Netbook-Run Dice Robot Can Rack Up 1.3 Million Rolls a Day 280
stevel writes "The owner of games site GamesByEmail.com created Dice-O-Matic, 'a machine that can belch a continuous river of dice down a spiraling ramp, then elevate, photograph, process and upload almost a million and a half rolls to the server a day. ... The Dice-O-Matic is 7 feet tall, 18 inches wide and 18 inches deep. It has an aluminum frame covered with Plexiglas panels. A 6x4 inch square Plexiglas tube runs vertically up the middle almost the entire height. Inside this tube a bucket elevator carries dice from a hopper at the bottom, past a camera, and tosses them onto a ramp at the top. The ramp spirals down between the tube and the outer walls. The camera and synchronizing disk are near the top, the computer, relay board, elevator motor and power supplies are at the bottom.' While not called out in the article, the pictures clearly show a Dell Mini 9 running the show (and performing the optical recognition of the dice values.) No, it's not running Linux."
More Like Color Recognition (Score:5, Informative)
While not called out in the article, the pictures clearly show a Dell Mini 9 running the show (and performing the optical recognition of the dice values.)
Yes but there's not a lot of "optical recognition" going on. From the article:
The dice are "Michigan Red Eyes", which have different colored pips for each value. The different colors make it pretty easy to count rolls. For example, if 6 yellow dots are found in the image, there were three 2s rolled, no need to worry about determining the proper grouping or orientation of pips.
If you control the background as being black or shades of grey (which is what it appears on that dirty dirty Windows XP screen) then your task is a lot easier and less error prone. Well done on the designer's part but surely reduces the computational work load.
Re:More Like Color Recognition (Score:5, Insightful)
In the "good old days," we called that a clever hack. Solving a problem is about simplifying the problem space in any and every way possible. I've made similar "OCR" hacks when everything was going to be in a known font and size.
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Why bother with numerical "dots" at all?
If it can do colour recognition (obviously it can) why not just have a single coloured circle on each side of the dice. When it's a blue circle, it's a "1". A yellow circle, it's a "2". Two yellows and three blues, 7 total.
Surely the need for a symbolic representation of the number is only necessary for us feeble humans, with our tendency to forget abstractions. For a computer, which need never forget that green means "6", actually drawing a picture or making a patter
Re:More Like Color Recognition (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What's so clever? (Score:5, Informative)
Why not use traditional white dice with black dots on a white background. Then it is as simple as
Calculating the full image is far more work than necessary. This also easily allows for an arbitrary number of dice to be used, assuming the don't start piling on top of each other.
Because if you count 36 dots, was that six dice with six rolled on each, or twelve threes, or ...
Even if you can count exactly how many dice you rolled, was the total of six dots from four dice three ones and a three, or was it one plus two plus two plus one?
I'm guessing that knowing the exact number of dice rolled and what each die rolled is important.
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So what's your problem with this? It sounds like you think he didn't make the problem hard enough for your taste.
Excellent... (Score:5, Funny)
Finally a sensible way to play a 3000 pt Imperial Guard list!
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Need more stats (Score:4, Funny)
What's its AC and THAC0? :)
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This is the 21st century sir.
Your roll of Wis vs Fort is a failure. You suffer 50pts of Necrotic damage; save ends.
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It's a gazebo Eric! A gazebo!
Re:Need more stats (Score:4, Funny)
THAC0 is deprecated as of the latest release. Please upgrade your packages.
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Sorry - those are all six-sided dice. Clearly, this machine plays GURPS.
Or maybe Traveller.
(We need a percentile version of one of these bots for our Rolemaster/Spacemaster games.)
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It has 200 dice. Clearly it's made for Shadowrun. :)
[John]
only useful if ... (Score:2)
A good first step (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes, I saw that episode of Lost in Space. The robot self-destructed (or something like that) after losing at the cup game [kongregate.com].
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Yes, I saw that episode of Lost in Space. The robot self-destructed (or something like that) after losing at the cup game [kongregate.com].
Did that involve Judy and Maureen Robinson?!!!
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Are you sure it wasn't the two girls one cup game?
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You just need some hookerbots and a casino for blackjack.
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Ahhh, forget the casino!
Re:A good first step (Score:5, Funny)
fully automize Vegas!
Someone already tried this. The machine took your debit card number, and generated a random number: if (N <= 45) { card->cash *= 2; } else { card->cash *= 0.5; }. The end result was the same, but for some reason it just didn't have the same appeal. My theory is it has something to do with the tangible dice.
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Assuming your number was 1 to 100,
I think best odds you can get in craps is a little over .48 so that would be one reason people wouldn't accept it.
This seems to support that: http://scoblete.casinocitytimes.com/articles/30.html [casinocitytimes.com]
From my two experiences actually playing (i.e. "throwing money into a hole"), some of the "good odds" bets are apparently socially unpopular. There is a social aspect to the table where you join a shared unreality where dice have memory and so on. I didn't totally get it but my EQ
Re:A good first step (Score:4, Interesting)
That beign said, I love craps. It's a lot of fun. Do I play to win money? No, but it is nice when it happens. I play for the entertainment value. The excitement of when the dice hit my number, the cheering and yelling. What other game at the casino can I stand around with complete strangers (and friends) and yell and scream and generally make an ass of myself? Sure, you get the occational noise from a winnign group at another game, but if you spend any time in a casino you will soon find out that all the noise is coming from the craps table.
Also, if you bet wise and dont get carried away its pretty easy to play for a long while and break even. But its hard not to get swept up in the game and start betting all crazy. Dont win big if you dont bet big.
And as for "throwing money into a hole", most entertainment is just that. You spend money on thigns that are enjoyable: A meal, a concert, camping, hookers coke and craps. At the end of each you've lost your money and gained entertment (and possibly a rash)
Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's true RNGs are not truly random. But, then again, neither is anything else. Just sufficiently random to be indistinguishable from an actual random event.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
It's a good thing I have my paradox absorbing crumple zones installed...
No random, no paradox (Score:2, Funny)
Nothing is random, but you can still imagine the results of a random event. There is no paradox here.
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I have random thoughts like that all the time.
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's true RNGs are not truly random. But, then again, neither is anything else. Just sufficiently random to be indistinguishable from an actual random event.
You fail at Quantum Mechanics.
Hardware random number generators [wikipedia.org]
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- Albert Einstein
"Albert, stop telling God what He can do."
- Neils Bohr
"God not only plays dice. He sometimes throws them where they can't be seen."
- Stephen Hawking
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Still not random. Quantum events can be practically unpredictable and appear sufficiently random as to be indistinguishable from something truly random. But they're still not random. From the article you link to:
These theories suggest that even though macroscopic phenomena are deterministic in theory under Newtonian mechanics, real-world systems evolve in ways that cannot be predicted in practice because one would need to know the micro-details of initial conditions and subsequent manipulation or change.
There are a lot of examples of things that are 'random enough' (nuclear decay, thermal noise, atmospheric noise, etc) for anything you could need. But I submit that nothing in the world is really random, just unpredictable and close enough to being random for any practical use.
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I hope you enjoy your cold mechanistic universe.
I, however, choose, however foolishly it may be, to believe in free will, the acausal side of the universe affecting the causal part we normally see by "choosing" how the "random" quantum events collapse (and in other methods, most likely. basically, I believe that the reality rules can be broken)
How do you know QM is random? (Score:2)
Perhaps it's completely deterministic, but we just don't know how to look at it.
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Pseudo Random Number Generators (like linear feedback shift registers) are not truly random, but True Random Number Generators, like a reverse biased PN junction with an amplifier and an appropriate sampling algorithm can be truly random (i.e. unpredictable).
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Nuclear decay, as well as some other quantum phenomena, is random in every sense of this word.
In case you haven't noticed, determinism is long dead. Even though the universe might be deterministic with respect to itself, it is not deterministic with respect to our observations, which is what actually matters.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Because any developer worth their weight in salt will tell you that RNGs are not truly random.
No, they are not truly random. Nor is his dice machine, as the dice are possibly imperfect and subject to gravity or the way it reloads them into the hopper. Influences could be anywhere.
I would be interested in seeing him run this machine for 30 days and then compute the Shannon entropy [wikipedia.org] on the results and then compare this to popular RNGs out there.
Although I would expect the RNGs (however flawed) to perform better, it would be interesting nonetheless.
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The developer says that his users have complained that his software RNGs were not random enough. His aim in building this is to build a machine that is as random as if users were throwing their own dice. At the end, he promises (light-heartedly, I presume) to punish the dice if a user shows that they are not random.
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I would be interested in seeing him run this machine for 30 days and then compute the Shannon entropy [wikipedia.org] on the results and then compare this to popular RNGs out there.
After reading the article, I think he's less focused on mathematical accuracy and more focused on appeasing customers. He only went to these lengths due to complaints against his RNGs he used to use.
This way, those wannabe math majors can't so easily complain.
Oh, and regardless of Shannon entropy, it is a bit more obvious that t
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No, they are not truly random. Nor is his dice machine, as the dice are possibly imperfect and subject to gravity or the way it reloads them into the hopper. Influences could be anywhere.
If the influence is consistent across all trials, then isn't the randomness maintained?
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Well, in real life the dice are imperfect. They have flaws, pips shift the weight. People don't roll dice the same way twice. Gravity bounces the dice.
.
On the other hand, RNGs roll 'ideal dice' which in effect remove all these flaws from the rolling and reduce it to the simplest operation.
.
So we've got conflicting goals here. This machine reintroduces many of the original random elements of actually rolling dice. The operation may be imperfect, but those imperfections reintroduce the atmosphere of roll
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Shannon entropy isn't the same thing as randomness. It's a measure of balance of the distribution. You could have a high entropy generator that is very unrandom, say, one that basically alternates between outputs. Or you could have a truly random distribution that favors some outputs over others, but completely unpredictably.
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Except that with the pips on different faces being different colors, I don't think that missing pips or phantom pips are really a high risk. It almost seems more likely that you'd miss an entire die than miscount the colored pips.
This isn't facial recognition - It's really basic optical recognition.
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I like the lava lamp rng
http://www.lavarnd.org/ [lavarnd.org]
wrong lava lamp (Score:2)
heh, I actually linked to the wrong lava lamp random number generator, but after clicking around the site, I decided that this one was better, though no actual lava lamps were harmed in the creation of this rng.
so again: http://www.lavarnd.org/ [lavarnd.org]
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If you think software RNGs aren't random enough to play board games with, you'd better delete your Webmail accounts and close your online bank account, because Web security absolutely relies on them.
On the other hand, this machine is frickin' awesome. But I do worry about the fact that it makes die rolls in large batches, and stores them for hours before using them. A fine opportunity for cheating if you can get access to any of the dice-roller's controller software.
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If you think software RNGs aren't random enough to play board games with, you'd better delete your Webmail accounts and close your online bank account, because Web security absolutely relies on them.
I thought they used /dev/random and hired people to wiggle the mouse and type random stuff for entropy :(
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80,000 rolls a day is one every 10 seconds. You can't be sure exactly which roll is going to be yours vs another gamer's, but you can use the average of say, the next 50 rolls to give yourself an edge the same way a card-counting Blackjack player would.
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You can't be sure exactly which roll is going to be yours vs another gamer's, but you can use the average of say, the next 50 rolls to give yourself an edge the same way a card-counting Blackjack player would.
Only if "high rolls" were automatically better for you than for your opponent. For example, there might be a game where the roll result means the player number that gets a good thing, and you have the higher player number. Otherwise, it's completely useless.
How much value would there be in knowing the next 100 rolls of the dice in a particular casino, but not knowing which table would get which roll? Even knowing that a vast majority are sevens would help only a little at craps, as a seven can be a bad t
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To improve the randomness of this robot, it would be useful to identify and remove all those dice that are insufficiently random. For a nominal fee, I am willing to recycle this byproduct . . .
My favorite homemade entropy is (Score:2)
a digital camera with the lens cap on. Especially, if you can get the raw pixels, it contains a large component of true quantum randomness. Just run the bits into PRNGD [sourceforge.net] (which runs the bits through a secure hash and adjusts the input/output bit rates according to the estimated randomness of the sources) with a conservative estimate of the percentage of quantum randomness.
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And neither are robots using RNGs to decide how to throw a die.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet, there is probably some bias in the way that the dice are thrown. This project is cool, but as a source of random numbers it is quite silly.
If this does not qualify as random, what does?
A dicerolling machine external to and slightly more complex than the universe itself?
I normally don't mind the arguments or objections that this or that is psuedo-random rather than truly random, especially when it comes to computer generated numbers designed to do X or Y.
But really these are physical dice. If this doesn't cut it for you, what will?
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware_random_number_generator [wikipedia.org]
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It depends on the dice being not biased, and the mechanics not exerting any influence.
One should test it by letting the machine rip for a couple of days, and then analyse the produced numbers for randomness, e.g. with the diehard [wikipedia.org] test suite.
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Trust.
People who know better will trust a good RNG just as well (as long as it's open source) - They're not perfectly random, but probably just as random as the dice roll. But if you're dropping $$ on the roll of a couple of dice (especially if you're remote), people will put more faith in a couple of pieces of bouncing plastic than they will a computer telling you that you just lost your $100 with no explanation.
Of course, that's purely speculation - Why RTFA when you can just glean through the comments.
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Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
"To generate the dice rolls, I have used Math.random, Random.org and other sources, but have always received numerous complaints that the dice are not random enough. Some players have put more effort into statistical analysis of the rolls than they put into their doctoral dissertation."
So, basically it was to quiet complaints about the randomness of the computer generated dice rolls. I question whether it's really better, but the players think it's better and in this context I guess that's all that matters.
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I remember an article many years ago about how dice stack up to being fully random. They had some interesting pictures of the dice in 6 stacks something like 50 high. Each stack with the dice arranged with a different number up. The height of the stacks were different by several inches. There was also several rolls that were then statistically analyzed to find that imperfections in the dice made them favor certain rolls over others.
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Because people can see dice falling, but they can't see a random-number generating algorithm at work. In cases like this, computers are inherently untrustworthy because they can be programmed to produce a desired result. It's all about credibility, not whether a computer algorithm is better or worse at randomization than this device.
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It's mathematically "better" than the PRNGs used in almost all computers, but really the main reasons why this machine was built are:
1. Why the hell not, it's geek cool!
-and-
2. The guy was being hounded by a bunch of witless nigglers (note the 'L' in that word)
Myself, I would have built a full-auto dice-gun and shot the whiners in the groin. What's your testicular THAC0, smartass ?
Why? Because revenge is possible (Score:3, Interesting)
'nuff said
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Why would you need this? And how is this better than a RNG?
Erm, it is an RNG. A proper one at that, not a PRNG.
OK so there might be a little bias somewhere in the system (a slight manufacturing defect in some of the dice making the chance of getting a six 1 in 5.99999999 instead of 1 in 6, or perhaps some oddity in the optical processing code that makes it fail to recognise the colour representing four more often that it fails to recognise threes) but only a perfect RNG would not have a little bias like this and there is no such thing as a completely perfect RNG. T
Jumping to conclusions (Score:5, Funny)
"No, it's not running Linux"
I hate it when people to conclusions. Obviously, it is running linux, just with an XP-themed window manager.
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Yahtzee! (Score:2)
From the first picture, all the rolls are 4's, 5's, and 6's! Where's the Yahtzee game that runs off this?
I believe (Score:2)
What has the netbook got to do with anything? (Score:2)
In other new: Computer "used for computer type work" shock!
I mean this is a really neat little hardware project (reminded me a uni hardware project I did), but the bit about the Dell is just fluff. What's so amazing about using a netbook? it's just a small laptop.
If it was being run off a trinary mechanical computer powered by a hamster then *that* would be quite interesting.
Actually, I think I have a new project....
Accuracy (Score:2, Interesting)
Very cool device! It does lack in accuracy. Pitted dice are off balance and the 1 will land on the bottom more often than not. That is why Vegas does not use that type of die. There is error in the machine; look closely at the video where the dice get stuck at the top.
From TFA (Score:2, Informative)
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The customer is always right. The customer is also always an idiot.
1.3 million rolls a day! ... (Score:4, Funny)
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When will the petarolls barrier be broken? I can't wait!
Oh, man, I need one of these! (Score:2)
If I can get my hands on one of these things I can automate the process of rolling all the ones out of my collection of D20's... While an ordinary elimination process might use an average of 400 dice to yield a single die with a 1:8000 chance of rolling another "one" on the next roll, this kind of automation could process thousands of dice in a reasonable amount of time - yielding either a higher volume of dice with a small chance of rolling another one, or producing dice with an even smaller probability o
Correcting for loaded dice. (Score:2)
If you build something like this, there's another step needed to get reliably random numbers. Take two successive outputs. If A>B,, output a 1. If A Even radioactive random number generators have to use that step. That was discovered in the 1950s.
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(Sorry, HTML escape problem.)
If A < B, output a 0. If A==B, ignore and try again.
Saving throw? (Score:2)
"Okay, I step forward."
"Success. You move one hex."
"I step forward again."
"Success. You move another hex."
"I take another step."
"Oh, critical failure! You actually trip and fall backwards one hex!"
"I'm going to kill the GM."
"Failure. You do no damage."
"No, that wasn't an action, I really am going to come across the table and kill you."
how long do the dice last? (Score:3, Insightful)
The article mentioned that the dice get beat up pretty bad at the bottom of the machine. I have three questions:
1. how long do the dice last before needing to be pulled out of the machine and replaced?
2. how are damaged dice identified to be removed?
3. does the software recognize when damaged dice are causing errors (for example, when the paint from a pip has been completely chipped off)?
All your dice suck - Testable! (Score:2, Informative)
Version 2 (Score:2)
On-demand dice roller with multiple numbers of d4, d6, d8, d10, d12 and d20. Type in 4d8+1 and see your dice rolled live on streaming video.
I fell in love with this site 4 years ago! (Score:2)
Gamesbyemail is awesome. I've been playing Axis&Allies on the site for almost 4 years now, and I must say its quite brilliant.
Great gaming engine, and he has covered all the classic games.
Ig Nobel prize! (Score:3, Insightful)
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A Linux user might also completely fail to read the article and discover that some of his users weren't happy with the results of various electronic and noise-based generators that he's used in the past.
Rob (a not-PC user, in a snarky mood for some reason)
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Yes, this.
The real reason to do this can NOT be to get better quality random numbers, since you'd be better off just hooking up a webcam with a piece of tape over the lens and hashing the resulting diode noise.
The best reason to do this is because you want to play mechanical engineer in your spare time.
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RTFA. The machine was built for a good reason.
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Second paragraph.
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/dev/random
Seriously, there are many applications (particularly in cryptography) where having a fast supply of true random data is important. I don't really know if this bot succeeds in that role, but I suppose it could. Before someone objects that 1 to 6 isn't sufficiently random, consider combining multiple dice roles into a single value. . . that is, treat each die as a digit in a base-6 number, to create a value as large as you need - you can create numbers with as many bits as you need this way:
3510530
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Re:What a waste, (Score:5, Funny)
it can only roll D6s.
No problem. You can generate any die roll you like from D6's, just do a little math.
For a D8, just roll two D6's, add them together, and then take the result modulo 8 and add 1. Poof! A random number between 1 and 8!
.
.
.
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(If you're furious with nerd rage right now: I'm kidding. If you're not furious: don't try this at home.)
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Re: (Score:2, Informative)
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Re:What a waste, (Score:5, Informative)
Wow. Fishing for nerds is so damned easy, they take the bait even when you put a sign on it saying "WARNING: CONTAINS FISHHOOKS".
For a good nerd time, try working out the probability distribution table for Mod8(D6+D6)+1. I suggested it as a joke, but it's less horrible thank you might think.
Re:What a waste, (Score:5, Funny)
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I take it you've never played Rolemaster then? ;^)
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Or alternatively just grab that Brownian motion detector.
If only it would just hold still for a sec...