Saturday, April 30, 2005

The Ultimate Answer

Some of my friends seem to have been disappointed by their first-day-first-show (henceforth referred to as FDFS) experience at the movies this Friday. I was so lucky then in that respect. Yesterday, I happened to watch this wonderful movie - The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - based on Douglas Adams' book - vow - I must get my hands on that soon now - blast ! I haven't been reading *anything* for a loooooong time - anyway, those of you have had the good fortune of reading this book - you will know what the story is - but for those who don't - this is about a time when the Earth was demolished to make way for a hyper-space super-highway and how Arthur Kent (the hitchhiker) manages to get a ride through the galaxy.

The best part comes when Deep Thought - the computer designed to find the answer to the ultimate question - i.e. "What is life, existence and all that ?" processes it for 7.5 million years and outputs 42 !!! Yes, the ultimate answer is 42. What a climax !! Reminds me of a time when a friend of mine had claimed that for any 2 vectors f and u, the best scale of u that fits f is square root of 2 .... but whatever !! and then the computer helpfully suggests that it was not the ultimate question and had they taken more trouble to frame the input correctly, the answer could have been more helpful. It also offers to construct this machine for them.

For this and much more geeky fun stuff ... the Hitchhiker is a must-watch ... and for me a must-read !!

1 comment:

Atul said...

Well, it wasn't FDFS, but I went even before hearing any reviews. Its ofcourse not even worth LDLS.
Me too comoing across the Hithchikers a lot ... will try to get my hands on it. Btw, that reminds me... The Hitch (Will Smith) is a good movie... do watch it if you haven't already.