<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(31, 73, 125); ">>We compared the original with the Chinese version, and found the manufacturing tolerances in the original were better, but that the Chinese version was in some ways easier to disassemble to modify for racing purposes. <</span><div>
<font class="Apple-style-span" color="#1F497D" face="arial, sans-serif" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 15px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#1F497D" face="arial, sans-serif" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 15px;">Yes, I was thinking that this morning, how the original was much smoother to use and didn't break like the cheaper ones did. I won the local racing competition but lost out in the regional. The Rubik's cube contests were the first "sport" I was actually any good at. I loved my little collection. Like most that used them for racing I guess, I'd break them down and coat the working parts inside with vaseline in order to get it to slide better. Fond memories. I played with it a little last night, but I don't remember how to solve it. I'll work on it after my math test on Tuesday. They actually have blind-folded 3X3X3 cube contests now. The champion is (or was last year) a teenage girl in Asia somewhere. Maybe Taiwan. She can do it in under fifty seconds.</span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#1F497D" face="arial, sans-serif" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 15px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#1F497D" face="arial, sans-serif" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 15px;">Darren</span></font></div>
<div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#1F497D" face="arial, sans-serif" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 15px;"><br></span></font></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#1F497D" face="arial, sans-serif" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 15px;">P.S. My pet peeve re cubes were the idiots in junior high school that used to peel off the stickers and solve it that way. A completely pointless exercise and a waste of a good cube. :)<br>
</span></font><br><div class="gmail_quote">2011/2/28 spike <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:spike66@att.net">spike66@att.net</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div lang="EN-US" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-size:10.0pt">From:</span></b><span style="font-size:10.0pt"> <a href="mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org</a> [mailto:<a href="mailto:extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank">extropy-chat-bounces@lists.extropy.org</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Darren Greer<br>
<b>Sent:</b> Monday, February 28, 2011 8:21 AM<br><b>To:</b> ExI chat list<br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ExI] Wizard Calculating Device</span></p><div class="im"><p class="MsoNormal"> </p><div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal">2011/2/28 spike <<a href="mailto:spike66@att.net" target="_blank">spike66@att.net</a>>:</p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span><span style="color:#1F497D">>An original Rubik’s cube if in it’s unopened original package is a valuable collector’s item. spike<</span></span></p>
<div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color:#1F497D">Yeah, it's not original. It's a "cube puzzle" knock off, and though the box is in great shape it has been opened though the instructions are still folded up inside it. </span><span style="color:#1F497D">…</span><span style="color:#1F497D">D</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D">Ja I have a couple of those. The original Rubik’s cube was about 7 bucks, but almost immediately the Chinese were making cheapy knock offs, which my college roommate brought back from Singapore as an early lesson to all of us engineering students in intellectual property and how difficult it is to defend. The Chinese version was about 2 bucks. We compared the original with the Chinese version, and found the manufacturing tolerances in the original were better, but that the Chinese version was in some ways easier to disassemble to modify for racing purposes. A racing cube had ground and polished catch tracks and corners.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D">That was in 1981. I wrote a routine for a TI59 programmable calculator. It would make the same series of moves repeatedly on a simulated cube and note the number of moves required to cycle back to a solved cube. Then I repeated the task on a counterfeit Apple II, which ran at a blazing 0.0028 GHz, which finished the task about 100 times faster than the calculator.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D">spike</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;color:#1F497D"> </span></p></div><div><p class="MsoNormal"> </p></div></div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
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