Call for smartasses

Some of you may have seen this video, since it has been around for several years:

(For those you feel so compelled to up-vote this video, sorry I don’t have such a button on my blog, but you are welcome to go to YouTube and search for “Short Comedy Sketch” and express your sympathy there. :))

After being exposed to it several times, I started to think, well, maybe, just maybe, it is not entirely, ridiculously impossible? So after some sketching, I came up with something like this:

It’s just a re-interpretation of what the business people are saying.

    • When they say 7 lines perpendicular to each other, they probably mean some lines are perpendicular to others;
    • When they say draw red lines with transparent ink, they probably mean red line with some transparency;
    • When they say draw red lines with green ink, they probably mean green ink overlaying red lines;

I proudly showed this to some friends and was called (not surprisingly) a smart ass. But that didn’t stop me from showing this in lectures and explaining to the audience how you can manage conflicting requirements – make sense out of it.

But then, today, I just found a even better solution to this seemingly impossible requirement:

[YouTube link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNWt0VuMbHA]

This solution is way better than mine in 2 aspects:

  • It actually draws red lines with blue ink;
  • All 7 lines are perpendicular to each other;

It is still not perfect, but it makes me think, maybe there are even better solutions? Smart asses out there, wanna try it out?