converting strings to hex

[Mark H Harris]

On 4/4/14 1:16 AM, James Harris wrote:
> YMMV but I thought the OP had done a good job before asking for help and
> then asked about only a tiny bit of it. Some just post a question!

    Indeed they do. Its a little like negotiating with terrorists. As 
soon as you negotiate with the first one, you then must negotiate with 
all of them.  Bad plan.
    The OP was soooo close, that to give him the help is immoral for two 
reasons: 1) it deprives him of the satisfaction of accomplishing the 
solution to the puzzle himself, and 2) it deprives the instructor 
(whoever she is) of the teachable moment. There is something she is 
trying to get Dave to learn, and she really *does* want him to go 
through the entire exercise on his own.
    Other than that, I give the OP credit for honesty and the good 'ol 
college try. But next time I'd like to see Dave post the problem (and 
his own solution) and then let the professional Cpython community pipe 
up on enhancements, or challenges. That way the OP learns twice.

> You might find this interesting.
>
>    http://sundry.wikispaces.com/transcript-2001

Indeed I do. I was thirteen when Odyssey came out. I was so impressed 
with the ship, and yet so disappointed with HAL. My favorite line, "I'm 
sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that," *must* have the word 'afraid' 
in there;  the HAL 9000 not only had mental illness, &will, but also 
classic controlled emotion...  but HAL's soft confident assured voice 
pattern was fabulous, wasn't it?  My second favorite line was, "Look 
Dave, I can see you're really upset about this," as Dave was unplugging 
HAL's neural net. Classic.

It was not until my later career at IBM did I realize that 'HAL' was one 
letter -0ff from 'IBM'; just never thought about it before.  Hilarious. 
Wasn't it interesting that Kubrick and Clarke were concerned about 
machines acquiring will and emotion (or mental illness) before anyone 
got those von Neumann processors to 'think' in the first place?
Which, of course, because of the negative answer to the 
Entscheidungsproblem is not possible.

This was a passion of Alan Turing; machines thinking I mean. We're going 
to find that thinking machine IS possible, but that the system is going 
to require multiple quantum processors running together (out of phase 
with one another) in order to be self-aware.  I think it will happen in 
my life-time; I'm encouraged with the work so far...


I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that...

... Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this...




marcus