Dispersing points on intervals

We consider a problem of dispersing points on disjoint intervals on a line. Given n pairwise disjoint intervals sorted on a line, we want to find a point in each interval such that the minimum pairwise distance of these points is maximized. Based on a greedy strategy, we present a linear time algorithm for the problem. Further, we also solve in linear time the cycle version of the problem where the intervals are given on a cycle. 1998 ACM Subject Classification F.2.2 Nonnumerical Algorithms and Problems, I.1.2 Algorithms, I.3.5 Computational Geometry and Object Modeling