Editing 664: Academia vs. Business
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In the alternate timeline, the boss does not possess the knowledge required to comprehend its import, and he simply sees the results without caring about the means Cueball used to attain them. He then gives Cueball another assignment, that may be vastly more workaday in nature. This, sadly, is the usual course of events in bureaucracy, which only seems to care about your results, not how you came about them. To drive in the point, the boss asks Cueball to do something as simple as setting up email on the office phones, a stark contrast to the skill and creativity Cueball would have needed to write his code in the first panel. It may even be imagined to be a "reward in itself" to casually hand over this new problem, however unsatisfying (or unsatisfiable) the new technical issue truly is. | In the alternate timeline, the boss does not possess the knowledge required to comprehend its import, and he simply sees the results without caring about the means Cueball used to attain them. He then gives Cueball another assignment, that may be vastly more workaday in nature. This, sadly, is the usual course of events in bureaucracy, which only seems to care about your results, not how you came about them. To drive in the point, the boss asks Cueball to do something as simple as setting up email on the office phones, a stark contrast to the skill and creativity Cueball would have needed to write his code in the first panel. It may even be imagined to be a "reward in itself" to casually hand over this new problem, however unsatisfying (or unsatisfiable) the new technical issue truly is. | ||
− | The references in the title text are to the {{w|P versus NP problem}}, a famous unsolved problem in computer science, and the "magical constant" (0x5f375a86) used in finding the {{w|fast inverse square root}}, i.e. solving y=1/√x | + | The references in the title text are to the {{w|P versus NP problem}}, a famous unsolved problem in computer science, and the "magical constant" (0x5f375a86) used in finding the {{w|fast inverse square root}}, i.e. solving y=1/√x by a program fast as possible – no-one knows quite who came up this very useful bit of code, but it was discovered hiding in the graphics code of the video game {{w|Quake III Arena}}. Note that the actual constant used in the Quake III source code is 0x5f375'''9df''', but the constant in the title text works also, and is actually slightly more accurate as shown in this paper: [http://www.lomont.org/Math/Papers/2003/InvSqrt.pdf Fast inverse square root by CHRIS LOMONT (Purdue university, 2003)]. |
− | The title text may be a reference to {{w|Stephen Jay Gould}}'s quotation: “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” | + | The title text may be a reference to {{w|Stephen Jay Gould}}'s quotation: “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” about how great minds may be exploited by the commercial world and their genius go unknown. |
==Transcript== | ==Transcript== | ||
− | :[Cueball sits at a desk in front of a computer | + | :[Cueball sits at a desk in front of a computer. There are cans on the desk and more crushed ones on the floor.] |
:Cueball: I just wrote the most beautiful code of my life. | :Cueball: I just wrote the most beautiful code of my life. | ||
− | |||
:Cueball: They casually handed me an impossible problem. In 48 hours and 200 lines, I ''solved'' it. | :Cueball: They casually handed me an impossible problem. In 48 hours and 200 lines, I ''solved'' it. | ||
− | :[ | + | :[Lines divide the comic into two possible end panels here, labeled "Academia" and "Business."] |
:Academia: | :Academia: | ||
Line 36: | Line 35: | ||
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]] | [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]] | ||
[[Category:Programming]] | [[Category:Programming]] | ||
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