So some more interesting I found.

Someone posted on /. about Petals Around The Rose. I was first introduced this game by my brother. I think I solved the game after the 2nd roll, though it was so simple! But I can definitely see why it may be difficult to pick up if you don’t see it immediately. If you’ve never played this game, you might not want to read this article: Bill Gates and Petals Around the Rose. Funny thing about Bill, he began to get answers right, but not consistently. He admitted that he was remembering throws he’d seen before, along with the answers, but had no plausible theory to account for answers. Remembering? Wow, first time I’ve heard someone brute forcing Petals Around The Rose.

So there is a riddle on that wwu site in my previous post asking if you think:
0.9999… < 1
0.9999… = 1
0.9999… > 1

You may want to read this thread. A lot of discussion on which is correct. If something converges as it approaches infinity, does it mean it equals that? One thing I hated about 0.9999… was that I could never represent that in fraction. For example.
0.1111… = 1/9
0.2222… = 2/9
0.3333… = 3/9
…
0.8888… = 8/9
0.9999… = 9/9?

But if that’s the case, does that mean 0.9999… = 1? They’ve proved that on multiple reasonings which I feel is fairly accurate, though I personally never really believed limits really ever reached the # (that’s why they were called limits), it just gets closer and closer, but I’ll concede that 0.9999… = 1.

One neat trick about these repeating digits is that there is always a easy way to convert them to fractions which I figured back in elementary school. Let’s say you have n repeating digits. All you have to do is put those n digits above n 9’s. For example, 0.123456123456123456… = 123456/999999.

Riddles are way too addicting. I should be play Fable!!! It’s 6am too! sigh…

The King and the Chalice

There is a king and there are his n prisoners. The king has a dungeon in his castle that is shaped like a circle, and has n cell doors around the perimeter, each leading to a separate, utterly sound proof room. When within the cells, the prisoners have absolutely no means of communicating with each other.

The king sits in his central room and the n prisoners are all locked in their sound proof cells. In the king’s central chamber is a table with a single chalice sitting atop it. Now, the king opens up a door to one of the prisoners’ rooms and lets him into the room, but always only one prisoner at a time! So he lets in just one of the prisoners, any one he chooses, and then asks him a question, “Since I first locked you and the other prisoners into your rooms, have all of you been in this room yet?” The prisoner only has two possible answers. “Yes,” or, “I’m not sure.” If any prisoner answers “yes” but is wrong, they all will be beheaded. If a prisoner answers “yes,” however, and is correct, all prisoners are granted full pardons and freed. After being asked that question and answering, the prisoner is then given an opportunity to turn the chalice upside down or right side up. If when he enters the room it is right side up, he can choose to leave it right side up or to turn it upside down, it’s his choice. The same thing goes for if it is upside down when he enters the room. He can either choose to turn it upright or to leave it upside down. After the prisoner manipulates the chalice (or not, by his choice), he is sent back to his own cell and securely locked in.

The king will call the prisoners in any order he pleases, and he can call and recall each prisoner as many times as he wants, as many times in a row as he wants. The only rule the king has to obey is that eventually he has to call every prisoner in an arbitrary number of times. So maybe he will call the first prisoner in a million times before ever calling in the second prisoner twice, we just don’t know. But eventually we may be certain that each prisoner will be called in ten times, or twenty times, or any number you choose.

Here’s one last monkey wrench to toss in the gears, though. The king is allowed to manipulate the cup himself, k times, out of the view of any of the prisoners. That means the king may turn an upright cup upside down or vice versa up to k times, as he chooses, without the prisoners knowing about it. This does not mean the king must manipulate the cup any number of times at all, only that he may.

Assume that both the king and the prisoners have a complete understanding of the game as I have just explained it to you, and that the prisoners were given time beforehand to come up with a strategy. The king was able to hear the prisoners discuss, however, so also assume that if there is a way to foil a strategy, the king will know it and exploit the weakness. The prisoners must utilize a strategy that works in absolutely every single possible case.

Now you must figure out not only how to keep the prisoners alive, but how to also ensure their eventual freedom. When can any one of them be certain they’ve all been in the central chamber of the dungeon at least once? And how? Don’t try to imagine any trickery like scratching messages in the soft gold of the chalice. The problem is as simple as it sounds. The prisoners have absolutely no way of communicating with each other except through the two orientations of the chalice. If any of them attempts any trickery at all they will all be beheaded. All the prisoners can do is turn the chalice upside down or right side up, as they choose, whenever they are called into the chamber.

Princes, Peasants, and Merchants

In the land of Gog, princes always lie, peasants always tell the truth, while merchants sometimes tell the truth and soemtimes lie. A tourist is enjoying an afternoon refreshment in one of the local pubs when the bartender (who always tells the truth) says to her: “Do you see those three men over there? One is a peasant, another a prince, and the third a merchant. You may ask them three yes/no questions, always indicating which man you wish should answer. If, after asking these three questions, you correctly identify the peasant, prince, and merchant, they will buy you a drink.” The tourist is indeed very thirsty. What questions should she ask?

Sticky Triangles

Let’s say I have a stack of sticks: all identical, inflexible, unbreakable. Sticks can touch only at their ends, not in between.

If I give you 3 sticks, you can make one triangle. If I give you 2 more sticks (5), you can make 2 triangles. If I give you another stick (6), how can you make 4 triangles?

18 Heads Up

You’re in a dark room with 50 quarters, 18 of which are heads up. You are allowed to move around the coins or flip some or all of them, if you wish. Problem is, it’s too dark to tell what you’re moving or flipping (no, you can’t figure it out by touch either). Your job is to split the coins into two groups, each of which has the same number of heads up coins. How do you accomplish this?

Where’s the father?

The mother is 21 years older than the child. In 6 years from now, the mother will be 5 times as old as the child. Question: Where’s the father?

When I solve these, I’ll put my solution in the comments section.

For those that like solving math/logic riddles, you might wanna visit Your Favorite Math/Logic Riddles?

Almost forgot about my favorite riddles site: [ wu :: riddles]

Rapist claim ‘brought too late’ (from deadlock) – Mr Justice Jack ruled last week the decision was correct and on Friday said this was because the claim was made more six years after the assault. Mrs A was earlier ordered to pay around £100,000 towards Hoare’s legal costs. Stupid legal system. Sigh…

U.S. offers donated Katrina meals to others – Early on, there was a need for about 500,000 readily packaged meals and the State Department asked its embassies worldwide to seek food donations. Britain was among the first countries to offer MREs. … An additional 33,000 MREs from Germany, Russia, Spain and France had also not been distributed to hurricane victims because of U.S. legal restrictions, Ereli said without elaborating. I can understand not accepting the British MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) because there’s a ban on cow import from England due to Mad Cow disease, but I can’t see any reason, besides the government being stubborn, to not distribue the other countries’ MREs when we really needed them.

Woman With $1.16 Tax Bill Faces $4K Fine – A woman who hasn’t paid a $1.16 income tax bill to this Cincinnati suburb faces up to 18 months in jail and $4,000 in fines. Though I’m not exactly sure of the situation, but it seems that this woman got numerous warnings, but just ignored them. On the other hand, it was just $1.16. How much money is going to be wasted trying to get this woman to pay that fee.

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Random Crap:

World’s oldest noodles found — in China – Italians are known for them and theories suggest they may have originated in the Middle East but scientists said Wednesday the world’s oldest known noodles, dating back 4,000 years, were made in China. It’s always been rumored that pasta (aka noodles) was invented in China and brought over to Italy. I had always thought it was Marco Polo who introduced it, but I guess I was wrong. Legend has it that Marco Polo introduced to Italy some products from China, including ice cream, the piñata and pasta, especially spaghetti. However, these legends are highly dubious — for instance, there is evidence that pasta was known in Italy since antiquity. Another thing is… since this is food, shouldn’t it be bio-degradable. If so, why is it still intact after 4000 years?

So artemyst was complaining how slow his 50MB email upload was going, so I was trying to convince him that you should never really upload such a large file through email. 1. The mail protocols weren’t meant for transfering large amount of data (http wasn’t meant for that either) and 2. You can’t gaurantee the recipients will accept emails with such large attachments. I know most servers only allow upto 10MB attachments, though they might have gigs of email storage space. He then tells me, he’s really uploading to himself on GMail for backup purposes. So I then show him this tool which I’ve shown you guys before: GMail Drive shell extension. This little tool actually creates a drive in Windows Explorer for you so you can access files directly from your GMail account. Where it stores, I’m not really too sure. Though the last time I tried it, it was rather slow, but expected.

So I played more Fable today. Several hours actually. I’ve been waiting since this morning when I woke up and was thinking I wanna go home to play Fable. Haha. So yah, if you were looking for me between the hours of 9pm and 12am, I probably had an away message up stating I was playing a game which required my full screen.

I guess the content rights to the video with Bill Gates and Napoleon Dynamite finally reliquished it and allowed people to post it online: Bill Gates Goes to College. Just like Napoleon Dynamite the movie, it requires a specific sense of humor to enjoy. Either you love it or you hate it. hehe.

The latest Las Vegas attraction: sumo wrestlers – The daily life of a sumo wrestler mainly involves waking up early, skipping breakfast, and practising intensely in the morning. They then eat hearty stew-based meals with plenty of rice, then sleep in the afternoon to bulk up. – besides the waking up early, it sounds like a pretty sweet life!

Dude! I need to got watch Serenity. It’s been out for 2 weeks and I still haven’t seen it. grrrrrrrr. To promote the movie, they released the 1st 9 minutes of the movie online. Probably to attract more viewers. Opening week, Serenity ranked #2. This week, they’re currently ranked #8. Go watch the movie if you haven’t.

New gadget to make theft of mobile phones harder – Finnish scientists have invented a device to make it harder to steal mobile phones and laptops by enabling them to detect changes in their owner’s walking style and then freeze to prevent unauthorized use. 1st of all, as someone who has lost his cell phone in the past, I don’t understand why cell phone service providers don’t help you track down your stolen cell phone. Instead they tell you to lock you account to prevent abuse or else you’ll be liable for the charges. Cell phone tracking technology (triangulation) has been available for quite some time. 2nd, you really think locking the cell phone would deter thiefs from stealing them? They’ll probably just reflash the phone and WA-LA. 3rd, detecting difference in walking patterns isn’t really useful. What if you lend your cell phone to a friend? What if you injured your leg or foot? What this does is just create inconvenience for the consumer, while not for the thief.

What art is hiding on your microchip? (from /.) – That was just the start of a catalog that now holds more than 100 images of extremely small automobiles, dinosaurs, birds of prey, cartoon characters and even a wedding announcement silhouette–all tucked away among microchip circuits. Davidson calls the collection the Silicon Zoo.

e honda! though swirly aura slap wasn’t really one of his moves – from artemyst

TheKen (Ken Stokes) Music (from lsiymle) – fan of Linkin Park and know how to play the piano? Well Ken here posted up piano sheets (I think he wrote them himself by listening to the music). It’s not bad.

toothpick gallery (from /.) – these toothpick carvings (if that’s what you can call them) are amazing! so intricate and details are so fine!

Remember how WhiteHouse.com was a porn site? Apparently WhiteHouse.org is a parody site of WhiteHouse.gov. Learn How to Be a Cigarette-Safe kid! (from artemyst) has these funny pictures of kids smoking. quite disturbing though.

Teen Finds Razor Blade in Chicken Sandwich – Craig Beat was not injured when he found the blade in his chicken patty Sept. 21, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office said. Reading that and imagining someone biting into a sandwich with a razor blade in it just forces me to cringe as I imagine a mouth full of blood.

Man coughs up screw after operation – “I have had a cold for the past few days,” Verhees told daily Gazet Van Antwerpen. “I had a terrible cough a few days ago. That’s when I suddenly felt something in my mouth. “It turned out to be a screw.” How the hell does a screw holding your spine get into your throat and ultimately into your mouth? Is there a hole somewhere that I’m missing?

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More stories, not necessarily cringing though.

Arkansas Mother Gives Birth to 16th Child – Their children include two sets of twins, and each child has a name beginning with the letter “J”: Joshua, 17; John David, 15; Janna, 15; Jill, 14; Jessa, 12; Jinger, 11; Joseph, 10; Josiah, 9; Joy-Anna, 8; Jeremiah, 6; Jedidiah, 6; Jason, 5; James, 4; Justin, 2; Jackson Levi, 1; and now Johannah. As cari noted, that’s almost 1 kid every year! They’re like rabbits!

Woman on Motorcycle Collides With Bear – story wasn’t that interesting, but: The bear fled the scene after the collision. They make it sound like the Bear was a hit and run case.

School expels children’s author for swearing – Reverend Graham Taylor, who wrote the novel “Shadowmancer,” which centers on witchcraft and battling evil, said teachers had got upset because he used the words “crap, poo, fart and bogey” in his talk at Penair School, in Truro in southwest England. “I think that my language was appropriate,” he said. “Language changes, and words that once were deemed unacceptable are now part of our culture.” and I totally agree! How is crap a swear word?

Thanks to esca for donating these cute kitty pix. I’ve imported them into my gallery. The gallery will now be my new photobucket. hehe. This photos were originally taken from ajani.org.