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A Funny Story - "The Opera"
Working at the university or institute you are bound to work with students and over time some funny situations will happen. I am going to tell you one such story. Even though it may not be entirely related to math, it is related to the thought process and problem solving.
Setting the stage: Imagine
a computer lab filled with students during a practice lesson. This group
of students I know quite well, they are few in number and among them
there is this really bright student. I shall call the bright kid Mr. X
and not reveal his true name in order not to damage his reputation - he
may need it at some point in his life =)
So, Mr. X is really smart - you only have to explain
something to him once, maximum twice, and he'll understand it and even
show it to the rest of the group. Because of this his mates call him
"The Hacker" - he catches everything on the fly, works with shortcuts
only etc. However, by being in such a high respect from his peers and
having a high self esteem, he can be sometimes really lazy and
overconfident.
The stage is set: This time the group is doing some database design and I'm making sure that they are really working and not slacking off. I check everyone and come to Mr. X, stand behind him and try to see what he's up to. I can definitely see that he has two programs running as there are two tabs in Windows taskbar. One of them is the database window and the other one is the Opera browser. When he sees me come up to him he quickly switches to the database window and pretends to work, but as soon as I walk away he switches back to Opera. I give him a couple of warnings, but he doesn't listen. Conclusion: he is slacking off and doesn't want to do the assignment. I, probably, shouldn't have really cared much (after all, he has to hand an assignment in - not I) had it not been for the fact that in the browser window he was playing one of those online combat games. The game totally absorbed him. It sucked him in, he was so concentrated that he looked away from the monitor only to see whether I was sneaking up on him. I gave him a short lecture about the perils of online games, but I could definitely see that my efforts were futile as my words fell on deaf ears. I understood this and, suddenly, I was visited by a strange thought... a revelation !
The culmination: Really,
had I thought about this situation for a week I would not have come up
with this idea. It was all in a spur of the moment. So I say to him (in
a serious tone):
Me: "Mr. X, did I
tell you about the new cool shortcut to open the database ?"
Mr. X (still glued to his online game and barely listening to
me): "No, you didn't. What is it ?"
Me: "Alt + F4. Try
it out !"
I remember this moment in slow
motion. While he is glued to the Opera browser, he still tries to sort
of pay attention to what I'm saying and I see, in absolute and total
disbelief, as his hand reaches for "Alt" and "F4" and presses them. =)
=) =) =) =)
After the "shortcut" does its job and closes the browser
window, the database window, being the only other open application,
immediately pops into view - hence the true effect of a shortcut. He he.
=)
Post Factum: It takes about 5 seconds for the information to sink in and he finally realizes that he was, as it is said in hacker-talk, "pwned" (owned). "The Hacker" was humbled !!! There was no resentment from his side, he just couldn't believe that he fell for it =) Everyone was laughing really hard after that and for a long long time. Mr. X continued on with his assignment...
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© 2007 Yaroslav (Slava) Bezverkhnyev, a.k.a.
Agarwaen
Last Update:
May 27, 2007
