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Lego Institutes Bulk Ordering
mattdm
wrote in to tell us that Lego has instituted
bulk ordering of parts. The selection is somewhat limited, but they have most of the parts you would want to build your fullsize Lego house. And with five colors to choose from, you should be all set! Now the question is, with this quantity of Legos available, what do people think the coolest thing to build would be?
Build a "Universal Constructor" out of lego. And then give it a blueprint of itself, the LEGO bulk-ordering department, and Microsoft's bank account. :)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Back when I was a poor and struggling programmer, I purchaced my first Intel-based system with a tax return check. This was in the middle of a chip embargo so prices were sky high.
Well, I had enough to buy the main system (A 10mhz 8086), but not enough for the monitor.
My solution turned out to be more expensive than the original monitor.
I found a monochrome monitor without an external case at a local electronics store. (Whacky Willies in Portland,OR. They deal in used equiptment and just generally STRANGE stuff.) I tried a couple of solutions for cases (including foil covered cardboard and other tacky looking disasters), but nothing worked.
I then decided to use Legos.
Do you know how many buckets it takes to build a monitor case? I must have spent over $100 in lego over the next few months. And you have to glue them together because the heat causes the whole thing to expand and come apart at inappropreate spots.
I finished it off and used the monitor for a number of months until general fear of radiation burns drove me to buy a real monitor. (This thing was pretty nasty. It was an early green screen that you could practically feel the radiation off the front. Probably why it only cost me $5.)
I still have the monitor in a box in the computer room. It needs some repair after being moved a number of times, but it might even work. Someday I will have to post pictures...
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
According to a friend of a friend (perhaps someone can verify this for me), Lego plastic is of such high quality that the assembly lines for making the bricks must be dedicated to the task - since no other product uses plastic that good. This would mean that Lego isn't trying to gouge customers by charging so much (since they are making quality product) and competitors have a tough time making bricks as good without charging just as much.
But again, this is only from second and third-hand knowledge.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
It'd be cool to build a 20 to 30 foot Tux to put in front of TransMeta's Headquarters.. (For Linus, of course)...
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Should we be worried if NASA starts placing large orders?
1. A lego will ever harm a living being unless they step on it in bare feet
2. A lego will obey humans unless it involves taking apart two peices (in these cases it's okay to break rule 1 as well)
3. A lego will attempt for self-preservation, especially when that means trying to hide so that people cant find it.
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Oh my god, Bear is driving! How can this be?
ADVENTURERS! - ANTIHERO FOR HIRE - CARDMASTER CONFLICT
Build huge lego bricks out of lego bricks. Then make larger lego bricks out of those. Finally argue that at an atomic level, lego bricks are composed of lego shaped atoms.
...then everything can be fractal.
Keeping