[ExI] Wizard Calculating Device

[Darren Greer]

>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. <

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.

Darren

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. :)

2011/2/28 spike <spike66 at att.net>

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> *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:
> extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *Darren Greer
> *Sent:* Monday, February 28, 2011 8:21 AM
> *To:* ExI chat list
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Wizard Calculating Device
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> 2011/2/28 spike <spike66 at att.net>:
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> >An original Rubik’s cube if in it’s unopened original package is a
> valuable collector’s item.  spike<
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> 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. …D
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> 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.
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> 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.
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> spike
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-- 
*There is no history, only biography.*
*
*
*-Ralph Waldo Emerson
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