is behind another object?

Because light travels in straight lines and is absorbed by most materials. Note however that just because the object cannot be seen doesn't mean that it has ceased to exist.

How to make money running a blog?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Oh, you're serious. A bunch of bloggers have started selling T-shirts. Try that.

Hey, if I offered FABULOUS ADVENTURES T-Shirts, would people buy them?

Why have we got a skeleton?

It'd be a little hard to walk without one, no?

What makes me proud to be a Micronesian?

I'd think that you'd know better than me. The lovely scenery perhaps?

Are you a monkey?

No, I'm a primate but not a monkey.

What are you looking at, monkey boy?

I just said I'm not a monkey. Geez!

How can I tell if I'm a centaur?

Is the lower half of your body that of a large, hooved quadruped? Is the upper half human? If you answered "yes" to both questions, odds are good that you are a centaur.

Where can I find funny questions to ask somebody?

Write a blog. Read the query logs every six months.

And finally, though this isn't a question, this is my favourite of the 29950 Google queries:

Eric is completely complete of the things that are very complete.

Thanks, that's a nice thing to say. I think you're complete too.

[This is part two of Riddle Me This, Google. See also Part One and Part Three.]

Riddle me this, Google

Eric Lippert — Wed, 12 May 2004 02:48:00 GMT

One of the reasons why I do all this technical stuff in a blog is to leverage the power of search engines like Google. I wrote a program the other day to go through the referrer log and extract all the Google queries that sent people to my page, and I was quite pleased to discover that the vast majority of the Google queries were from people who would have gotten their questions answered by various articles. Lots and lots of queries like "vbscript and jscript arrays", "cannot use parentheses when calling a sub" and so on. I've gotten over 15000 Google hits since I began this project. Next time I'll discuss the details of the simple analysis program I wrote, but today I want to answer more reader questions.

Looking through the logs though, I see there are many questions posed to Google which were referred to my blog, but my blog didn't actually answer them. I'd like to take this opportunity as a public service to answer those questions. (I've capitalized and punctuated the queries, but otherwise they're pretty much as they were typed into Google.)

Personal questions:

Are you a traveling man?

I'm a travellin' man. Don't tie me down 'cause there's just too much livin' goin' all around. A man has got to see what he can see. I love the road and I love the air and I don't worry and I don't ever care. I love my women, and sometimes they love me.

Historical Questions:

Name as many people you can who went before the Committee and did name names.

Elia Kazan, and, um, hmm, he's pretty much the only one who comes to mind. Oh, and Disney of course. That part of history is not my strong suit.

Linguistic Questions:

What does "MSDN" stand for?

Microsoft Developer Network.

What does "foo" mean?

Nothing. It's a metasyntactic variable used as a placeholder.

What does "FUD" stand for?

Fear, uncertainty and doubt.

What does "elision" mean?

It's a grammatical term. To elide a word is to omit it in such a way that the meaning is still clear. For example, I live with two people who grew up in Pennsylvania, and they have a habit of eliding the verb "to be" in certain contexts. For example, they'll say "Do you have any towels that need washed?" instead of "need to be washed". The missing "to be" is an elision. (I hardly even notice it anymore.)

We use the term in artificial languages in the same way. For example, when you say class blah { int foo; } in C#, you've elided the internal on the class and the private on the member. They're understood to be there, but omitted for brevity without changing the meaning.

What are some opposite words for "boring"?

Fascinating, engrossing, interesting, captivating.

Is there a difference between English and German?

Yes.

How can I write Urdu?

Learn the alphabet first. Try this page: http://www.ukindia.com/zurdu1.htm

Romantic Questions:

What are the best ways to get a boy to like you?

Just be yourself -- the last thing you want is to get a boy interested in a fake, put-on version of yourself, because then you'll only have to maintain the charade to keep him interested, and what fun is that?

If you're having trouble meeting boys, do stuff that makes you a more interesting person and puts you in contact with new people. Volunteer in your community, join a mixed-sex sports team, take some classes, whatever. That not only increases your chances of meeting someone with common interests, it gives you something to talk about as you're getting to know them.

More generally: I've learned by bitter experience that it is a bad idea to predicate your own happiness on the behaviour of other people. It seems crazy, I know, but one of the best ways to have a good relationship with someone else is to first learn to be happy by yourself. Happy single people are highly attractive to MOTASs compared to desperate, depressed single people.

(I am amazed that my blog is number three on the Google page for this query.)

Why do guys string you along?

Some guys are just jerks, I guess.

Health Questions:

What make my eyes hurt when I open them in the morning?

Your planet is in orbit around a giant ball of fire. Close the blinds before you go to bed.

What are those little things in my eyes?

Assuming they aren't contact lenses, they're probably "floaters" -- little pieces of detached protein. Unless you suddenly start getting a lot of floaters, they're nothing to worry about. If you do suddenly get lots, go see an optometrist immediately.

I see things with my eyes.

No kidding? Me too!

Philosophical Questions:

Why does my clock change?

Because time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' into the future.

Who can say where the road goes?

Any decent cartographer. Or try stopping at the next gas station.

I have evil powers. How do I use them?

I'd tell you, but that would be morally wrong.

Am I too smart?

Probably not; few people are.

Practical Questions:

How to tell asbestos vinyl flooring?

I had that stuff in my old kitchen. Believe me, you can't tell whether it is contaminated just by looking at it.

Get a spray bottle and soak a small area with water. Keep spraying it as you use a sharp knife to cut off a small sample. (If there are asbestos fibers, you want them wet so that they fall out of the air.) Immediately put the sample in a zip-lock bag, or, preferably, two, and take it to an asbestos testing lab.

I can also give you some tips on do-it-yourself abatement if you decide to take it out yourself.

Where do cufflinks come from?

When a mommy and daddy cufflink love each other very much…

Seriously, any good formal wear store can hook you up with a nice pair of cufflinks.

How can employees give good service to the customer in order to get more customers in a restaurant establishment?

In general, good service is straightforward: treat the customer like you appreciate their business and want them back!

Remember, good service doesn't get people in the door; good service gets repeat customers. Advertising gets them in the door. Of course, there is always word-of-mouth, but that's more likely to be about the good food than the good service. Regular customers are the lifeblood of most restaurants.

How can I break my foot?

Dropping a really heavy object (for instance, a bunch of bricks, or perhaps an anvil) is the "classic" method. You can also get it caught in a door or some machinery or get run over by a heavy vehicle. There are lots of ways -- be creative!

How can I add two numbers?

Start by adding the ones digits, then the tens, and so on. Make sure to keep track of the "carry".

How can a monkey be interviewed?

Lock James Lipton in a room with a monkey and a tape recorder, see what happens. Better yet, lock James Lipton in a room with a couple dozen monkeys. I'd pay good money to see that.

[This is part one of Riddle Me This, Google. See also Part Two and Part Three.]