Battle Over Blocks

RoscoHead writes: "S'pose you've already seen this over at Fast Company - a follow-up to their previous article by Charles Fishman. The follow-up includes comments from three different "users" of Lego - including Hemos, alias Jeff Bates, Slashdot's esteemed Lego guru..."

Comments

I win.

[Anonymous Coward]

Eat it, fags.

Re:I win.

[mighty jebus]

is it just me, or did anyone else wonder if this was a battle over block -vs- character device drivers?

Lego

[hardburlyboogerman]

Wandayaknow-1st.

Re:Lego

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to that. I got out of legos primarly because it started costing over $50 for a ever decreasing set of little plastic bits.

I must admit, I'm really really tempted by mindstorms however...

Re:Lego

[Lish]

Absolutely. Every Christmas, I decide to get Legos for one of my brothers. And every year I end up getting something else cuz they're just too expensive. Anything in my price range has like, a dozen pieces and half of them are the fancy specific pieces. Bleah.

The mom in the story said her son is "saving his allowance" to buy one of the Bionicles(sp?). How much allowance does this kid get?

If legos were cheaper, I'd buy them all the time for myself. They're still fun. As it is, though, anything worth having is too expensive.

Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this story has the building blocks of a good story. All it needs is some relevance, and a point.

Keep up the good work!

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Well Said. What the hell does this have to do with the theme of the site.

crazy authors!

Tacos

[Anonymous Coward]

I would take a tuna taco over CmdrTaco any day. Tuna tacos smell better.

Re:Tacos

[Anonymous Coward]

Introduction:
Growing marijuana indoors is fast becoming an American Pastime. The reasons are varied. With the increased interest and experimentation in house plant cultivation, it was inevitable that people would apply their knowledge of plant care to growing marijuana. Many of those who occasionally like to light up a joint may find it difficult to locate a source or are hesitant to deal with a perhaps unsavory element of society in procuring their grass. There is, of course, the criminal aspect of buying or selling grass; Growing marijuana is just as illegal as buying, selling, or smoking it, but growing is something you can do in the privacy of your own home without having to deal with someone you don't know or trust. The best reason for growing your own is the enjoyment you will get out of watching those tiny little seeds you picked out of you stash sprout and become some of the most lovely and lush of all house plants.

Anyone Can Do It
Even if you haven't had any prior experience with growing plants in you home, you can have a successful crop of marijuana by following the simple directions in this pamphlet. If you have had problems in the past with marijuana cultivation, you may find the solutions in the following chapters. Growing a marijuana plant involves four basic steps:

Get the seeds. If you don't already have some, you can ask your friends to save you seeds out of any good grass they may come across. You'll find that lots of people already have a seed collection of some sort and are willing to part with a few prime seeds in exchange for some of the finished product.
Germinate the seeds. You can simply drop a seed into moist soil, but by germinating the seeds first you can be sure that the seed will indeed produce a plant. To germinate seeds, place a group of them between about six moist paper towels, or in the pores of a moist sponge. Leave the towels or sponge moist but not soaking wet. Some seeds will germinate in 24 hours while others may take several days or even a week.
Plant the sprouts. As soon as a seed cracks open and begins to sprout, place it on some moist soil and sprinkle a little soil over the top of it.
Supply the plants with light. Flourescent lights are the best. Hang the lights with two inches of the soil and after the plants appear above the ground, continue to keep the lights with two inches of the plants. It is as easy as that. If you follow those four steps you will grow a marijuana plant. To ensure prime quality and the highest yield in the shortest time period, however, a few details are necessary.

Soil
Your prime concern, after choosing high quality seeds, is the soil. Use the best soil you can get. Scrimping on the soil doesn't pay off in the long run. If you use unsterilized soil you will almost certainly find parasites in it, probably after it is too late to transplant your marijuana. You can find excellent soil for sale at your local plant shop or nursery, K-Mart, Wal Mart, and even some grocery stores. The soil you use should have these properties for the best possible results:

It should drain well. That is, it should have some sand in it and also some sponge rock or pearlite.
The ph should be between 6.5 and 7.5 since marijuana does not do well in acidic soil. High acidity in soil encourages the plant to be predominantly male, an undesirable trait.
The soil should also contain humus for retaining moisture and nutrients.

If you want to make your own soil mixture, you can use this recipe: Mix two parts moss with one part sand and one part pearlite or sponge rock to each four gallons of soil. Test your soil for ph with litmus paper or with a soil testing kit available at most plant stores. To raise the ph of the soil, add 1/2 lb. lime to 1 cubic foot of soil to raise the ph one point. If you absolutely insist on using dirt you dug up from your driveway, you must sterilize it by baking it in your oven for about an hour at 250 degrees. Be sure to moisten it thoroughly first and also prepare yourself for a rapid evacuation of your kitchen because that hot soil is going to stink. Now add to the mixture about one tablespoon of fertilizer (like Rapid-Gro) per gallon gallon of soil and blend it in thoroughly. Better yet, just skip the whole process and spend a couple bucks on some soil.

Containers
After you have prepared your soil, you will have to come up with some kind of container to plant in. The container should be sterilized as well, especially if they have been used previously for growing other plants. The size of the container has a great deal to do with the rate of growth and overall size of the plant. You should plan on transplanting your plant not more than one time, since the process of transplanting can be a shock to the plant and it will have to undergo a recovery period in which growth is slowed or even stopped for a short while. The first container you use should be no larger than six inches in diameter and can be made of clay or plastic. To transplant, simply prepare the larger pot by filling it with soil and scooping out a little hole about the size of the smaller pot that the plant is in. Turn the plant upside down, pot and all, and tap the rim of the pot sharply on a counter or the edge of the sink. The soil and root ball should come out of the pot cleanly with the soil retaining the shape of the pot and with no disturbances to the root ball. Another method that can bypass the transplanting problem is using a Jiffy-Pot. Jiffy pots are made of compressed peat moss and can be planted right into moist soil where they decompose and allow the passage of the root system through their walls. The second container should have a volume of at least three gallons. Marijuana doesn't like to have its roots bound or cramped for space, so always be sure that the container you use will be deep enough for your plant's root system. It is very difficult to transplant a five-foot marijuana tree, so plan ahead. It is going to get bigger. The small plants should be ready to transplant into their permanent homes in about two weeks. Keep a close watch on them after the first week or so and avoid root binding at all costs since the plants never seem to do as well once they have been stunted by the cramping of their roots.

Fertilizer
Marijuana likes lots of food, but you can do damage to the plants if you are too zealous. Some fertilizers can burn a plant and damage its roots if used in to high a concentration. Most commercial soil will have enough nutrients in it to sustain the plant for about three weeks of growth so you don't need to worry about feeding your plant until the end of the third week. The most important thing to remember is to introduce the fertilizer concentration to the plant gradually. Start with a fairly diluted fertilizer solution and gradually increase the dosage. There are several good marijuana fertilizers on the commercial market, two of which are Rapid-Gro and Eco-Grow. Rapid-Gro has had widespread use in marijuana cultivation and is available in most parts of the United States. Eco-Grow is also especially good for marijuana since it contains an ingredient that keeps the soil from becoming acid. Most fertilizers cause a ph change in the soil. Adding fertilizer to the soil almost always results in a more acidic ph.
As time goes on, the amount of salts produced by the breakdown of fertilizers in the soil causes the soil to become increasingly acidic and eventually the concentration of these salts in the soil will stunt the plant and cause browning out of the foliage. Also, as the plant gets older its roots become less effective in bringing food to the leaves. To avoid the accumulation of these salts in your soil and to ensure that your plant is getting all of the food it needs you can begin leaf feeding your plant at the age of about 1.5 months. Dissolve the fertilizer in worm water and spray the mixture directly onto the foliage. The leaves absorb the fertilizer into their veins. If you want to continue to put fertilizer into the soil as well as leaf feeding, be sure not to overdose your plants.

Remember to increase the amount of food your plant receives gradually. Marijuana seems to be able to take as much fertilizer as you want to give it as long as it is introduced over a period of time. During the first three months or so, fertilize your plants every few days. As the rate of foliage growth slows down in the plant's preparation for blooming and seed production, the fertilizer intake of the plant should be slowed down as well. Never fertilize the plant just before you are going to harvest it since the fertilizer will encourage foliage production and slow down resin production. A word here about the most organic of fertilizers: worm castings. As you may know, worms are raised commercially for sale to gardeners. The breeders put the worms in organic compost mixtures and while the worms are reproducing they eat the organic matter and expel some of the best marijuana food around. After the worms have eaten all the organic matter in the compost, they are removed and sold and the remains are then sold as worm castings. These castings are so rich that you can grow marijuana in straight worm castings. This isn't really necessary however, and it is somewhat impractical since the castings are very expensive. If you can afford them you can, however, blend them in with your soil and they will make a very good organic fertilizer.

Light
Without light, the plants cannot grow. In the countries in which marijuana grows best, the sun is the source of light. The amount of light and the length of the growing season in these countries results in huge tree-like plants. In most parts of North America, however, the sun is not generally intense enough for long enough periods of time to produce the same size and quality of plants that grow with ease in Latin America and other tropical countries. The answer to the problem of lack of sun, especially in the winter months, shortness of the growing season, and other problems is to grow indoor under simulated conditions. The rule of thumb seems to be the more light, the better. In one experiment we know of, eight eight-foot VHO Gro-Lux fixtures were used over eight plants. The plants grew at an astonishing rate. The lights had to be raised every day. There are many types of artificial light and all of them do different things to your plants. The common incandescent light bulb emits some of the frequencies of light the plant can use, but it also emits a high percentage of far red and infra-red light which cause the plant to concentrate its growth on the stem. This results in the plant stretching toward the light bulb until it becomes so tall and spindly that it just weakly topples over. There are several brands of bulb type. One is the incandescent plant spot light which emits higher amounts of red and blue light than the common light bulb. It is an improvement, but has it drawbacks. it is hot, for example, and cannot be placed close to the plants. Consequently, the plant has to stretch upwards again and is in danger of becoming elongated and falling over. The red bands of light seem to encourage stem growth which is not desirable in growing marijuana. the idea is to encourage foliage growth for obvious reasons. Gro-Lux lights are probably the most common flourescent plant lights. In our experience with them, they have proven themselves to be extremely effective. They range in size from one to eight feet in length so you can set up a growing room in a closet or a warehouse. There are two types of Gro-Lux lights: The standard and the wide spectrum. They can be used in conjunction with on another, but the wide spectrum lights are not sufficient on their own. The wide spectrum lights were designed as a supplementary light source and are cheaper than the standard lights. Wide spectrum lights emit the same bands of light as the standard but the standard emit higher concentrations of red and blue bands that the plants need to grow. The wide spectrum lights also emit infra-red, the effect of which on stem growth we have already discussed. If you are planning to grow on a large scale, you might be interested to know that the regular flourescent lamps and fixtures, the type that are used in commercial lighting, work well when used along with standard Gro- Lux lights. These commercial lights are called cool whites, and are the cheapest of the flourescent lights we have mentioned. They emit as much blue light as the Gro-Lux standards and the blue light is what the plants use in foliage growth.
Now we come to the question of intensity. Both the standard and wide spectrum lamps come in three intensities: regular output, high output, and very high output. You can grow a nice crop of plants under the regular output lamps and probably be quite satisfied with our results. The difference in using the HO or VHO lamps is the time it takes to grow a crop. Under a VHO lamp, the plants grow at a rate that is about three times the rate at which they grow under the standard lamps. People have been known to get a plant that is four feet tall in two months under one of these lights. Under the VHO lights, one may have to raise the lights every day which means a growth rate of ate least two inches a day. The only drawback is the expense of the VHO lamps and fixtures. The VHO lamps and fixtures are almost twice the price of the standard. If you are interested in our opinion, they are well worth it. Now that you have your lights up, you might be curious about the amount of light to give you plants per day. The maturation date of your plants is dependent on how much light they receive per day. The longer the dark period per day, the sooner the plant will bloom. Generally speaking, the less dark per day the better during the first six months of the plant's life. The older the plant is before it blooms and goes to seed, the better the grass will be. After the plant is allowed to bloom, its metabolic rate is slowed so that the plant's quality does not increase with the age at the same rate it did before it bloomed. The idea, then, is to let the plant get as old as possible before allowing it to mature so that the potency will be a high as possible at the time of harvest. One relatively sure way to keep your plants from blooming until you are ready for them is to leave the lights on all the time. Occasionally a plant will go ahead and bloom anyway, but it is the exception rather than the rule. If your plants receive 12 hours of light per day they will probably mature in 2 to 2.5 months. If they get 16 hours of light per day they will probably be blooming in 3.5 to 4 months. With 18 hours of light per day, they will flower in 4.5 to 5 months. Its a good idea to put your lights on a timer to ensure that the amount of light received each day remains constant. A "vacation" timer, normally used to make it look like you are home while you are away, works nicely and can be found at most hardware or discount stores.

Energy Emissions In Arbitrary Color Bands 40 Watt Flourescent Lamps
In Watts and Percent of Total Emissions
Daylight Cool White Gro-Lux GroLux WS
Light Type> Band Watts % Watts % Watts % Watts %
Ultra-Violet -380 0.186 2.15 0.16 1.68 0.10 1.42 0.27 3.16
Violet 380-430 0.832 9.60 0.72 7.57 0.70 9.67 1.07 12.48
Blue 430-490 2.418 27.91 1.98 20.78 1.96 27.07 1.22 14.29
Green 490-560 2.372 27.38 2.35 24.67 1.02 14.02 1.24 14.49
Yellow 560-590 1.259 14.53 1.74 18.27 0.10 1.42 0.83 9.77
Orange 590-630 1.144 13.21 1.69 17.75 0.44 6.05 1.36 15.93
Red 630-700 0.452 6.22 0.81 8.47 2.86 39.55 1.86 21.78
Far Red 700-780 0.130 1.53 0.07 0.81 0.06 0.80 0.69 8.10
Total 8.890 100.0 9.52 100.0 7.24 100.0 8.54 100.0

Temperature and Humidity
The ideal temperature for the light hours is 68 to 78 degrees fahrenheit and for the dark hours there should be about a 15 degree drop in temperature. The growing room should be relatively dry if possible. What you want is a resinous coating on the leaves and to get the plant to do this, you must convince it that it needs the resinous coating on its leaves to protect itself from drying out. In an extremely humid room, the plants develop wide leaves and do not produce as much resin. You must take care not to let the temperature in a dry room become too hot, however, since the plant cannot assimilate water fast enough through its roots and its foliage will begin to brown out.

Ventilation
Proper ventilation in your growing room is fairly important. The more plants you have in one room, the more important good ventilation becomes. Plants breathe through their leaves. The also rid themselves of poisons through their leaves. If proper ventilation is not maintained, the pores of the leaves will become clogged and the leaves will die. If there is a free movement of air, the poisons can evaporate off the leaves and the plant can breathe and remain healthy.
In a small closet where there are only a few plants you can probably create enough air circulation just by opening the door to look at them. Although it is possible to grow healthy looking plants in poorly ventilated rooms, they would be larger and healthier if they had a fresh supply of air coming in. If you spend a lot of time in your growing room, your plants will grow better because they will be using the carbon dioxide that you are exhaling around them. It is sometimes quite difficult to get a fresh supply of air in to your growing room because your room is usually hidden away in a secret corner of your house, possibly in the attic or basement. In this case, a fan will create some movement of air. It will also stimulate your plants into growing a healthier and sturdier stalk. Often times in an indoor environment, the stems of plants fail to become rigid because they don't have to cope with elements of wind and rain. To a degree, though, this is an advantage because the plant puts most of its energy into producing leaves and resin instead of stems.

Dehumidifying Your Growing Room
Cannabis that grows in a hot, dry climate will have narrower leaves than cannabis grown in a humid atmosphere. The reason is that in a dry atmosphere the plant can respirate easier because the moisture on the leaves evaporates faster. In a humid atmosphere, the moisture cannot evaporate as fast. Consequently, the leaves have to be broader with more surface area in order to expel the wastes that the plant put out. Since the broad leaves produce less resin per leaf than the narrow there will be more resin in an ounce of narrow leaves than in one ounce of broad leaves. There may be more leaf mass in the broader leafed plants, but most people are growing their own for quality rather than quantity.
Since the resin in the marijuana plant serves the purpose of keeping the leaves from drying out, there is more apt to be a lot of resin produced in a dry room than in a humid one. In the Sears catalog, dehumidifiers cost around $100.00 and are therefore a bit impractical for the "hobby grower."

Watering
If you live near a clear mountain stream, you can skip this bit on the quality of water. Most of us are supplied water by the city and some cities add more chemicals to the water than others. They all add chlorine, however, in varying quantities. Humans over the years have learned to either get rid of it somehow or to live with it, but your marijuana plants won't have time to acquire a taste for it so you had better see that they don't have to. Chlorine will evaporate if you let the water stand for 24 hours in an open container. Letting the water stand for a day or two will serve a dual purpose: The water will come to room temperature during that period of time and you can avoid the nasty shock your plants suffer when you drench them with cold water. Always water with room temperature to lukewarm water. If your water has an excessive amount of chlorine in it, you may want to get some anti- chlorine drops at the local fish or pet store. The most important thing about watering is to do it thoroughly. You can water a plant in a three gallon container with as much as three quarts of water. The idea is to get the soil evenly moist all the way to the bottom of the pot. If you use a little water, even if you do it often, it seeps just a short way down into the soil and any roots below the moist soil will start to turn upwards toward the water. The second most important thing about watering is to see to it that the pot has good drainage. There should be some holes in the bottom so that any excess water will run out. If the pot won't drain, the excess water will accumulate in a pocket and rot the roots of the plant or simply make the soil sour or mildew. The soil, as we said earlier, must allow the water to drain evenly through it and must not become hard or packed. If you have made sure that the soil contains sand and pearlite, you shouldn't have drainage problems. To discover when to water, feel the soil with your finger. if you feel moisture in the soil, you can wait a day or two to water. The soil near the top of the pot is always drier than the soil further down. You can drown your plant just as easily as you can let it get too dry and it is more likely to survive a dry spell than it is to survive a torrential flood. Water the plants well when you water and don't water them at all when they don't need it.

Bugs
If you can avoid getting bugs in the first place you will be much better off. Once your plants become infested you will probably be fighting bugs for the rest of your plants' lives. To avoid bugs be sure to use sterilized soil and containers and don't bring other plants from outside into your growing room. If you have bets, ensure that they stay out of your growing room, since they can bring in pests on their fur. Examine your plants regularly for signs of insects, spots, holes in the leaves, browning of the tips of the leaves, and droopy branches. If you find that somehow in spite of all your precautions you have a plant room full of bugs, you'll have to spray your plants with some kind of insecticide. You'll want to use something that will kill the bugs and not you. Spider mites are probably the bug that will do the most damage to the marijuana plants. One of the reasons is that they are almost microscopic and very hard to spot. They are called spider mites because they leave a web-like substance clinging to the leaves. They also cause tiny little spots to appear on the leaves. Probably the first thing you'll notice, however, is that your plants look sick and depressed. The mites suck enzymes from the leaves and as a result the leaves lose some of their green color and glossiness. Sometimes the leaves look like they have some kid of fungus on them. The eggs are very tiny black dots. You might be wise to get a magnifying glass so that you can really scrutinize your plants closely. Be sure to examine the underside of the leaves too. The mites will often be found clinging to the underside as well as the top of the leaves. The sooner you start fighting the bugs, the easier it will be to get rid of them. For killing spider mites on marijuana, one of the best insecticides if "Fruit and Berry" spray made by Millers. Ortho also produces several insecticides that will kill mites. The ingredients to look for are Kelthane and Malathion [erowid note- Malathion may be very toxic to humans, should be handled very carefully, and is certainly not intended for indoor use. It also seems highly preferrable to avoid spraying pesticides or any chemicals on plants that will be smoked without being washed thoroughly first.] Both of these poisons are lethal to humans and pets as well as bugs, but they both detoxify in about ten days so you can safely smoke the grass ten days after spraying. Fruit and Berry will only kill the adult mite, however, and you'll have to spray every four days for about two weeks to be sure that you have killed all the adults before they have had a chance to lay eggs. Keep a close watch on your plants because it only takes one egg laying adult to re- infest your plants and chances are that one or two will escape your barrage of insecticides. If you see little bugs flying around your plants, they are probably white flies. The adults are immune to almost all the commercial insecticides except Fruit and Berry which will not kill the eggs or larva. It is the larval stage of this insect that does the most damage. They suck out enzymes too, and kill your plants if they go unchecked. You will have to get on a spraying program just as was explained in the spider mite section.
An organic method of bug control is using soap suds. Put Ivory flakes in some lukewarm water and work up the suds into a lather. Then put the suds over the plant. The obvious disadvantage is it you don't rinse the soap off the plant you'll taste the soap when you smoke the leaves.

Pruning
We have found that pruning is not always necessary. The reason one does it in the first place is to encourage secondary growth and to allow light to reach the immature leaves. Some strands of grass just naturally grow thick and bushy and if they are not clipped the sap moves in an uninterrupted flow right to the top of the plant where it produces flowers that are thick with resin. On the other hand, if your plants appear tall and spindly for their age at three weeks, they probably require a little trimming to ensure a nice full leafy plant. At three weeks of age your plant should have at least two sets of branches or four leaf clusters and a top. To prune the plant, simply slice the top off just about the place where two branches oppose each other. Use a razor blade in a straight cut. If you want to, you can root the top in some water and when the roots appear, plant the top in moist soil and it should grow into another plant. If you are going to root the top you should cut the end again, this time with a diagonal cut so as to expose more surface to the water or rooting solution. The advantage to taking cuttings from your plant is that it produces more tops. The tops have the resin, and that's the name of the game. Every time you cut off a top, the plant seeds out two more top branches at the base of the existing branches. Pruning also encourages the branches underneath to grow faster than they normally would without the top having been cut.

Harvesting and Curing
Well, now that you've grown your marijuana, you will want to cur it right so that it smokes clean and won't bite. You can avoid that "homegrown" taste of chlorophyll that sometimes makes one's fillings taste like they might be dissolving. We know of several methods of curing the marijuana so that it will have a mild flavor and a mellow rather than harsh smoke.
First, pull the plant up roots and all and hang it upside down for 24 hours. Then put each plant in a paper grocery bag with the top open for three or four days or until the leaves feel dry to the touch. Now strip the leaves off the stem and put them in a glass jar with a lid. Don't pack the leaves in tightly, you want air to reach all the leaves. The main danger in the curing process is mold. If the leaves are too damp when you put them into the jar, they will mold and since the mold will destroy the resins, mold will ruin your marijuana. you should check the jars every day by smelling them and if you smell an acrid aroma, take the weed out of the jar and spread it out on newspaper so that it can dry quickly. Another method is to uproot the plants and hang them upside down. You get some burlap bags damp and slip them up over the plants. Keep the bags damp and leave them in the sun for at least a week. Now put the plants in a paper bag for a few days until the weed is dry enough to smoke. Like many fine things in life, marijuana mellows out with age. The aging process tends to remove the chlorophyll taste. Editor's Note and Important Warning:

This pamphlet was written about 8 years ago. While the facts, figures, and methods described here are still valid, an important note must be added concerning the purchasing of equipment and supplies. The information age is upon us and and increasing amount of data is being kept about all of us whether we realize it or not. With the war on drugs in full effect, the D.E.A. is using this information at every possible opportunity.

When you make a purchase with a credit card, every last bit of information regarding that purchase is filed away into a database, both at the store and with your credit card company. Not only the price, but the exact date, location, and items purchased are recorded and stored away. Many stores and credit card companies routinely sell their databases of customers and transactions to anybody who can afford it. The D.E.A can certainly afford it. After all, they're using your tax dollars.

The D.E.A. as well as other government agencies DO purchase these databases for their own uses. They feed them into their computers and the computers spit out a list of anybody with "suspicious" purchases. Any purchases that could be associated with drug production, use, or selling could be flagged for further investigation. These "suspicious" purchases include unusual chemicals, medical supplies such as syringes, lights and timers, and even potting soil and fertilizer.

The point is, if you are planning on purchasing supplies to grow marijuana don't take any chances. While the average home grower, who is simply growing enough for his own use, would probably never be flagged by the computers, you never know. If you are purchasing equipment or supplies, PAY CASH! In addition, many supermarkets and discount stores now have some sort of "Preferred Customer" cards. When you buy something, regardless of how you pay, you give them your card to scan and all of your purchases are recorded. They then send you some sort of coupon depending on what and how much you purchased each month. It sounds like a good deal, but you wind up having all of your purchases recorded and sold just like with the credit cards. DON'T use one of these cards when you are purchasing anything that might be deemed suspicious. For that matter, don't use them at all. They just result in a ton of junk mail and a lot of people knowing exactly what you buy and when you buy it.

Worlf Blitzer[

[Anonymous Coward]

Wolf blitzer needs to get off his ass and do something, the only reason people like him is cause he stood on a roof in the gulf war and cause he has a cool name, and hes not standing on roofs anymore

Re:Worlf Blitzer[

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to change my name to Tiger Howitzer. That would kick a Wolf Blitzer's ass any day.

Re:Worlf Blitzer[

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditka versus Wolf Blitzer? Don't be stupid. Ditka!

Lego(again)

[hardburlyboogerman]

I have watched,with some admusement,the stories involving Lego blocks.Keeps a smile on my face.(Since I am stuck in a hospital bed,rigging a dial-up using a old Pent. Laptop thru the hospital phone system.)
It just goes to show what can be done with a little though and maybe a touch of insanity.
;)

Re:Lego(again)

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you like it when the male orderlies come in and give you a sponge bath and an enema, you sick freak.

FP is mine!

[egg troll]

As you all know, the Slashdot FAQ clearly states an AC cannot have the first post. Thus I claim it for my own.

Re:FP is mine!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nor can FP belong to an obious troll account. If you want FP then you must be prepared to take the Karma hit on your real account. By the way, ya mom has a pritty cunt.

lego usage

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, Hemos 'uses' Legos, but I dont think shoving them one by one up one's ass is PROPER usage.

how the fuck is this

[Anonymous Coward]

"news for nerds". goddamn, slashdot really sucks a big turgid donkey cock. that ass goblin hemos can take a large lego block and shove it up his asshole. i hope he anally bleeds to death before he suffocates on tacos rancid semen, fucking pedos...

Lego User

[webword]

CmdrTaco confession at rehab Clinic: "Yeah man, I, uh, frequently use Lego blocks. No, man, no, I am not addicted. Just, ah, just give me one more. Just one more block. Yeah, yeah. Yes. No. I, ahh, mean it. I need one more block. Look at this Linux box I almost built! One more block will do it. If I don't close that hole, they'll get root! Pleeeaze. I need one more block. Fine. Uh, fine. You've got me by the balls. One more block and I promise I won't post any more Katz...."

O/T -- Buddyhead on Lego

[Anonymous Coward]

This site has some intresting facts about Lego . . .

Big jugs

[Anonymous Coward]

When will we be able to build blow-up dolls from lego?

and i think

[Anonymous Coward]

you should shut your filthy hole until it's time to suck down a large tube of shit, you goddamn turd-burgler. get the fuck off of slashdot, bitch...

Re:and i think

[Anonymous Coward]

hey, i thought my little AC comment was amusing!

-evil_spork.

Bitch

[egg troll]

This is my real account. I don't post under anything else. My karma has taken more hits than your mom's pussy.

Re:Bitch

[11 platter hard driv]

This is a waste of hard drive space on the /. servers. Please keep from putting flame bait up on the posts. I doesn't help anyone.

I see

[Anonymous Coward]

What do black people and the fox baseball commentators have in common?? They're both dumb as shit!!

(Also accepted: "everyone wants to kill them")

I do bar mitzvahs too!

Re:I see

[Anonymous Coward]

I hate the way they keep talking about how bob brently used to work for fox and now he is the manager. Like anybody would ever hire Tim Mccarver to manage shit.

Lego dance

[Anonymous Coward]

I like to put lots of Legos up my ass. They make a neat sound when I do the shimmy out on the dance floor. Folks down at the Disco call me "The Rattlesnake!"

egg troll SUCKS COCK FOR A LIVING

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right he does. He's the biggest fag in the universe. he enjoys being fucked up the ass by cmdrtaco while giving hemos a blowjob.

Wrong!

[egg troll]

Hey it was michael sims that was punching my leather donut, not taco. Taco was off to the side, giving all three of us a yummy golden shower. Get your facts straight before you post such slanderous lies, cockknocker.

How I'd spend my time if I could.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd spend the week licking Claire Dane's anal orifice.

Legos obsolete

[perdida]

Legos, as they were originally designed, are obsolete.

Hence, the Lego company, attempting to make money, made the Lego platform into a complex robot related thing and Web phenomenon.

This got them money from rich geeks, but made the product even less pleasant and fun for average, non-technological kids.

Kids who want to build with blocks was the original Lego audience. Legos were blocks that wouldnt fall down at the slightest touch from one's sister or dog.

Now, they are a boutique item.

A similar thing happened with Etch a Sketch.

Most of the Lego kids grow up fragging on computers anyway, so it's not a big deal.

Re:Legos obsolete

[sllort]

This got them money from rich geeks, but made the product even less pleasant and fun for average, non-technological kids.

Legos are hardly the place for taking pot-shots in the Class Warfare struggle in America. For every nine year old child building remote controlled cars out of legos, there are working class children too, building oil rigs, monster trucks, and freight trains, powerful symbols of blue collar existence. The extensive flexibility introduced by the newer legos do not extend new possibilities just to upper middle class science-fiction fans, but to children everywhere with a solid engineering background and about a hundred dollars.

Pure left wing nonsense!

Re:Legos obsolete

[Apotome]

Saying that the original LEGO bricks are obsolete is akin to saying that in architecture the cantilevered beam is now obsolete because we have new composite materials. It's o.k. to move ahead, and the LEGO company needs to do this. But it's also imperative to know where you've been and what worked in the past. The LEGO company can't seem to come to grips with it's own past successes.

Re:Legos obsolete

[SaxMaster]

So you assume that all working class kids like monster trucks, have mullets and will marry their sisters? For Shame.

Re:Legos obsolete

[Dirty Sanchez King]

Thanks for summarizing the first Fast Company article! Unfortunately, you have added nothing to this discussion, but you did get the karma you were seeking.

You should be ashamed of yourself. Adequacy is such a waste of effort and time, couldn't you do something better with your talents?

Oh well, once a troll, always a troll. Can't you (and your cohorts) quit posting here, now that you have a site dedicated to that nonsense? You, and your kind, have made this web log almost worthless.

Re:Legos obsolete

[11 platter hard driv]

Yeah, but we even adults play with blocks. Take construction, or network administration. Both have to do with building something to a greater end. And that end is having someone else (i.e. people who use dynamite as a living or the end user on a network) destroy it, hence the dog or sister thing. LEGO was just onto something there, and we are all greatful *1..

1. Except for the little sister and the dog. They both wanted to knock down my blocks, but I wouldn't let them. I had my LEGO'S!

New Sets != Death of Imagination

[john@iastate.edu]

Again, I see yet another adult decrying that the new (more than just rectangles) sets are the death of creativity for kids.

As the parent of an eight year old boy who has spent virtually every dime of allowance he has ever received on Logos, I just don't see it.

Sure, roughly 4 nanoseconds after getting it home (only because we banned doing it in the backseat) he has it open and is building it according to the directions -- BUT in a couple of hours he'll have it apart and he'll NEVER build it that way again.

Re:New Sets != Death of Imagination

[Pstrobus]

Sure, and I did the same thing when I got my first set in '75. At the same time, I got ticked off at lego when their sets started getting too focused on "part does this and just this." Heck, I had the old set where you built the boat hull out of parts, now they are prebuilt.

It's not so much that creativity will die, as that by being directed with specialized parts, the end results are more limited. This is my biggest argument with most software. Most users need a small set of generalizable tools rather than a bunch of "one shot" tools. My work in tech support would have been so much more straightforward if less effort was wasted on chrome 'features' and instead focused on basic tools. If you have mastered your toolset, you can find a way to describe new items. Otherwise you need to use the supplied 'solution' and hope it works just right.

And can someone tell me why HTML is not the default file storage format of wordprocessing docs? HTML can handle images, text, and layout and, being text, is readable on any platform I have used.

Re:New Sets != Death of Imagination

[Apotome]

I grew up on LEGO sets that took an hour or two to assemble for the first time. I have fond and lasting memories of the company and their products.

What will your son feel when he grows up and his memories are of a toy that never challenged him for more than a few minutes?

The damage to the company is being done now. The products they offer may be selling well (though many are not) but at great cost to their reputation and their future adult fans. They are in desparate need of getting in touch with their 'core values'. They know it, they are just reluctant to do it.

Re:New Sets != Death of Imagination

[Peter H.S.]

Again, I see yet another adult decrying that the new (more than just rectangles) sets are the death of creativity for kids.

I remember the same complaints in the late 70's. And, I am ashamed to admit, I too, was once complaining about that.

I guess that ones own "golden Lego moments" are frozen with the sets and bricks available at the time. What comes after, seems like follies, and crass commercialism.

I do think that Lego is expensive, especially because the rule about "quantity is a quality in itself", is so true about Lego. Lots of bricks is lots of fun. There is also a certain "critical mass of bricks" needed for many continouse hours of zen-like Lego constuction and play time.

On the other hand, I also think that stuff like Lego are really great toys, far superior to so much else. If for nothing else, because Lego pieces tend to very tough (oh, all the "glittering" plastic trash toys I used to own, who could not withstand even a low intensity afternoon war in my bedroom;)

Sure, roughly 4 nanoseconds after getting it home (only because we banned doing it in the backseat) he has it open and is building it according to the directions -- BUT in a couple of hours he'll have it apart and he'll NEVER build it that way again.

He, he, the frantic art of backseat assembly of Lego sets.

A woman in the one of the articles, is worried because her son only assembles the kits and never take them apart. She blames ready made sets for destroying creativity. But in my childhood (early to mid 70's) when Lego sets were much more simple (and therefore "better"), I knew kids, who would _glue_ the assembled sets together; The horror!
So I think that the "build once, then atomize" or "neatly build, then display" strategies, has much more to do, with the childs basic personality (and age), than with what kinds of sets Lego offers.

Re:New Sets != Death of Imagination

[Anonymous Coward]

I grew up with legos. First some oddball hand-me-down pieces (like the old people that had a one-piece armless body and a cylindrical head without a face), and then new sets. The closest thing to specialized pieces were the wings for outer space vehicles. Stuff like the advanced tractor (working PTO shaft, drawbar and steering) were amazing.

I dreamed of owning the advnced bulldozer or earth chomper.

My brother grew up on legos that consisted of half a dozen one-use pieces. It's tragic.

Re:New Sets != Death of Imagination

[singularity]

Perhaps, but as an avid Lego fan (65,000 blocks), I can say that there have been some good sets out recently.

The Bungee Blaster is one of the best designed sets I have ever seen. Everyone on Slashdot should go out and purchase this set. It is simple, inexpensive, and will have you playing with it for hours.

See this Usenet post and related threads.

Re:New Sets != Death of Imagination

[malfunct]

I agree, and the bungee power is great for driving larger more complex vehicles :)

Re:New Sets != Death of Imagination

[malfunct]

My parents always purchased me the "Technic" type lego sets. They were great fun and I rarely build the model more than ones. Though the car type models were a ton of fun because I always loved driving cars around. Mostly though I tried to build 4 wheel drive trucks with my motors which was quiet hard to do (I didn't have alot of pieces and the more efficient designs were not available to me because of this). I look at todays technic sets, and mostly there are too many tubes and big plastic plates making up the outsides of the model which means less parts to build the core of a new model. Mostly its ok though, still lots to be done.

I think there would be a LARGE market for lego bringing back some of its old sets (anyone for the black supercar set?) again.

Re:New Sets != Death of Imagination

[Nater]

...decrying that the new (more than just rectangles) sets are the death of creativity...

When I was 9 and my brother was 7, we built a huge layout using the castle themed stuff. The scene was a river flowing from a small lake through a valley with big mountains all around. On one of the mountains, there was a castle at the top. From that same mountain, there was a waterfall into the lake. In the lake there was another castle, with a rope bridge to the mountain, where a road went up to the other castle. Next to the lake, on the same side of the river as the two castles was a village, and there was a small bridge, wide enough for one cart, across the river. There were two armies in this scene. One, with the falcon crest, was defending the two castles and the bridge and consisted of a lot of archers. The other, with the lion crest, was a legion approaching from the narrow plain on the other side of the river, mostly spear, pike, and sword bearing infantry with few mounted soldiers. In all, the layout was about ten square feet and the valley was about three feet from floor to summit.

My brother and I titled this scene "The First Battle of the Rhine" and sent a photo in to the Lego Maniacs magazine (or whatever it was called, we were subscribers at the time) to be featured in the next issue. Our photo never materialized in print, and I know that this is entirely circumstantial, but over the next two years we saw Lego produce the following sets: a castle in a lake, 2 different a castle/fortress thingies on mountains (and pitiful two and a half inch mountains at that), and a river scene featuring a rope bridge piece over a river plate. At the tender ages of ten and eight, it was quite upsetting to see the apparent wholesale theft of my brother's and my ingenuity. Even more disconcerting, even at that age, was the idea that other kids wouldn't have to, and therefore wouldn't try to be as clever. The waterfall was just about the only unique idea we never saw in the Lego catalogues, which is odd, because I engineered the flashing lights from the monorail into the base of it behind some transparent bricks... it was possibly the most marketable part.

Of course, it never stopped us from buying more Legos... including all four of the aforementioned rip off sets.

Re:New Sets != Death of Imagination

[gi-tux]

What will your son feel when he grows up and his memories are of a toy that never challenged him for more than a few minutes?

A toy can be challenging in many ways. As a parent (yes I am a parent of two lego maniacs, a 9 year old son and a 3 year old daughter), giving my children a set of lego blocks is a part of the challenge. They can build by the instructions (at their respective levels), but that is only the start. There are other things that can be done to present a challenge to them.
1) lose the instructions after they have been built once or twice. You might file them away somewhere so that they can be retrieved at a later time if necessary. But save the box, haven't you noticed that on the back of the box are other models which can be built with those blocks? No instructions, just a picture. I know that this still isn't using the imagination, but other skills are being learned. Just as following instructions is also a good skill to learn.
2) come up with your own games. Yes it takes a little work on your (and your childs part) but it can be a lot of fun. We play lego yard wars (our own version of Junk Yard Wars (on The Learning Channel). My son and I will decide on something to build and how to test it, and then we will go build it from lego blocks. We have built bridges that had to support a certain amount of weight and vehicles that had to travel a predetermined path, machines which could walk, and many others. But we did it together and with only our imaginations .
3) start early. Even my 3 year old builds with blocks, she uses duplo blocks which are more her size. She build walls and towers and even sometimes builds with her brother using duplo and lego blocks together, learning to cooperate and share.
4) give your child an assignment. Make it very broad and tell them that using instructions is not allowed. Start simple with stuff like a wall. Get more specific and complex as they start to use their imagination. Remember an imagination like any other skill must be developed, it doesn't just happen.
5) join in! Do your part as a parent, just providing isn't enough. Yes, I have trouble with time myself sometimes, but when I sit on the floor and dump all those bricks out and start building, nothing else matters.

Me too!

[egg troll]

Oh god so would I. Nothing really satisfies me quite like giving a hot woman a sloppy rimjob. I swear with Claire Dane's I'd wag my tongue so far past her sphincter her toes would curl in seconds flat.

your still a GAY HOMOSEXUAL FAGGOT

[Anonymous Coward]

it's true

Wandayaknow

[Anonymous Coward]

you lose, you stupid cunt !

ahoy there!

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't you suck onto my penis!!

Re:ahoy there!

[Anonymous Coward]

onto is the incorrect preposition in your sentence.

Re:ahoy there!

[Anonymous Coward]

onto is fine, you sucker! suck onto my PENIS!

Bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Human feces is highly toxic and ingesting it will cause severe sickness or possibly even death!

Re:Bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

No problem. I've been building up immunities over the last several years.

Re:Bad idea

[egg troll]

With Claire Danes you don't need to build up immunities. She is free from the normal fecal bacteria that you and I have. The only thing that ever comes from her bung is pure honey, and my face is the toast upon which she may spread it.

Re:Bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

These are the cream of the crop, sites that had me running to my shit-buds sayin, "You gotta see this! You're gonna love it!" Go take a look, I'll bet they do the same for you.

GDShiteater
This hot Chicago boy has some very intense personal accounts of his shit experiences that had me cumming for a week. He's got a few pics to sweeten the deal too.

SewerRat
(a.k.a. Bernard) This filthy frenchman has had a great site for a long time but he recently re-did it an made it even better. His galleries of personal scat pics are some of the best on the web and his link page almost made me decide not to do one! Bernard also has a very good seperate homepage.

Shit Eating Freak
This guy is it, the top (or bottom) of the shit heap. He gets as sick, perverted, and filthy as you can in the shit scene and he has great pictures to document it. Very heavy action, very graphic pictures. I am in awe!

Rainer - Berlin
A hot German skinhead with a very good, extensive site. His collection of scat pics is just one of many, including fisting, dildos, and rubber..

Puddles Portalet's Personal Pages
One of the on-line shit greats. See his stories in my story collection or see the complete collection here at his site.

Re:Bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course, I'd have to show her my stinger.

And...?

[egg troll]

Does that make me a bad person? You should come over to my house tonite. I swear I'll use my tongue on you in ways that would make you jizz like Old Faithful. How about it? I got some wine coolers and Zima chilling in the fridge, sailor!!

Ya want a battle over bricks?

[Digitalia]

My favorite game in childhood was a true geek's game. We built stuff using Legos and then flung 1" diameter ball barings from siege-engines. You haven't played with legos until you've spent the afternoon building the Ice Planet Deep Freeze Defender and promptly watched it crumble to pieces as the slug of metal hit it. It's even more fun re-designing it to be more structurally sound.

Re:Ya want a battle over bricks?

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't played with legos until you've spent the afternoon building the Ice Planet Deep Freeze Defender

I'm guessing you didn't get laid till you were 24+. Am I right?

Re:Ya want a battle over bricks?

[Digitalia]

Laid? Where do you get that set? eBay?

Re:Ya want a battle over bricks?

[Telastyn]

My childhood lego game was similar, though instead of ball bearings, each team was given a set amount of bricks (usually ~12 2x4) to build a "bomb" out of, which was then lobbed in a high arc at the opposing teams' structure/ship/fort.

Thus you got the two designs of making one part sound, and the other part to make the other guy's unsound.

Re:Ya want a battle over bricks?

[richardalan]

When I was in junior high, I once spent most of an afternoon with one of my older brothers (a college professor) seeing who could build a structure out of Legos that could survive a fall from ceiling height. :-)

Re:Ya want a battle over bricks?

[LordMokar]

I remember Lego wars very fondly unfortunately I don't think I won a single battle with my older brother. We did not employee the 1" diameter ball baring instead we would each get one of those large green bricks and build a thing. I say thing b/c they rarely looked like much looking back. However, throwing our creations at each others during battle we would have our final stress tests. Before this my older brother, younger and myself would throw them off the roof, deck into walls you name it was tried.... Then you'd try and figure out what angle it landed on and try and re-build your design to enhance the strength of the impact. Through this process I learned to test, test and then test some more. When you couldn't think of a new test that looked at something you could come up with throw the damn thing off a roof and see what happens. I learned a lot of skills I use in programming and working with my computer from my early lego years. For every block that you fix, your bound to find another that is broken. Its an endless struggle to fix and then break the blocks....

because it's too small.

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to Go Trolls!

[egg troll]

34 Comments, 6 at +1 or greater!! Excellent work all around.

Technic is the way

[dimator]

Lego's are cool, but I would guess most of the older types would prefer technic, just because there's so much more to do with them. Any toy with a universal joint piece is OK in my book!

Re:Technic is the way

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, lego porn! This should be +5. Don't change your sig, at leat for the next few days.

Advice For Trolls *Score : 5, Insightful*

[Anonymous Coward]

Important Stuff For Trolls:

Please try to keep posts off topic.

Try to starting new threads instead of reply to other people comments.

Dont read other people's messages before posting your own to encourage simply duplicating what has already been said.

Use a vague subject that does not describe what your message is about.

Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be praised by other trolls.

Oh yea! Especailly the new Harry Potter set!

[disc-chord]

Legos are truly the greatest toy you can get for the little geek in your life. My younger cousins are all clamouring for the new Harry Potter set. The new sets just keep them interested, I can't imagine how anyone would find them to be the "death of imagination".

Re:Oh yea! Especailly the new Harry Potter set!

[Spy Hunter]

The reason so many people hate the new sets is the proliferation of "special pieces." It used to be that lots of Lego sets came with special pieces such as hinges, turntables, and such, but they could always be used in your own models, and most of the pieces were still good old vanilla lego bricks. Now it seems that it is impossible to buy a set without over half of its pieces being large, oddly shaped pieces that can hardly be used in any way other than to build the set in the instructions. Regular lego blocks make up fewer and fewer of the actual pieces. It hinders the creativity aspect when you can only build one thing from your lego pieces. Its sort of missing the point. Legos just become some sort of model kit like a model airplane, which isn't what Legos should be.

Re:Oh yea! Especailly the new Harry Potter set!

[w1kL3f]

"He and I have very different ideas about Legos," says Ethan's mom, Lisa Gates, a dean at Wesleyan University, who is in Orlando on vacation. "I prefer the free-form bricks, where he can make his own universe. Ethan is most drawn to the theme-based scenarios. He has an Egyptian-pyramid-dig set and some Star Wars sets. He's fixated on the directions -- when he builds it, he wants it to look exactly like it looks on the box. That introduces a note of anxiety into playing with Legos -- did I do it right?"

Look, the new Legos have been dumbed down to death. They're just models with cute figurines included. No creativity necessary---and don't even get me started on the Jack Stone series!!!

The first writer pointed out how stupid and muddled their current catalogue is. They are trying desperately to hit on something, anything, that can compete with Pokemon. They should just forget about appealing to modern kids raised on a glut of information, play-dates, and micro-managed lives...and do what they can do to appeal to the AFOL's.

Re:Oh yea! Especailly the new Harry Potter set!

[T.Hobbes]

I haven't acutally _seen_ any of these newfangled sets, but hey.. fuck it. Kids are kids, and they'll find ways to use the new oddly-shaped pieces for random creations of their imaginations. As long as you have a good store of plain vanillas, you're ok.

Re:Oh yea! Especailly the new Harry Potter set!

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as you actually build something physically, it's way better than children wasting their time on a porn collection & first person shooters.
Modern computer games are an insult to intelligence.
Sorry about the rant, But I could never quite figure out why parents are so proud when their children play quake.

Re:Oh yea! Especailly the new Harry Potter set!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want more of the standard bricks, buy the Blue Box. It has something like 1200 standard bricks and is only something like $20. I've seen them on sale for $12. it's the only real bargain in Lego available.I think they also have a Red Box has some useful specialized bricks that is reasonably priced. Either are great for building things on the fly.

Re:Oh yea! Especailly the new Harry Potter set!

[sibergirl]

Ok...How about a ,lego playing, girl's perseptive on this? I will admit that I grew up with the lego sets. My favorite was the castles. I would build them to the exact specifications on the included sheet of paper. Does this make me a person without any imagination or creativity? Sure you can build the castle right out of the box, but what about the world around it? To go with this wonderful castle I had to build a garden, cottages, a treehouse for the princess(Heck I had to make the princess!) and of course I had to make the hidden grottos and secret meeting places for the evil knights that would, at any moment, steal the princess from her peaceful garden. I even fliped over my brothers car mat and colored a meadow on the edge of a lake for the castle to sit on. Does this show lack of imagination? I think the key to getting the full potental out of these sets to provide a huge ass box of miscellaneous lego to go with it. The kids will do the rest. Lego does make boxes of regular building sets..some do come with special pieces. I suppose if you are anal you can throw them away. Or better yet go to lego's web page and order all the boxes of 4X6 ,white, blocks you can dream of. As for that castle? It sits upstairs in a box...still put together. I can't wait to see what worlds my future kids build around it.

Re:Oh yea! Especailly the new Harry Potter set!

[Nater]

I think the key to getting the full potental out of these sets to provide a huge ass box of miscellaneous lego to go with it.

Hear, hear! Amen!

My brother and I grew up on the transition from vanilla Lego bricks to the newfangled one time pieces (OTPs), so most of our enormous collection (about twenty-five cubic feet of plasticky goodness) is vanilla bricks, but there is a substantial minority of weird non-brick pieces (WNBPs) and just a few OTPs. Our older step siblings did not grow up on Legos at all. Come Christmas and birthday time, my neices and nephews get the bulk packages of vanilla bricks from me and my brother, and sets from their parents. Together, they make a wonderful compliment to each other.

Thanks a lot asshole

[Anonymous Coward]

for putting 8 billion links in the description to make it impossible to tell which one I'm actually supposed to click on...

idiot

Two complaints.

[Anonymous Coward]

All three of them have great things to say. But, Allan is one of those gits who doesn't match colors and builds 'multicolored dreams'. And Hemos, its 'lego' not 'legos'.

Does anyone else remember feuds over color co-ordination and freaks that called lego 'legos'? Or, am I the only retentive one?!

Gimme all your blue 2x6 lego! My space ship has to have blue impact armor with grey wings and trim!

Re:Two complaints.

[golrien]

me and my friend used to have bitter wars over who got to build the red robot and who had to make do with all the other colours. these 'robots' were really just buggies, and tended to end up pushing each other down the stairs.

Ehh

[egg troll]

WTF?

Remember your own days with lego....

[marijnm]

I mean, almost everybody builded the sets at least one time according to the 'cookbook'. As a (young) kid it took you a lot of time to figure out the directions, which also yielded some new insigths about 2D to 3D mapping.

BUT, after a few days it fell off the table or your brother or sister smashed it and that was the start of the real fun...

So the only thing I'm a bit worried about is all those special purpose blocks...

Marijn

Lego and Thought

[under_score]

Lego is one of the best educational toys possible. I grew up with Lego. My father bought me one of the very old technic sets with the yellow, blue and red gears. Wow!

I have played primarily with space sets and technic sets. I have Mindstorms. I build gross huge disgusting complicated stuff. Backhoe loader with 6 degrees of freedom using pnumatics, four digit trinary counter power distribution system, spaceships over a meter long (3') etc.

Oh. And I'm thirty, I have a three-year-old kid, and we play together now :-)

So, Lego is great. But why? Because it does what no other toy I know of does: it challenges the mind in details, in abstractions, in planning, in three-dimensional visualization, in imagination, in story creation, in beauty, in symetry, in working with constraints, in memory (ever had something break and rebuild it from memory?).

Is there any other toy that comes even close?

Buy the sets you think are best. Don't buy the ones you don't think are good. Lego Inc. will get the hint.

Re:Lego and Thought

[ShaunC]

>Is there any other toy that comes even close?

A Windows box?

OK, so maybe it doesn't meet the "beauty" spec. But it sure as hell emphasizes details, planning, abstractions and memory!

Shaun

Re:Lego and Thought

[Demidog]

All well and good. I've seen alot of comments about how terrific Lego and other building blocks are but I haven't seen anyone talk much about other perhaps more useful things kids can do with their time - rather than try and build mechanical or organic simulations where the starting point is a set of geometrically correct yet naturally abhorrant shapes(there are alot of comments here so it could simply be because I haven't read them all).

I have a three year-old as well.

But my view can be summed up as "legos shmegos."

Show me a kid that can walk into a piece of open land, pick up a few items and build a fire without a match and I'll be impressed. It can be done. The materials to build a bow drill can be found and constructed without the use of any tools.

Or how about a kid who can identify all of the edible and poisonous plants in his part of the world?

At one time, these were skills of value. Because they are not, and because things like legos and lincoln logs are considered "educational", the "shoppers" will be rendered completely helpless in the event of a major catastrophe.

And those who chose to forego legos and instead walked outside and looked around, will then simply and naturally walk into the woods and survive comfortably while the "technologically advanced" people will start killing each other to obtain resources because their great technological systems will have failed them.

Re:Lego and Thought

[Moofie]

Dammit! You're right! When I got my LEGO set, it totally switched off the part of my brain responsible for outdoor survival! It's obvious that the LEGO company wants us all to be mindless automatons after the coming holocaust, so that they can sell us the new LEGO Survival Sam kits!

Your contention that these two types of knowledge and fun are mutually exclusive is ridiculous. I know how to build a bow drill, and I know how to play with LEGO. What's wrong with having both?

Re:Lego and Thought

[malfunct]

I've known a number of people that hung out outside all the time and STILL can't survive worth a hoot. I on the other hand spent a great deal of time playing lego. I also learned how to survive in the outdoors. There is much to be said about balance. All lego is certainly not good, but all outdoors doesn't complete you as a person either.

Maybe its just where I was raised but I have a little bit of knowledge of a whole bunch of things and some expertise in a couple of areas. I would totally recommend lego as a toy for any child today. I would also recommend that the parents get right down there and spend some time with the children playing with the lego, they might learn something, they might have a "moment", but basically it will all be good. I just with the price of the "cool" sets would go down so I could buy more of them (I'm 23 and have spent far too much on lego on the last year).

Re:Lego and Thought

[SEE]

Is there any other toy that comes even close?

Construx (a plastic girder-and-connector systme). Unfortunately, they stopped making them in 1997. Building with Construx was like building a (steel/wood) frame structured building, instead of building with bricks.

Of course, we developed ad-hoc interfaces for Lego-Construx combined works; but we really preferred the Construx around my house.

Well, that's just great

[Anonymous Coward]

Them coming out with "Time Capsule" sets that are supposed to appeal to adult former Lego users, and they're still more new-fangled than what I remember, definitely makes me feel old...

I specifically remember looking on these with disdain as an eleven-year-old and thinking there were too many many dedicated-use type bricks and not enough general-use ones. (Although I probably didn't use the term "dedicated-use"...)

real gay boys get high on poppers, not Zima

[Sexual Asspussy]

and besides, anal sex with girls smells better (mainly because girls smell better than guys). cock-Führer.

I never really took to Lego

[mj6798]

For "engineering" applications (building things that do things), Lego always seemed to limited to me. And purely for shape and sculpting, it had all the charm of an Etch-a-Sketch: you spent most of the time trying to get around its oddball rectangular limitations.

If you must use a construction set, there seem to be better ones around than Lego: systems like ErectorSet, FischerTechnik, and others, are a lot more flexible and have a lot more interesting mechanical components in them.

But what is wrong with wooden blocks, woodworking, metal working, clay, real electronic parts, solder, or paint? Why learn something as limited, expensive, and plasticky as Lego when you could learn real skills with the real thing? Start off with clay and paint, move on to cardboard and paper, then to light wood, then, well, you get the point. And if parents actually get involved with their children, they can start supervised woodworking and metal work very early.

Re:I never really took to Lego

[Apotome]

There's nothing at all wrong with any of those other materials and systems that you mentioned.

But one of the things that gives traditional LEGO bricks their charm is, in fact, their retangular limitations. By adding some restrictions you sometimes force more creative thinking within those boundaries.

Censorship has the same effect on literature.

Sometimes having an unlimited palate and/or supplies and/or range of motion leads to aimless and timid designs.

Re:I never really took to Lego

[RedWizzard]

But what is wrong with wooden blocks, woodworking, metal working, clay, real electronic parts, solder, or paint?

For some reason my parents wouldn't let me do any woodworking, metal working, soldering or painting when I was 6.

Re:I never really took to Lego

[Saurentine]

But what is wrong with wooden blocks, woodworking, metal working, clay, real electronic parts, solder, or paint? Why learn something as limited, expensive, and plasticky as Lego when you could learn real skills with the real thing?

I like your thinking, but which of these can be done in short time segments, like the 15-30 minutes between when I got home from school and when the first adult got home from work?

Which of these can be enjoyed and cleaned up again, with your work in process safely saved as well, between 5:00PM and dinner time on a weeknight?

Legos were never a complete substitute for other projects in my youth. Instead, they kept my interest in creating things during the intervals when there wasn't time or space to create by other means. Yes, they did take some time from other projects I might have accomplished, but their pure convenience factor made me much more creative as a whole.

And they cost more as well, but since when was such convenience cheap?

Re:I never really took to Lego

[Zog]

Lego is fun because you can constantly change, build, destroy, and improve upon ideas without taking much time (clay: drying; wood: takes longer, requires tools). There's not really anything I know of that's much cooler than a really well-thought-out Lego spaceship - When I was young I spent a week straight working on a missile launcher that would retract into the belly of my best ship; with any other material, it would have been incredibly difficult to take it apart and re-assemble it as many times as I did to make it work; Also, Lego doesn't force you to stick with any single plan or idea - if you think of something absolutely awesome halfway through a project, you simply pop a piece or two away and put in a new fixture for your rocket launcher or longer catapult arm.

Re:I never really took to Lego

[(trb001)]

Why learn something as limited, expensive, and plasticky as Lego when you could learn real skills with the real thing?

Because you don't typically build a soap box derby car, then take it apart and build a tree fort, then take that apart and build a dog house. Legos are all about reusability. I had two big castle sets that I then made probably 20 different castles with. That doesn't typically happen with wood/metal. And furthermore, my mom wouldn't let me play with a hammer and drill when I was 5 (good call :).

--trb

Long ago on a 32 foot cruising sailboat....

[SwedishChef]

somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, in the confining spaces of a sailboat 32 feet long and 10 feet wide, there was a 3-year-old red-headed girl. This little girl had to herself a bed approximately 2 feet wide and 5.5 feet long. At the foot of the bed was a bookcase whcih contained all the children's books in the knwn universe and from them she learned a love of reading.

But a little red-headed girl does not live by books alone... she needed toys. Toys to make houses, cabins, cottages, kitchens, bedrooms, villages, cars, motorcycles, boats (not many boats, actually), flying machines of unimaginable proportions, castles, dungeons... in short, everything. Where oh where would this little red-headed girl find the room to take along so many toys on such a small sailboat for such a long journey?

Well boys and girls, behind the pillow where her head rested every night was a door; and behind that door was a tiny cupboard; and in that cupboard, resting in the dark where no one else could see (and only she could find it) was the only toy a 3-year-old red-headed girl needed for a 5-year-long journey around the Pacific Ocean on a 32-foot sailboat.

Legos.

And she lived happily ever after.

Re:Long ago on a 32 foot cruising sailboat....

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. That's the start of a beautiful and fantastic story.

Where can we find the rest of it?

Re:Long ago on a 32 foot cruising sailboat....

[Anonymous Coward]

But a little red-headed girl does not live by books alone...

Damn right, once in a while she needs a good, deep dicking from Charlie Brown.

Re:Long ago on a 32 foot cruising sailboat....

[Anonymous Coward]

"But a little red-headed girl does not live by books alone... "

Of course not, she needs the nightly comfort of an experienced, rock-hard [THIS POST HAS BEEN INTERCEPTED BY THE OFFICE OF HOMELAND SECURITY. ALL YOUR ONLINE COMMUNICATION ARE BELONG TO THE U.S. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO POST IMMORAL OR DISSIDENT THOUGHTS! YOU WILL BE CONVICTED OF TERRORISM!]

Re:Long ago on a 32 foot cruising sailboat....

[Anonymous Coward]

What the FUCK are you on about?

Re:Long ago on a 32 foot cruising sailboat....

[sibergirl]

I thought I should add... the reason the little red-head girl didn't build many lego boats is because she couldn't get the damm hull to look right. Of couse it would have been nice if her parents would have given her one of those sets that had the new one peice hulls. (Like her friends on that other sail-boat had) So she instead stuck with building cottages with nice flowers on the table. Ahhh... to think of all the potential boats that could have been invented.

i actually hear she's kind of a bitch IRL

[Sexual Asspussy]

but i'd walk a mile to fuck the screen Claire Danes, that's for fucking sure. that girl is h-o-t-t hott. chicks like her can make even the most hardened Castro bear imagine her head bobbing on his prong.

Re:i actually hear she's kind of a bitch IRL

[Anonymous Coward]

That's OK. All she really has to do is drop her panties and expose her poop-shoot.

news for nerds??

[Anonymous Coward]

this aint about linux i want LINUX ONLY AND I WANT IT NOW GOD DAM YOU MOTHERFUCKERS. you fucking niggers make me sick!! if it aint about linux then its fucking SHIT!!!! you disgusting cocksuckers need to post NEWS FOR NERDS (=LINUX) now!!!

FUCK YOU

Re:news for nerds??

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux Sucks Ass!

Fuck You Too

WORD THIS UP, MODERATORS!!

[egg troll]

Straight up, homeslice. But she won't be too bitchy in real life when Egg Troll has all of his lovetool plowing her ass like its Iowa farmland.

Lego, not Legos

[Small Hairy Troll]

Why do most Americans insist on using 'Legos' as the plural form instead of the accepted 'Lego' ? I see most slashdotters get this one right (perhaps because the majority of the posters are European ?), the article got it wrong.

Do you say one sheep, many sheeps ? (It's sheep)
One cactus, many cactuses (It's cacti)
One mongoose many mongooses? (Actually this is correct. I bet many of you thought the plural form is mongeese)

Re:Lego, not Legos

[Anonymous Coward]

Legos is generally the kids plural form (most eight-year-olds haven't quite mastered the rather obtuse English plural rules. ie. "Mom, I need more Legos to build the super-robo-tron"). Lego is the generally the adult plural form ("Honey, put your Lego away").

As the next line in the article was about "grown-ups", it's likely the article was just trying to sound "like a kid."

On the other hand, there's no real reason for the average parent to know the "correct" plural, anyway.

And who says that the plural isn't Legos, anyway? Lego in the singular could refer to the "Lego System." To me, "where are my Legos" sounds much more natural than "where are my Lego" - "where is my Lego" sounds much better. "Lego" could refer to individual bricks or the individual collection of pieces; "Legos" would refer to "Lego bricks."

Re:Lego, not Legos

[Samrobb]

For the same reason folks in other countries misuse American words and phrases, and vice versa... because language evolves. Does it really matter, so long as everyone understands what you're talking about?

Oh, and the correct plural of mongoose is polygoose. Well, OK, maybe not. But if there was any linguistic justice in the world, it would be.

Re:Lego, not Legos

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's your point? Oh wait, you don't have one, you're just recycling an old troll.

Re:Lego, not Legos

[ShaunC]

>Do you say one sheep, many sheeps ? (It's sheep)
>One cactus, many cactuses (It's cacti)

One photo, or many photos?
One Lego, or many... Legos.

Lego "are" a great company, isn't that how you'd say it across the pond ;)

Shaun

Re:Lego, not Legos

[Eccles]

And who says that the plural isn't Legos, anyway?

Lego's IP lawyers.

For a word to keep full trademark, it can't become the generic name for something. Thus the Lego folks request of all those who create Lego-related websites that they refer to the bricks as Lego bricks, not Legos.

You semen to be an authority on the topic

[BiffJerky]

blah blah blah

HAHAH! POPPERS!!

[egg troll]

I dunno dude. Ass kinda smells like ass no matter who its from. But hey, I'm like Frank in Blue Velvet: "I'll fuck anything that moves." Either that or: "Baby wants to fuck! Baby wants to fuck Blue Velvet!"

Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst terrorist attack in recorded history occurred last month, and now we're involved in a WAR and you people have the gall to be discussing Lego blocks???? My *god*, people, GET SOME PRIORITIES!

The bodies of the thousands of innocent civilians who died (and will die) in these unprecedented events could give a good god damn about your childish Lego models, your nerf toy guns and whining about the lack of a "fun" workplace, your Everquest/Diablo/D&D fixation, the latest Cowboy Bebop rerun, or any of the other ways you are "getting on with your life" (here's a hint: watching Cowboy Bebop in your jammies and eating a bowl of Shreddie's is *not* "getting on with your life"). The souls of the victims are watching in horror as you people squander your finite, precious time on this earth playing video games!

You people disgust me!

There simple minds cannot handle such thoughts

[BiffJerky]

sad but true

Fear this:

[drinkypoo]

I must confess that I believe in certain absolutes when it comes to raising children. Kids should be taught to sit still, so they can make it through a piano recital without disrupting the entire event. They should eat what's put in front of them at dinnertime without complaint.
...
(http://www.fastcompany.com/solo/solo_feature/lego _gates.html)

I wonder if the last name Gates can be scientifically linked to expecting people to shut up and eat what you put in front of them.

Re:Fear this:

[pedro]

Just wait until YOU have kids, buck-o.
You'll be ASTOUNDED at how much you will find yourself agreeing with her, and damning yourself for making the *severe* mistake of empowering _any_ offspring under the age of 18.
Just wait.. oh yeah.. you'll see how moronic what you just wrote truly is.
Prepare for a life of pain, pal.

When...

[egg troll]

...do the pirates board the sailboat and kidnap the girl. Thirteen years later she becomes their sexual slave, forced to do all manner of disgusting things to the pirates? Can you post that part of the story? I'm hard up for some wanking material lately (no pun intended.)

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

parent is a known troll. do NOT feed.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[Dirty Sanchez King]

Care to offer evidence of that?

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

your nickname is dirty sanchez king, as in the king of dirty sanchez.

Most slashdot moderators (being sexually inexperienced) are unaware that "dirty sanchez" is a sexual technique in which a shit-covered dick or finger is wiped across the upper lip of one's partner, creating a shit moustache.

also, you didn't say that linux rules/windows sucks, so you must be a troll

Re:Legos obsolete NOT!

[brassrat77]

My kids still prefer building free-form objects with legos over the kits (my son will build the kit, then after it begins to fall apart - they PLAY with it, after all - use the "special" pieces to make more interesting things himself).

One of the BIG advantages of Legos is they require less manual dexterity than traditional models, while allowing greater creativity. Kids gravitate to that. OK, marketeers and the toy store buyers who decide what goes on the shelves DON'T. That doesn't make LEGO themselves "obsolete", Just harder to get into the stores.

Ignorant bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

>So you assume that all working class kids like monster trucks, have mullets and will marry their sisters? For Shame.

Where the fuck did this come from? Someone here has an inferiority complex, must be trailer park trash.

Re:Ignorant bastard

[SaxMaster]

Actually, I'm Upper-middle-class trash. I drive a newer Saab :)

Legos......and ripping off K'nex

[Chanc_Gorkon]

I was in the store Saturday and we walked past the Lego's after picking out a hot wheel for my son (two year old....I know, they are 3 and up but he doesn't put them in his mouth and he KNOWS what they are! :) ) and I was amazed. I saw a Lego set that looked more like K'nex then Lego. You could combine it's pieces with Lego blocks (it had four Lego dots on some pieces, while others only had one). It looked nothing like Lego. Lego can do the special pieces, but then make them WORK for other things. I remember getting wedge shaped pieces that had computer panels on them and I loved those! When I did not have enough of those, I came up with the idea of using regular wedge shaped pieces as computer terminals.....every spaceship I built had many seats with a computer terminal at each seat. I remember building my own warp drive on some with the engine pieces. I remember building engines out of blocks when I didn't have enough. I remember when you used to be able to buy figures by themselves and they had multiple handheld acessories for them to carry.....every accesory had a lego dot on it somewhere, and I have been known to use the handheld devices in strange places.

Now, with these frickin HUGE pieces everywhere, how are we supposed to be creative? I remember when the cockpit windows were all some sort of cool looking wedge shape derived from the roof tiles. Now they have these huge bubble butt windows that can't be used for anything BUT cockpit windows. With the wedged shaped ones, I can use those to create a dome on my space station and things like that. You can't do that with these huge pieces!

Legos for grownups

[Understudy]

I must admit as kid building the kits and sometimes being creative
enough to make up my own designs was cool. I grew up and like many
people I put my Legos away except on special occasions. I do look now with
a great deal of envy toward peaple like Eric. I see him making
a living doing this sometimes on a grand scale. God I hate him. I work
in hell and he gets to play with legos all day.

Brings back some fond memories

[Anonymous Coward]

This story brings back some fond memories for me. When I was a child I had hundreds if not thousands of blocks. I would spend an entire day building up majestic skyscrapers which reached into the sky, and then cute little model 747's which, in my little play fantasies, I would use to crash into the towers, sending them crumbling to the ground with thousands of imaginary occupants falling to their deaths. Who knew that other children had similar fantasies and would some day put them into practice in the real world?

I also have fond memories of detonating Lego-modelled 50 kg. nuclear devices inside of New York City. I wonder if other children have similar fantasies?

Re:Brings back some fond memories

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod this up! +1, interesting

Re:Brings back some fond memories

[Anonymous Coward]

How is the parent post, "Flamebait"? The poster was just describing his fond memories of building Lego toys as a child, and the imagination it inspired within him. I myself have had similar fantasies.

These atrocities will be corrected in metamod.

The Real Reason Legos are Doomed

[w1kL3f]

pr0n and mp3's. Simple, huh?

Thank you!

[egg troll]

I'll use these in future trolls.

Legos these days

[spacefem]

Oh settle down, it's all about using the technology. When I was a kid I had most of the outer space collection, weird peices are great because they're that much more challenging to use in different ways. No peice is made so it can't be anything but cockpit windows... if that's all you see, you're not thinking outside the, um, block.

Re:Legos these days

[Apotome]

You're right. We have to embrace the technology; allow ourselves to be open to change. Part of what makes LEGO so challenging is how it presents obstacles and forces us to find new routes; new solutions.

The basic square bricks themselves present a tremendous problem in creating anything that doesn't have right a right angle in it. However, for years, LEGO builders have found creative and clever solutions to that problem.

But...

Cockpit windows are unique.

They both suck and blow.

Enduring.

[A_Non_Moose]

Heh, judging by the comments one thing seems true: Legos are a product that never go out of style.

Consider the Erector set story posted earlier, and the "bringing it back".

I mean boys, girls, the engineers and the artists of the future probably have all played with legos.

If you ever want to know the true power of a product go to a doctors office or place of business with the "Lego Table". The table top is the connector portion of the legos..."I wish we had those when I was a kid" I've said.

Kids of all kinds gather there...even the "big" kids. And it keeps me... err, them quiet for hours.

Even the "special" legos can be use with the other stuff. My son has made some pretty interesting ones with the Starwars ship (forget which one it is) and 3 he got from Mickey D's (originally a boat and 2 prop planes).

Fun stuff, but as a parent we need "Nerf Legos" so when I/we step on them the don't hurt so damn much!

Moose.

Time to clean up your...OW...room.

my god

[Anonymous Coward]

Every author there used the proper 'LEGO' instead of the hick 'Legos', everyone author that is, except for our ignorant friend hemos.

Lego Block Candy

[neema]

Anyone ever have the Lego Candy?

That stuff was tasty. But probably took out a few of my teeth.

Check out the new sets

[Migelikor1]

go to http://www.lego.com/eng/bionicle/frontpage.asp

Click on Toa, and then see all the sets on the submenu....their pieces are totally specialized, and they look like action figures.

Click on Turaga, and again click the little submenu tabs. These guys are tiny bits of leftover Technic pieces. There are no gears involved though, just joints and rods, but at least the parts can be interchanged.

Makuta seems to offer the most promise, click the pictures at the bottom. The kits build large technic animals. These, unlike the other two subgroups, could be quite fun to smash apart and build a super thingy out of.

I have to say, I don't see a single raised circle for attaching blocks on any of these sets...oh well. That's modern business, taking things that rock and making them suck.

Similar, yes...

[egg troll]

I always pretended my "bad" Legos had cooties. If the "good" Legos approached the bad ones, they'd die of some horrible cootie disease that would swiftly spread to the rest of the good Legos.

Lego

[geomcbay]

Lego are a wonderful creativity tool for kids and adults alike, but they are way too god-damn expensive, at least here in the US.

Re:Sets!=Death of Imagination (The Boats)

[OctaneZ]

I had the old set where you built the boat hull out of parts, now they are prebuilt

I have to admit that the preformed hulls worked great. As a kid facinated with water, boats, and just generally anything that's wet,the single piece hull was a god-send. You could make your own hull out of plates and bricks, but after more than about a half an hour, the water would just flood right through (admittedly this worked much beter when the goal was to sink one of them by running two or more boats into each other, or capsula creations) but the ability to build models that could stand up to repeated soaking for a long duration was a ton of fun. The best part was the ability to have your legos interacting with other things in a new medium.

The truly best part about being a geek, was having a couple different things to throw together; thousands of hours of time was spent combining LEGO, Construx, Starcom (yeah I know it was themed, but I just loved the guys with the magnets in their feet.. nothing like a war on the fridge), and good old fashioned wooden blocks.

While I think that there is a certain nostalgia about building everything from the 1x2 blocks, the new pieces do draw in a different market; kids are still going to tear everything apart when they get bored and do something new with it (if you claim you didn't do this, ask your parents, I am sure I am not the only one who took apart the phone).
-OctaneZ

Okay

[egg troll]

Yes, yes you are right. Slashdot is being run off a floppy disk I'm told. I'll watch what I say.

You really expect me to believe this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's bad enough that you expect me to believe in the existence of something called a "Lego guru". But, furrfu, an "esteemed lego guru"???? Honey, you know and I know there ain't no such thing.

Re:Sets!=Death of Imagination (The Boats)

[Anonymous Coward]

i always liked starcom. i really enjoyed how they didn't need batteries, and instead used wind-up motors or springs for everything, like Mask toys.
they needed to build the ships without those pistol handles on the bottom though. those sucked.

Legos, Construx, and Capsella...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh what a trio! My sister and I used to create Construx cars and ram them into each other...what a learning experience in skinned knuckles and structural integrity. And damn, I thought I was a genius the day I realized I could rip the motors and gears out of the Capsella bubbles, and use them as raw parts for anything I wanted.
Sigh.

Re:Legos, Construx, and Capsella...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah? Well my sister and I used to have passionate bottomknocking sex! What a learning experience in skinned dick and vaginal integrity. And damn, I thought I was a genius the day I realized I could cum in her bellybutton, and make her lick my penis afterward. Sigh.

Multiple Choice Quiz

[Anonymous Coward]

When exhibited by a man over twelve years of age, an intense interest in Lego is probably a sign that:

(a) he is a kindergarten teacher.
(b) he is a bright and creative genius.
(c) he is a geek with an extremely irritating but basically harmless affectation.
(d) he is a poorly socialized adult who expresses his subconscious fear of mature sexuality and adult social relationships by embracing symbols of childhood innocence.

Re:Multiple Choice Quiz

[Hektor_Troy]

Hmm ...
(a) - no!
(b) - I'd like to think so
(c) - I think so
(d) - sadly this is probably true as well.

if I can only pick one, I'll pick (b) any day of the week.

reminiscing

[bert_mcdoy]

About an hour ago, I officially turned 22. I know I'm by no means "old", but I started reminiscing about all the hours that I spent playing with my legos when I was a kid. People complain about all the new fancy pieces in today's legos saying it won't allow kids to have an imagination.

Remember the castle (the one that split apart in the back) with the gray wall pieces that had such weird shapes? Once I had played with it for a few days, I took it apart and started building other stuff with it. All those crazy pieces took a serious imagination to build them into other creations, but that was the fun part. Why is it that people keep saying that all these fancy new pieces will take away a kid's imagination? If anything it will make them be more creative, and have more fun in the process. I know I loved it whenever I got a new set of legos, it made building other things that much more fun.

Re:reminiscing

[sibergirl]

Hay...thats the same castle I have. The falcon fortress or something like that.

Nowadays...

[Anonymous Coward]

...people use steel and concrete instead of Legos, and planes instead of ball bearings...

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Lego's 'respect for its customers'

[Shambhu]

All that stuff in there about their corporate culture sounds nice, and I'm sure they love kids, but compare the prices in the article: $79 for the 600+ piece Dino set and $19 for the 1,200 piece bucket of bricks.

Don't get me wrong, I love legos (yes, I use an 's'). In fact, I can't imagine my childhood without them.

-S

Choosing sets

[Shambhu]

Didn't anyone else choose sets based on the pieces they contained? I use to spend weeks analysing the pictures on the boxes and in the pamphlets, trying to figure out exactly what pieces a particular set contained.

My friends and I eventually pooled our sets for greater variety. The core was an old (first space line?) spaceship, about two and a half feet long, all transpearant-blue and opaque-white pieces. It broke into two small fighter ships, a chasis, and a lab. Anyone remember that one?

-S

Re:Choosing sets

[ElderKorean]

I'm sure that my brother and I had this one back many years ago.

We've not played with our Lego in a long time as mum and dad claimed them for when we supply then with some grandchildren, so there's fun things for us all to play with.

We used to have most of the early space kits, in a huge draw string bag that mum made, that could be spread out as a big play/construction area. Made cleaning up really easy, just pull the string.

We never got into the Technic sets or others much outside of space as they came along when we were older than the recommended ages. Seeing as we're both space sci-fi nuts the space kits were all we really needed.

There were never enough computer terminals, or aerials as it's amazing how complex a weapons system you can make with them, especially the red ones, they were the most powerful ones, good for strafing the planet below.

Ian.

Exactly!

[Ithil]

You can't get the really cool pieces in the boxes of blocks, you have to buy the kits. Unfortunately, the cool pieces are also much easier to break (and stepping on them is a lot more painful :p). There are about 10,000 lego pieces in some big buckets at my house that came from about 60 sets that my brother and I bought, played with, accidently destroyed, and built even cooler stuff out of.

Solutions

[osolemirnix]

I still have a big box of legos (mostly from the Space series). No instructions however, but I don't remember that spoiling any fun. We would build the sets according to the instructions maybe once, to learn what could be done with the parts. Now the instruction booklets are all lost, but Lego still is fun.

If you get a kick out of creating your own and don't like the price or the fact that the new sets contain less "generic" parts, try flea markets and garage sales. You can get bags full of old-style blocks really cheap!

I think part of what kills Legos sales is that their "toy" lasts so long and doesn't really go out of style. So they think they have to invent all this new stuff, tricky situation for them. On the other hand: one can never have enough parts, really (I built my own StarWars ships after I saw the movies as a kid, and my parts were just enough for an X-Wing and the Falcon, the latter had a diameter of about 30 cm. If I'd had enough bricks, I certainly would have built that 3 meter long Star Destroyer...).

lego is great

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure it develops baby's eye-sight & fine-motor-skills.
I had a (too complicated to explain) thing happen before I was born that meant I have poor fine-motor-skills. Playing with lego since I was two years old has meant I am able to write, etc, which I may not have been able to do otherwise.

Re:Sets!=Death of Imagination (The Boats)

[rob colonna]

For lego boats, if you didn't have the preformed hull pieces (the sets sorta sucked apart from the hull pieces, and were really expensive), my solution was always to build a double hull, with plastic sandwich bag material or tape lining the area in between the two. of course, an overlooked aspect of the boat sets was the splendid weight piece they provided. tough to do with plain old bricks... the plastic-bag idea worked well for swimming pools, too.

glad to hear i wasn't the only person who thought starcom was cool, too...

Thanks for the free publicity

[perdida]

Every time one of you Geekizoid cunt rags flames adequacy.org, you give us free publicity.

Everybody keeps calling me anti-free-market because I'm a socialist, but you're the one wishing you could prevent me from offering a choice to people (the purpose of advertising).

I'm not spamming. I post here because it's fun! Like thousands of other slashdotters I put my site in my sig. I rarely link to the site in a post.

Adequacy is a good thing. It's well-read, controversial, funny, and infuriating. I am glad people have strong opinions about it. I'm damn lucky to be working with a brilliant group of people who

Re. using my talents for something else? I'm sending out 12-24 resumes a week. I'll let you know when I find something.

And, yes, go wank off to this post, you have trolled the troll. Because I will freely admit right now:

IHBT.

Re:Thanks for the free publicity

[perdida on]

Cunt rags? Did the comment really deserve that kind of response?

Post in haste, repent at leisure..

[perdida]

Adequacy is a good thing. It's well-read, controversial, funny, and infuriating. I am glad people have strong opinions about it. I'm damn lucky to be working with a brilliant group of people who...

should finish

...create content that stands out from the thousands of other weblogs out there.

that's true, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

sometimes the pieces are too ridiculous for words. I don't have any of the new-fangled lego sets (although I still have a few useless pieces, heh). But when I was stuck with nothing but my little cousin's lego (eagh), I could hardly make a thing. I just about managed to make a catapult, although it looked a lot like a rock monster with a postbox stuck to it's face.

The most fun you can have is to try to find a use for the broken lego.

You think that's funny?

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to get up after my mum had put me to bed and keep on playing with my lego.... And didnt stop til she came back up [around 10pm to midnight] and told me to get my arse to bed.

6 hours sleep a night is not enough for a 3 year old!

Addicted? Nah... Obsessed? Yup!

Ali (at london d0t c0m)

www.ali-d.abel.co.uk