Yeah, this is one of those edge cases where it doesn't satisfy the string test from above, but there is still a chance it could fit.
sqrt[ (57/2)^2 + 22^2 ] = 36", which is greater than 31"
116 karma · joined January 4, 2008
sqrt[ (57/2)^2 + 22^2 ] = 36", which is greater than 31"
I feel much better now knowing I wasn't missing something obvious, and I can finally move onto my actual work for the morning after seeing the solutions. Thanks!
Mathematically this "string theory" (sorry, couldn't help myself) is saying the following:
sqrt[ (l/2)^2 + b^2 ] < min(x,y)
where l = length of box, b = base of box, and x and y are the respective widths of the two hallways.
However, this ignores the fact that the pivot point on the box around the corner can slide as you push the box around the corner. So the pivot point could essentially slide from one end of the box to the other (at some point sliding through the midpoint you are measuring for), which allows a lot more leeway for the box's acceptable dimensions.
I worked on this problem a bit this morning, but I don't have my trusty TI-89 calculator to help out. This is actually a calculus problem that I have a difficult time explaining without posting some sketches. Maybe I'll do that in the near future.
For non-student housing, I use http://www.mapskrieg.com
We have developed solutions to many of the problems you're contemplating (school email confirmation, conditional anonymity, etc.), so I think there might be a good opportunity to collaborate here.
Just as we've developed a way to involve landlords and school administrators in the site without compromising the students' anonymity, I've thought of how much opportunity ratemyprofessors is missing out on. Their business model is horribly outdated, and there are so many other ways they could be leveraging their information. Imagine if the site partnered with education specialists to help the poorly-rated professors improve their lessons and teaching. And a comment I had often heard from my professors was that until the site gave them a chance to respond (much like we've done with landlords), they would never take it seriously.
Not to mention the fact that there'd be an excellent opportunity to partner with schools (much like our School Partnership Program) and allow them to incorporate the ratings and website into their online registration process (or offer them an online registration process entirely).
I could go on indefinitely, so I'll just stop here. You get the idea. Please let me know if you're interested and serious about pursuing this venture.
In my opinion, the greatest cause for cheating was severely unrealistic expectations from the professors. They often expected a far greater amount of memorization and understanding than could possibly be accomplished in the amount of time given to learn the material.
When confronted, their answer was almost universally that "you will have to know it in the real world, and people's lives could depend on your work." However, this logic is severely flawed in that, in the real world, we are given more than 2 hours to complete a set of tasks. And we have the internet and textbooks at our grasp if we need a refresher on a specific equation or concept. And others will be checking our work, especially if people's lives depend on it.
This discrepency between professor expectations and real-world expectations I think gave many students the view, "if the professors aren't playing fair, then why should I?"
As a result, I saw much much less cheating when the professors "played fair", meaning they made the tests open-book and/or open-note. However, there was probably also much less legitimate understanding of the material come test time. So, I'm not really offering up a solution. Just my observations.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8umukDN_PVE
We've been a band for 5 years now, and this is definitely my top activity right after running our startup and right before autocrossing (oh, and my girlfriend fits somewhere in there too).
Very sweet though. I'm going to pass it on definitely.
If you're worried about abuse, you could provide a free account to registered students, which you can verify with their .edu email address. To keep the account free and active, you could send them a confirmation email once a year (or 6 months) to make sure their original .edu address is still active.
I'd start with seeing what kind of car you're compatible with by taking a look at http://www.carzen.com.
I recently bought a Volkswagen Jetta Wolfsburg Edition (same 2.0 turbocharged engine as the GTI and GLI but about $2500 less). Volkswagens retain their resale value (right up there with Mini), so they didn't lose much and are taking advantage of that by giving very favorable rates. Trust me, you can get a more expensive VW for less than other cars, just from the dramatic difference in interest rates. And their service is amazingly better than most other dealerships as well. Two of my roommates have since also gotten VW's.
I'm definitely a car person and autocross regularly. I've taken my Jetta to a track day at a race track we have nearby, and I'm completely satisfied with this thing.
Other than that, I'm not sure I know of a surefire way to make money without doing anything, except for the "work like hell for a few years" thing.
Friday nights, we usually have band practice or a show somewhere, followed by drinking and hanging out with fans and friends. Saturday nights are usually filled with more partying or taking my girlfriend on a date.
I've spent many many weekends over the past few years working straight through on my startup, but since we've started to turn the corner of profitability, I've stopped doing that.
Also, I haven't had a chance to check it out because it's taking forever to load in my other tab, so I might be missing exactly what it does... but, how about some RSS feeds?
There we go it just loaded... I'm getting a MySQL error on line 105 of index.php.
Any chance you could do some data parsing to give me just the relavent whois info instead of dumping the whole entry into the page?
I do like the idea overall. Expect 51 visits per day now.
You might also consider making the whole thing free and asking for donations to help you keep the project going and continue improving it and adding features.
As far as building a sustainable business goes, Twitter can't even do that from their own service. It will be difficult at best for you.
http://www.colorblindme.com/static/img_s_a104f13f889b73b841b...
In your server's Firefox installation, you may want to turn off notifications.
And maybe install Flash (or not). http://www.colorblindme.com/static/img_s_f8e133dc8711169cef5...
We've had some interest from a few investors (which is somewhat difficult being a web-based company in the Midwest), but we are still unsure about actually accepting any investment, since we are on the verge of profitability having so far been boot-strapped.
That being said, I would agree that "Hack" may not have been the best choice of words to use to describe the article. I find it interesting that everyone here is attacking Wired's Design Of Experiment for this article. I suppose I read the article in the context that it was a spoof and found it very amusing, thinking like-minded people would as well. Perhaps a new experiment is in order... gauge readers' reactions to an article after priming them with various titles for that article. Maybe I should have titled my submission, "Ice as a Commodity" or "Common Sense Wins Again".
Maybe we'll do a poll for our existing user's and see what they say. I've got no problem changing it if people don't like it... and I'm the only designer, so I've got no red tape to go through ;)
I agree about the enormous space the options boxes take up on the results page, and I'm still working on a redesign of that.
The browse rentals page doesn't serve much purpose other than to give casual views something to look at. Typically users who are actively looking for rentals either search for their school or type in a city or something, which of course returns much more relavent results.
Perhaps I'll change the results page for the "Browse Rentals" to show the schools on the map and allow the user to click one to narrow down the search.
As for the "screwed" in the slogan, most landlords love it. I've also won a couple Elevator pitch contests by working the slogan in there, and had people coming up to me the rest of the conferences laughing and saying how memorable it was. I think it's all about knowing your audience and your boundaries and then listening to feedback from your customers to make sure you're not going to far. As for us, most landlords love it too and agree whole-heartedly that they don't want to get "screwed" by student tenants.
And as a side note, when landlords log in to the site, all of the language and vocabulary on the site change to a much more professional tone.
Thank you very much for your feedback. We appreciate it a lot!