geekhack
geekhack Community => Other Geeky Stuff => Topic started by: ThirdLap on Wed, 18 August 2010, 03:29:42
-
Can you guess it without clicking? (http://tinyurl.com/3xclk3v)
-
Well, I can tell you what I play with the most.
-
..and I can't reveal to you what I play with the most.
It's secret. Shh.
-
yo-yo?
-
i guessed it, and it isn't yo-yo (although I love my yo-yos).
-
Hmmm, wasn't it Rubick's cube or something ?
Made quite a ruckus when it went retail, IIRC, and keeps being cited now and then.
-
Hmmphff.
I would've thought that geekhanders - representing perhaps the most elite and persnickety keyboarders in the world - would automatically recognize the difference between "popular" and "best".
Who wants to be popular, anyways? Kids want stupid Elmo and potato face when they should be getting oscilloscopes and chessboards, oh yeah.
-
Why so many Darths?
-
I guessed it. It seems pretty logical to me, since I can't think of too many toys that are that popular internationally, and for many generations.
Spoiler: Highlight to read
(Of course, James May may have boosted the numbers quite a lot when he built a house out of Lego on his new show (James May's Toy Stories.))
-
Well, yeah. If you wanna get technical, 10 interlocking "2x4" blocks could be counted as a single toy, or 10 separate toys, or kabillions (http://www.math.ku.dk/~eilers/lego.html#whywrong) of separate toys if you consider all the ways they could interact. While even a potato head can probably offer less than a few dozen combination toys, and even those are limited because the components aren't interchangable outside of potato people.
-
Spoiler: Highlight to read
(Of course, James May may have boosted the numbers quite a lot when he built a house out of Lego on his new show (James May's Toy Stories.))
Nice try.
Fails for those that use the clear forum skin though :smile:
-
No sex life is not the same thing as no imagination.
We just play differently than "normal" people would.
Lego isn't for photo-ops using little sets populated with little people ... Lego is for building robotic prototypes. Rubik's cubes aren't for casual amusement, but for applying superior cube-solving algorithms. Monopoly isn't a board game, it's a micro-economic study in probabilities. Twister is merely a preface for discourse about topology and dimensional relations. Dolls (er, Action Figures) are useful for combat simulations and such. Poker is just a programming exercise. Chess is the game of kings. D&D is the game of post-puberty kings. WoW is for losers.
[Edit]
Admittedly Mr Potato Head isn't a very nerdy toy. Nerds might be allergic to starch.
-
No sex life is not the same thing as no imagination.
We just play differently than "normal" people would.
Lego isn't for photo-ops using little sets populated with little people ... Lego is for building robotic prototypes. Rubik's cubes aren't for casual amusement, but for applying superior cube-solving algorithms. Monopoly isn't a board game, it's a micro-economic study in probabilities. Twister is merely a preface for discourse about topology and dimensional relations. Dolls (er, Action Figures) are useful for combat simulations and such. Poker is just a programming exercise. Chess is the game of kings. D&D is the game of post-puberty kings. WoW is for losers.
well said.
-
MM I love that warm nostalgic feeling
-
You're still a nerd.
-
¨They were too narrow when asking that question, the most popular toy must be the dildo it sure have a longer history (http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2010/07/stone_age_dildo_found_in_swede.php) than Legos six or seven decades.
I prefer Legos though...
-
I'm having mine bronzed.
Your dildo?
The quote at the bottom of that 4chan poster was hilarious.
-
Yoyo was my guess, but I'm a huge lego fan and it makes sense as #1, it's definitely the most versatile toy ever made.
-
Nice try.
Fails for those that use the clear forum skin though :smile:
Or anyone using a monitor with good contrast in general.
Hmmphff.
I would've thought that geekhanders - representing perhaps the most elite and persnickety keyboarders in the world - would automatically recognize the difference between "popular" and "best".
Who wants to be popular, anyways? Kids want stupid Elmo and potato face when they should be getting oscilloscopes and chessboards, oh yeah.
When I was a kid I just had a windows 98 computer, forget toys. And for outdoor activities I cultivated plants, and also knew pretty much every type of flower. I really like tropical plants; great for indoors (and trees that produce fruit or nice scents are good too; better than plain boring trees).
Chess is a "bored" game, it's too slow, good opponents are hard to find, games always result in massive unbalances, and I can't find Alexander Alekhine's books anywhere.
-
Windows 98? I had to suffer through Win95 (and 95A, 95B, 95C) first. And Win3.11 (for workgroups!). And every version of MS-DOS from 3.0 to 6.22.
I got an Apple ][+ (well, actually a clone, better than a real Apple) when I was a kid.
Massive unbalances in chess? It's purist mentalism, strategy at it's finest. You can be the best card player in the world and still lose with crappy hands, or a complete noob who lucks out with royal flushes every time. No such random garbage, strategies based on maximizing "odds" and "probabilities" in Chess. If there's an unbalance it's because one player pwns and the other sucks.
-
Windows 98? I had to suffer through Win95 (and 95A, 95B, 95C) first. And Win3.11 (for workgroups!). And every version of MS-DOS from 3.0 to 6.22.
I got an Apple ][+ (well, actually a clone, better than a real Apple) when I was a kid.
Massive unbalances in chess? It's purist mentalism, strategy at it's finest. You can be the best card player in the world and still lose with crappy hands, or a complete noob who lucks out with royal flushes every time. No such random garbage, strategies based on maximizing "odds" and "probabilities" in Chess. If there's an unbalance it's because one player pwns and the other sucks.
Well the computer was upgraded to windows 98. I prefer it above all else.
Windows 95 and MS-DOS weren't bad. Well at least not DOS, Tim Paterson is awesomeness.
Chess still has the malady of having unbalanced opponents. I find a game terribly boring when there is no challenge. There has to be an element of losing, or at least difficult struggles to pit you at your wit's end.
-
Ewwwww.............
But that's not a toy, that's an erogenous zone.
Chess is a "bored" game, it's too slow, good opponents are hard to find, games always result in massive unbalances, and I can't find Alexander Alekhine's books anywhere.
I have one of them in my collection. I agree that there are problems with Chess, but I think I have come up with a way to fix them.
In Japan, Honinbo Shusaku had perfected defensive play in Go, thus doing to that game what Steinitz had done for Chess. The exact result was different. Chess after Steinitz was usually a draw. Go after Shusaku was usually a win for the first player (Black) by about three stones.
In Japan, excitement was restored to Go through komidashi, where the threshold for a win by Black is raised to having a certain number of stones more than White.
Chess games, though, aren't won on points. How could one do the same thing for Chess?
Well, in Chess, a draw counts as 1/2 game for each player. Suppose that forcing stalemate still counted as a partial win - 3/5 points for the player who forced stalemate, 2/5 for the other player. This would allow a smaller advantage to go on the scoreboard, but still punish a player who lost an opportunity to checkmate instead.
Starting from there, I proposed a complicated system which I call Dynamic Scoring, which works like this.
In addition to checkmate, stalemate, bare king, and perpetual check also count as partial victories, rewarding the winner with increasingly smaller amounts of points.
But in addition, the smaller the partial victory, the more points the second player, Black, receives for that kind of victory than White does.
Checkmate: 100-0 or 0-100.
Stalemate: 60-40 or 39-61.
Bare King: 56-44 or 41-59.
Perpetual Check: 52-48 or 43-57.
Draw: 50-50
The idea is that if Black mixes up the game and takes some risks in order to win part of the time at the low Perpetual Check level, then Black ends up the winner even if he wins that way fewer times than White does.
If White wants to even the odds, he has to take even more risks, and open up the game further, so that higher-level wins take place. If the game is resolved by checkmate, the odds return to being even, the norm for Chess.
-
Chess is like any other game. You'll never improve (or really like the game much) unless you consistently play against opponents who are better.
-
Chess is like any other game. You'll never improve (or really like the game much) unless you consistently play against opponents who are better.
Problem: I cannot find any opponents that are better than myself (that is if I'm bored enough to play it). And the chessmaster goes way too slow to be enjoyable (all of those algorithms).
I'd rather do something fun that involves strategy, music, graphics, and a whole lot of other things at faster paces. Plus, most chess boards & pieces aren't visually to my liking.
Problem #2: I still cannot find any of Alexander Alekhine's publications that should be freely viewable on the internet (although maybe I should go through the effort of transcribing it all). That [to me] shows people who think they are interested in chess, don't know anything about it. Although there was a fellow I knew who did know a handy some about chess: reason being, I am usually oriented in the end game of chess, whereas Alekhine prefers doing the most strategics in the beginning. It would be interesting to see the benefits or downsides of either or.
-
So, what about one that 50% population of earth got and are likely pretty used to...
-
Try this (http://tinyurl.com/ch3ovj)
If you're serious then you're serious. If not then simply play something else you find enjoyable.
-
Plastic army guys?
-
Chess is like any other game. You'll never improve (or really like the game much) unless you consistently play against opponents who are better.
Some alternative way of playing chess. (http://www.chessvariants.com/cards.dir/tempete.html)
I have it, but I don't have the patience to play chess :pout:
-
Ack, you're one of those people!
While rules variations are always amusing diversions, I would adhere to the purist form (what is now called Modern/European/International) Chess (http://ancientchess.com/page/play-chess.htm). I've thinkered a bit with "Chinese" Xiangqi (http://ancientchess.com/page/play-xiangqi.htm) (Catapults totally spank Rooks!) and Japanese Sho/Shogi (http://ancientchess.com/page/play-shogi.htm) and quickly discovered they're even more complex than classic Chess. After taking Chess quite seriously for a year or so (and never achieving higher than "B Class" mid-1800s in competition play) I doubt I really want to get involved in other versions. It would take too much time away from microcoding projects and StarCraft 2.
Still, the point is toys are supposed to be fun to play with. I'd wager that more people (of all ages) love Lego than Chess.