The Nineteenth Byte - 2014-07-23

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12:25 AM

@Doorknob Out of curiosity, what play order are the entries played in? Is the first entry always player 1 (where first entry is playing), etc?

@Geobits I randomized the list before starting the game.

K, was just curious. Seems if any player has an advantage, it would be the first one to make a move.

New Sandboxed Posts

12:45 AM

0

A: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XIV

Reindent Java/C/C++/etc. code Write a program that inserts or removes whitespace adjacent to { and } so as to properly format code according to these rules: No line should contain more than one of { and }. A { should never be the only thing on a line (besides whitespace). A } should always be ...

1 hour later…

2:04 AM

Phew... my scores aren't completely botched like I thought they were

I just left this one poor guy's submission in a weird state. I told him I would make it up to him if he placed in the top 3 of the next run

2:28 AM

Hehe. I think I found some deep voodoo that might work well in an IOCCC program. In the very last chapter in vol 2. of Handbook of Automation Computation and Control (1959).

It a Turing machine designed for a drum memory instead of a tape. The drum spins at a constant speed, and you have to do NOPs until the right data is under the head.

It may or may not have a second memory, like an accumulator. If the second memory exists and is larger than one cell, the size cannot have a common factor with the size of the primary memory, so all address combinations occur in a super-cycle.

If I combine that with some crazy way of implementing the cyclic memory, don't nobody gonna grok that shit.

Like using a double-length memory array, and a fixed pointer to the median cell, and memmove()ing everything instead of adjusting the pointer.

... Now everybody forget everything I just said.

2 hours later…

5:08 AM

16

Q: Where does the laser go?

Take a 2-dimensional grid and draw a number of line segments on it to represent mirrors. Now pick a point to place a theoretical laser and an angle to define the direction it's pointing. The question is: if your follow the laser beam path for some specified distance, what coordinate point are you...

Not even a single answer trying to golf...

5:28 AM

found a free ebook site: forgottenbooks.com/books/…

1 hour later…

New Sandboxed Posts

6:56 AM

0

A: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XIV

This will be a code-golf question Find the Greatest Common Divisor of two numbers, with no math operators or calls to math libraries. Use any language to find the GCD of two numbers passed in from command line. Program should run as ./program num1 num2 Bonus kudos awarded for recursive soluti...

Martin Büttner

@Howard I might give it a try with Ruby tonight, but I just couldn't be bothered to port it so far. :D

3 hours later…

Martin Büttner

9:49 AM

"damn it" ... got another silver and bronze badge on SO for some old answer... I've got to try harder on PPCG :D

@MartinBüttner I have a very simple way to fix that! Just award a bounty to any of my answers :D

That will give you Investor and Altruist :)

whispers to @MartinBüttner If you award one to me instead of him, I won't delete your account!

3

:P

:D

New Sandboxed Posts

10:14 AM

0

A: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XIV

Brainfuck compression For many code golfers, Brainfuck is the language of choice. However, it is horrifyingly wasteful: it only uses eight symbols (.,<>+-[]) out of a character set of 256. Your task is to convert it into a compressed format, as follows: Receive Brainfuck code on standard inpu...

Martin Büttner

Haha, thanks for your very generous offers, but I already have a question in mind on which I'll get those two badges :P

(and neither of you have answered that question yet... but maybe you might once I put the bounty on it :P)

10:30 AM

Is it the color snake one? (I'm currently writing a solution to that one.)

bump

2

A: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XIV

IBAN validator Write a program (can be either a function or a code snippet) that accepts a string of alphanumeric characters and validates it according to ISO 13616:2007. The algorithm for validation is (source: wikipedia article on IBAN http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Nu...

10:56 AM

@Howard It used to be that people complained about answers which included a code count even though the question wasn't code-golf. Now we're risking turning into a site where you get a ton of upvotes for having an animated gif even if you don't attempt to optimise for the stated winning criteria, effectively turning every question into popularity-contest.

2

1 hour later…

11:59 AM

@PeterTaylor Agree - most challenges turned into popularity challenges - I'd even say "don't attempt to optimise for the stated winning criteria" is too mild - "ignore the requirements of the challenge and look for popularity only" is also often the case for many answers

@Howard More of the question's fault, isn't it? The "Bonus" section (effectively creating two primary winning criteria, which is an oxymoron) shouldn't be there; the answers are simply doing exactly what the challenge asked. (/cc @PeterTaylor)

@Doorknob It is the case for this specific question - but there are many more where the question is fine but answers favour popularity over correctness.

@Howard Examples? Non-golfed solutions to golfed challenges are borderline NAA, and I'm not exactly clear on what you mean by "don't attempt to optimise for the stated winning criteria."

Martin Büttner

@Doorknob No it's an older one.

1 hour later…

1:14 PM

@Howard You can use this challenge as an example. I have 90 answers, and 30% of them are not serious. If 30% of them were closed as NAA, I would have a lot less work to do.

Martin Büttner

1:25 PM

@Rainbolt that sounds like you're complaining about those non-serious entries that got the challenge started ;)

I suggested this tag synonym here: codegolf.stackexchange.com/tags/graphical-output/synonyms ... it seems like graphical-output and drawing are basically the same thing. The only difference is that the tag wiki for drawing includes ASCII art whereas graphical output doesn't and tells you to use ascii-art instead. That seems to be a fairly irrelevant difference, and having both of them just makes it non-obvious which one to use for "actual" graphics.

@MartinBüttner Not complaining. Allowing Howard to use them as a catalyst.

Martin Büttner

For instance, I would have expected this challenge to be tagged graphical-output

I want to get some formal learning in algorithms involving graphics. All I know how to do currently is "search for pictures similar to this one"

But the algorithm is so fascinating that I feel like others would be as well

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt I'd argue that non-serious submissions are actually vital for KotHs - not just to get them in the HNQ, but more importantly to generate a sufficiently large number of participants for certain strategies to work and be interesting.

@Rainbolt they definitely are!

I personally enjoy getting 90 entries, but I can see why it might bother Howard or Peter Taylor when the silly entries start to spill over to places where they aren't wanted. Maybe they aren't as thrilled by hitting the HNQ as I am, since they are veterans.

On the other hand, that comment I posted on your meta post yesterday: If the challenge allows poor answers, there is a problem with the challenge.

(I'll continue countering my own arguments) On the other other hand, maybe posting a set of rigorous specs that would eliminate silly answers as NAA is too tedious for most authors to do on every challenge.

2:06 PM

user image

2

Umm, wut?

@Doorknob What does the stuff in out.txt mean after running the controller?

Lmao!

When I run two PokeBots, I get this:

1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1

@ProgramFOX Each bot has an ID. There are 10 numbers after the battle ID; if they're positive, that means that bot won. If they're -1, that means it was a tie.

PokeBots always tie each other because all they do is SPSPSP. :P

Ah, I see.

Does every PokeBot have the same ID (1)?

2:09 PM

I read "PokeBots" as "PO-KEY-BOTS" because of Pokemon

2

@ProgramFOX No; each bot will be included exactly once and will have a unique ID.

@Doorknob Who do I just have one line then?

0

Q: Caveman Duels (or: Me poke you with sharp stick)

Caveman mad. Other caveman take stick but stick was for me. Caveman fight! Description Caveman need sharp stick to stab other caveman. Other caveman also try to stab with sharp stick. Caveman can sharpen stick, poke with stick, or block poky sticks. If caveman poke other caveman with sharp...

king-of-the-hill

@ProgramFOX Uhh, what?

@Doorknob I just get one line of output in out.txt. As two PokeBots have been fighting against each other, I expect 2 lines.

@ProgramFOX Why? 2 PokeBots == 1 duel

2:13 PM

@Doorknob One line for one PokeBot, one line for the other PokeBot. If they would not tie, I would have no idea which one actually won.

@ProgramFOX One would have the ID of 0, and one would be 1. For example, if the scores were 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 -1, that means bot #0 won 5 times, bot #1 won 4 times, and they tied once

@Doorknob Ah, now I see. I thought a 1 would appear if you win, a 0 if you lose and a -1 if you tie.

It's almost midnight in my timezone so I'm going to sleep now; the first test will be right when I wake up tomorrow (assuming there is at least one more entry by then). — Doorknob ♦ 1 min ago

Lol someone upvoted Pokebot

Anyway, going to sleep, bye all

Martin Büttner

that was me

that was exactly what I had in mind for my first submission :D

@Rainbolt this

okay, I managed to do the next simplest thing, that gives me a chance a chance of winning ^^

New Sandboxed Posts

2:45 PM

0

A: Proposed Question Sandbox - Mark XIV

Dining Philosophers (Incomplete) Please do not vote or comment yet. Introduction Cooperate with other Philosophers in order to eat your dinner as quickly as possible. Game You will be randomly paired with two other philosophers. Each philosopher begins with one fork. A philosopher needs tw...

@Doorknob Can you delete that ^? I only posted so I wouldn't forget my idea while on vacation next week.

I'll be sure to bring attention to it when I'm done.

Ehh nevermind (I just remembered he was going to sleep)

Martin Büttner

vacation? the nineteenth byte will be so quiet next week.

Actually, I am going to haul my desktop computer with me because I have trials to run

And because thanks to Doorknob, tinkering with Good Versus Evil has actually been somewhat relaxing

I was a little panicky before I got a bounty extension.

@MartinBüttner I thought of another way we could collaborate without having to be all creative and stuff, if you're interested.

3:03 PM

@Doorknob The bonus section when presented as a bonus was a distraction, which in retrospect was a mistake. The recent edit to convert it into an alternative is compounding the mistake.

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt go ahead!

@Rainbolt I'm not sure about Howard, but I first became aware of the HNQ when I got back from my Christmas holiday to find that it was providing a positive feedback loop to promote code trolling. Since there's no way of forcing people to read the FAQ and understand what this site is about before participating, I'd prefer to be excluded from the HNQ.

@MartinBüttner I'm going on holiday next week too. You may start panicking now ;)

Martin Büttner

GAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

@MartinBüttner I want to bring this to fruition in Java, C#, C++, or another "fast" language. meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/1593/18487

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt I can do C# and C++. I'd prefer the former, but I'm not sure it's such a good idea. I don't know the current state of Mono, but excluding Unix users is not an option, and I think one would get more downvotes for "Too bad it's in C#" than for "Too bad it's in Java"

What about @Geobits? (it was hist post after all)

3:12 PM

He's welcome to participate. Doesn't Java run on Unix?

Martin Büttner

Btw, I'm not sure using one of those languages is the most convenient option. For cases where the controller itself doesn't have to be fast (because there is no heavy number crunching on the bots' replies or similar), I think using something like Ruby or Python would be more convenient for people (since they wouldn't have to compile anything).

@Rainbolt sure it does... but I was referring to C#

Mono's got pretty good library coverage, but isn't as well optimised for speed.

Martin Büttner

by "the former" I meant the former of the two I listed, not of the three you did ^^

The controller itself is going to be doing a lot of compiling

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt well, it's going to be calling processes that do the compiling

3:15 PM

That's true

Well, here's another idea.

We could just write a series of scripts that do one thing and only one thing each.

For example "Compile all files ending with .cs"

Even just that would have taken a huge load off of my back the other day

Martin Büttner

Yeah that would definitely be a start

And they would be particularly well suited to Ruby or Python

Maybe I can learn Ruby (resume item!)

Martin Büttner

also... how about a submission scraper... the OP would have to instruct all participants to follow some format (e.g. #SubmissionTitle | Language\n\nCodeBlock\n\nWhateverYouWant), and then it would be really easy to fish out the submissions, sort them into language buckets and compile them appropriately

That would be nice. How about an auto commentor that uses the errors from the submission scraper to auto generate comments saying "You broke the format idiot."

@Rainbolt This sounds like the kind of thing which make programs are for. The problem would be finding a sufficiently general make.

For *nix it's probably not too hard: one line per file extension with a bit of shell to glue

Martin Büttner

3:25 PM

@PeterTaylor In any KotH, if the second submission is trying to be better than the first (what most people would try to achieve) - how can that second submission not be specifically beating the first one?

E.g. .cs: mono-csc -o $1.exe $1.cs

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt I'd usually be careful with stuff that automatically writes to the web... reading won't do any harm (in the quantities we're talking about)

@MartinBüttner Only a pessimist would try to achieve that. An optimist or a realist would try to be better than future submissions too.

Martin Büttner

@PeterTaylor I'm pretty sure my bot will be the odd future submission, too.

I doubt that PokeBot will be the only one starting with SPS (and I did have that in mind when posting)

of course, PokeBot is among the bots beaten by this strategy

What about PatientBlacksmith? It's a pretty decent strategy... and it will beat all existing bots. Was it written specifically to beaten the first three?

I have no idea, but I don't think it's relevant.

Your answer makes a claim which I think disqualifies it, and I was commenting on that. Doorknob is the final arbiter.

Martin Büttner

3:37 PM

@PeterTaylor Oh well, I can remove that half sentence if you prefer... what I meant was all this bot wants to do is better than the existing one (without actually trying to have a decent strategy that has any hope of winning against the majority of bots)

does that sound better? codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/34970/8478

Yes, it does.

The public visibility of answers does make this a less than ideal place to host king-of-the-hill contests. They would be fairer if submissions were private.

Martin Büttner

that being said, I think the rule is a bit counter productive in the first place... the meta game is half the fun of a KotH... and since the submissions to any KotH will only explore a small part of the strategy space, writing a bot that's good on average against arbitrary strategies might actually be a bad choice against the particular strategies written by the other submissions. what's the point of writing a provably optimal (on average) strategy if it loses against the other bots anyway?

@PeterTaylor yeah I'm not sure I'd find them as interesting if I couldn't see the other bots

2

I've heard of iterated prisoner's dilemma contests with private submissions and subsequent publication of the contestants' code. But that doesn't work with the StackExchange model.

Martin Büttner

@PeterTaylor This one? codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/26486/…

3:52 PM

No, these ones

Martin Büttner

right

3 hours later…

Martin Büttner

6:50 PM

hey ruby golfers, what's the best way to get at the maths constant and functions?

just redefine M=Math?

or is there a way to access them without referring to a module at all?

(short of c=Math.cos)

7:03 PM

@MartinBüttner I wasn't the first to come up with the idea, just the first to post it on meta :)

If you guys want to do all the work, that is fine by me.

I just never did anything with it because nobody seemed interested in it at the time.

Martin Büttner

@Geobits Oh yeah, I thought someone else might have had the original idea, but your post does say, you were going to tackle it. ;)

right, fair enough

At the moment, life is getting in the way (see my drop in post frequency on PPCG for evidence).

jackets are just really tall necklaces that you wear backwards

With sleeves?

Martin Büttner

@Geobits maybe Trimsty is wearing those other jackets

(but then they wouldn't be backwards)

7:14 PM

Oh, like a self-hugging jacket?

@Geobits sleeves are just a metaphor

I... don't know what to say to that. I tried touching my sleeve just now and it worked, so I'm pretty sure it's real. If not, then it's all a lie and nothing matters anyway, and even in that case, it's real to me.

@Geobits If sleeves can provoke that kind of thought, imagine what the whole jacket can do

Why? It's just a necklace.

@Geobits sleeves don't even exist

7:23 PM

They do as much as jackets or necklaces do. Now, you might have a good case that the armhole in a sleeve doesn't exist, but...

It scares me that I installed the same product 30 times on one machine, and each time Windows reports a different size for the program in the "Uninstall a program" window

We're anywhere from 64 to 66 MB large

@Rainbolt i guess they figured nobody would install the same thing 30 times to notice

@Trimsty "They" is me lol. It's my company's product, and I wrote a large portion of the installer

7:39 PM

Is this the same program that doesn't uninstall everything when you uninstall it?

It is now. We leave the web.config behind.

And programs leave trial data behind ofc

I'm 90% certain the requirement was misinterpreted, and I even made my team leader aware of this. I'm pretty sure our customer just wants the web.config to remain on upgrades, not on uninstalls/reinstalls

Not that my team leader is poor or anything. He's actually really perceptive. He just likes to pick his battles

(was looking at the Hilbert golf and found this l-system rendering;)

user image

I wanna do that snake challenge :S but I have to go to bed in 10 minutes

Martin Büttner

@Trimsty then be quick about it!

7:51 PM

@MartinBüttner ten minutes is barely enough to sketch out the region mapping

lol

Idea for a type of challenge that isn't really feasible given the tools we currently have: How fast can you solve a challenge?

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt That's been suggested before, but rejected exactly because it's very punishing with the SE format

a) meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/941/…

@Rainbolt Idea for a new site: that

Martin Büttner

b) meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/1796/8478

"If you laid out all the bones in a snake end-to-end, you would have a snake." - xkcd

Martin Büttner

7:56 PM

haha yeah

(relevant because hacker culture)

Martin Büttner

why are those what-ifs taking longer and longer?

-9 votes!!! Wow people didn't like that idea.

Maybe if he had started with "This isn't feasible but..."

@MartinBüttner we just have to figure out what's scarier; what-ifs becoming real, or what-ifs not coming out at all

Martin Büttner

@Trimsty Totally the latter.

although I'm not sure how the two are correlated

7:58 PM

@Rainbolt I got massive negative karma on reddit for accidentally leaving out a question mark, versus a lot of upvotes if I had had it in

@MartinBüttner let's submit it as a question o:

^ blowjob face

augh, I keep doing that xD

You guys better not make any blowjob faces while I'm on vacation. Behave yourself!

2

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt I don't know... I don't think it would work at all (see my comment on b)

@Rainbolt I'll ping you each time someone does

Haha ok

Martin Büttner

8:00 PM

Okay, here is one idea how it might work. You'd have to figure out when any participant started working on it

@Rainbolt you can never take a vacation from saying "^ blowjob face"

Martin Büttner

then you could score by shortest time between start and submitted answer

that would require: 1. the participant not being able to start before he claims he does, 2. the challenge not being ruined once a solution is known

(unless people do the SHA-1 thing)

That was really the heart of the "not feasible" comment. How on earth can I determine, using SE tools, when a participant started working

Without using an honor code

Like "enter your name here to get the challenge" because they could just enter someone else's name

I guess you could have an external service to authenticate you via OpenID (is that possible?!) and grab the login time, and use that as your start time

then you'd just hope everybody's honest :P

Oh I know. I could say "Enter your name, telephone number, address, email address, credit card number, and Social Security Number to view the challenge."

8:03 PM

@Rainbolt "Email is optional."

You forgot banking info. Might as well get that while you're at it, saves a step.

Yea I just ninjedited the credit card # in there

Hmmm

Let's agree on one thing real quick.

Ninjedited

Ninjetted

Two t's? Seriously?

@Geobits Typo lol. Sorry

Martin Büttner

Ninja'd

8:05 PM

I like ninjedited

editedquicklyinthehopesnobodynoticedortocorrectaminordetailthatwasoverlookedand‌pointedout

3

I think you should remove the question mark at the end

That's my only complaint

What question mark?

Martin Büttner

What question mark?

bloody multiple keyboard layouts

Omg I've been editedquicklyinthehopesnobodynoticedortocorrectaminordetailthatwasoverlookedand‌‌pointedout by Geobits!

8:07 PM

Hey, let's translate that into German, then it won't be long

It's in Australian already. They don't need very many spaces. "HeyYou GimmeABeer." is perfectly normal.

Martin Büttner

schnellgeändertinderhoffnungdassesniemandmitbekommenhatoderumeinkleinesdetailzuk‌orrigierendasübersehenundundworaufhingewiesenwurde

not quite

@MartinBüttner Length is relative.

Martin Büttner

@Trimsty I actually already used a few constructs that make it sound a lot more awkward in German than in English (if it was a proper sentence), so doing it properly it would be even longer

This is in Afrikaans, but it's a hand-translation: Vernederkennisgewingvoorkomwyskorreksiewysig

Martin Büttner

8:11 PM

catchy

Literally, "Edit to prevent humiliating knowledge of the state."

Afrikaans is so awesome, you can find examples of 50 letter words, 30 letters daily

Martin Büttner

"50 letter words, 30 letters daily" what?

@MartinBüttner You see 30 letter words on a daily basis, and on occasion you run into 50 letter words

just mah strange southern grammar

or it being late, one

Martin Büttner

right

:D

Martin Büttner

8:17 PM

that's worse than in German, actually

yup

Martin Büttner

20 letters, yeah... but then again English has things like internationalisation, too, and that's not even a compound word

@MartinBüttner Apparently yelling "Titin!" makes linguists cringe

Martin Büttner

you do get the odd 40-50 letter compound word, but those tend to be absurd names for laws

@Trimsty idontgetit

@MartinBüttner titin's chemical name is like, 198k letters long

whoops, I meant it's IUPAC name is 189k letters long (I don't ninjedit.)

Martin Büttner

8:21 PM

right ^^

I've gtg now ;c bai

[other people on the chatroom secretly celebrate]

Martin Büttner

see you

no we'll do it publicly once you're gone

Martin Büttner

9:13 PM

@PeterTaylor codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/34824/8478 would you be so kind to reconsider your downvote? :)

Anyone have a recommendation for a good sub-$300 rowing machine?

Martin Büttner

gym membership?

No thanks. I like to do cardio junk while I binge-watch TV. Much better on my large screen than taking a tablet/earbuds to a gym :p

Martin Büttner

fair enough

Besides, a gym membership will end up costing more than $300 very quickly around here.

Martin Büttner

9:16 PM

ahhh, the benefits of being a student :D

But the benefit of not being a student is, well, not being a student.

Martin Büttner

one year membership in central london for £160 :)

:P

They have a gym room at my office, but the equipment is junk and then I have to spend more time "at work".

If you count a couple treadmills and some kind of bowflex contraption as a "gym room".

Martin Büttner

yeah....... no.

@Geobits @Rainbolt did I already consult you regarding refueling for the solar system thing? this came up

I remember reading that. At first glance, I agree, but I'll admit I haven't given it much thought.

Martin Büttner

9:33 PM

the other thing that still needs figuring out is how fighting works for more than two parties (or how to avoid it)

I guess we can put this into perspective with Risk. Is there ever a time where you wish that your units were hanging out in limbo?

I would say no, that a unit doing nothing on a tile is better than a unit hanging out in limbo.

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt I'm just thinking, from a game theory perspective... if I can have my units somewhere instantly, without them already being there, I'd definitely want to do that, because a) it hides how many units exactly I have there and b) it leaves the decision of the fight to me

But hiding in space doesn't guarantee instantaneous travel does it?

Martin Büttner

if you have units whizzing around in a planet system, you'd have them ready for a fight within minutes or seconds which is negligible compared to all relevant actions (like fights, and taking over bases)

So the refuel was meant to stop players from whizzing around too much, and take breaks between long flights?

So that players who were in the middle of a fight didn't suddenly look up to find the rest of the universe has changed?

That makes sense to me

Martin Büttner

9:41 PM

yes basically

But I think you could just make fights take a few days and make interplanetary travel take a few months and achieve the same effect.

Martin Büttner

@Rainbolt the problem is, a mercury-neptune journey already takes something like half a year. travelling between the satellites of jupiter still only takes a few seconds or minutes. the length scales of the solar system do span a few orders of magnitude ^^

Well, it's your universe to squish and stretch how you like.

I was just thinking that "long flight + refueling time" is equivalent to "slightly longer flight"

In other words, if a two year trip takes two days to refuel, just make the trip two years + two days.

Martin Büttner

the current rules say that refueling takes 10% of the travel time

that still wouldn't make a difference

and I like the fact that it's easier to travel within a planet system than between planets

you should be more mobile around a single planet than globally

(yay, rep cap)

Wow, 29 notifications

Martin Büttner

9:52 PM

@Doorknob that was a short night

That's... something

Martin Büttner

and 3 badges?

@Doorknob

user image

Ha, the 160 just changed to a 165

I'm kind of afraid to click them

Martin Büttner

:D

well 20 notifications are answers

one is an edit to the meta answer

then there are probably 2 or 3 chat pings

9:54 PM

:P

Martin Büttner

@PeterTaylor thanks :)

Quick, everyone find 10 network-wide Doorknob posts to make a meaningless comment on.

@MartinBüttner Done

Ninja'd

Martin Büttner

although I think now that the OP clarified the question, you're downvotes for the answers aren't justified any more... it's not their fault for following a bad spec (and I think you've already downvoted the question for that)

@Rainbolt You still want me to?

Martin Büttner

9:56 PM

(ha, 202 rep without an accepted answer! although I think that will be corrected by tomorrow)

@MartinBüttner Probably an undownvote

Martin Büttner

@Doorknob yes, Peter's

also, yay, one silver badge closer to my SO account :)

what's a visual melon?

wow, did someone tell people we'd have free beer in here?

one who's wishing the CLR didn't take 0.15s to warm up so he didn't have to re-write his slime in C++

@MartinBüttner I still think that a) the interpretation that it wasn't required was hard to sustain before OP edited to state that; b) it's against the site standards for questions tagged code-golf; c) downvotes are a tool to try to discourage people from violating those standards.

Martin Büttner

fair enough

10:05 PM

is it possible to login into the system on startup if u knew the password?
without using keyboard, dont want to use any input device

Martin Büttner

"the system"?

@MartinBüttner computer

Martin Büttner

well yeah

Well, mine has an auto-login option. I think most OSs do.

Martin Büttner

for starters, which OS?

10:09 PM

@MartinBüttner Ubuntu...but it require to enter the password on startup..

@Vishwas Go to "User Accounts" and pick the user you want to auto-login. There should be an option for "Automatic Login".

I'm unsure whether you need the root password for this, but probably.

@Geobits if thats not the case , how to do it?

@Geobits bare with me

What version of Ubuntu? They move it around every so often.

Mine is 13.10

@Geobits 13.04

The instructions here for 13.04 show the same thing. If it's not there, I'm not sure what to tell you.

10:15 PM

@Geobits i know that..but in case you have to enter the password on startup without touching these settings>

I don't really understand what you're asking. You want to log in without entering a password but without enabling auto-login?

can i do it with any application?

just like plugging the USB having the password

Martin Büttner

so your actual problem is, you are currently not logged in and cannot log in via any input device to adjust those settings?

Ah. So you want a program that can log you into a system that has no input device at all, provided the password is stored/whatever by the program.

Martin Büttner

SSH onto the machine from another one if that's an option?

10:20 PM

Yea, that sounds like the easiest way to do it.

Even if you had some program on a USB stick, hopefully plugging it into your computer doesn't auto-run anything on it, and I can't see how you'd run the program without an input device.

Assuming the disk isn't encrypted, you could probably mount it in another PC and change the auto-login setting on disk. I'm not sure right offhand where it's stored.

the computer is on the LAN having internet..

@Geobits can i launch any script on startup?

I'm no expert, but I assume you'd need to be logged in to set that up.

yes i can set up that for once..but dont want do to it again n again

Martin Büttner

I'm pretty sure if you change those settings they will remain like they are

let me very ..

frank

10:25 PM

Several options here: askubuntu.com/questions/814/how-to-run-scripts-on-start-up

Martin Büttner

@PeterTaylor btw, one of the answers you downvoted (the Python one) already had a golfed version

ah no, it didn't when you downvoted, but it did before mine

@Geobits thanks man i will take look further..thanks a lot

11:16 PM

Caveman testing starts now!

According to Wolfram Alpha, there are 120 duels for 16 contestants. Currently, I've finished running 60 duels. This is going surprisingly quickly

130 games played... so that calculation was wrong

Oh, it stopped at 136

porting my slime from C# to C++ at the moment, can't say that code quality is a concern at this point

Heh. Why do you need to port it? I think Mono can run C# on Linux.

it seems to take 0.15s to start the process

(i.e. class P{void Main() {}})

11:31 PM

Ah

Well, when I have time I'll test that on Mono on my machine

do you want a copy of my bot to test it with?

Can't right now; busy building the scoreboard for the caveman challenge

roger

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