

Tim Berners-Lee and the Toilet Paper Protocol - darrennix
http://darrennix.com/tim-berner-lee-thoughts-on-the-toilet-paper-p

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sethg
Related: a 1984 paper by Knuth, “The Toilet Paper Problem”.

<http://www.jstor.org/pss/2322567>

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carterschonwald
for those who encounter a paywall: <http://lts.cr/bzJ> to direct dl the pdf

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InnocentB
Donald Norman (of The Design of Everyday Things fame) talks about the various
strategies for this in his newest book, Living With Complexity. It's an
interesting problem because it turns out enough people follow the antisocial
strategy of taking from the larger roll (what Berners-Lee calls K in his
protocol) that both rolls will often run out within short intervals of each
other (less than µ).

Norman proposes the strategy of "nearest roll first" instead of "smallest roll
first", which is an easier strategy to accommodate through toilet paper
dispenser design. Many public stalls hide the spare roll inside a contraption
for this purpose.

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tzs
I'd go for the smaller one because of physics. It has a smaller moment of
inertia, and so less force is required to pull out an adequate length of
paper.

When I attempt to pull out a proper amount to cover my fat programmer's butt
there is a significant breakage problem with large rolls.

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jasonkolb
I've met Tim a few times, this doesn't sound like something he would write.
But whether it is or isn't, it is hilarious.

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qq66
Tim's email address is timbl@w3.org. Is this faked?

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bxr
Its Tim Berners-Lee, of course he has a w3 email address. And yes, that is the
real one.

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qq66
I know he has a w3 email address -- I've just never seen him use timb@w3 --
always timbl@w3.

