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Domino Day '02 Ends with a New World Record
Bobson writes "It took 89 people 8 weeks to set up 4000000(4e6) domino pieces for an attempted World Record. The last piece was set at 21:00 CET(Central European Time) by a Backstreet Boy. Jim somebody... Anyhow said piece started of over 90 minutes of an amazing domino avalanche show. It is one of the top hacking feats I've had the privilege to witness. This time Live on TV. I hope tapes (dvds) of it become available.
They even had time delays of more than 5min each, built into the system to allow for advertising intermissions. Some parts of the installation didn't quite work, but overall it was worth seeing. The final tally came to 3847295 pieces fallen. It ended less than an hour ago and you should have seen it."
"It took 89 people 8 weeks to set up 4000000(4e6) domino pieces for an attempted World Record.
Why would anyone use scientific notation for such a small number? Why not just say 4 million, wouldn't that mean more to people?
Wow! First post! This never happens to me!
And it still hasn't, little buddy.
Interesting if you want to watch their content you need to pay via DigiPay... 4million domino's aren't really interesting enough to pay to watch.
I'd hate to be the one tasked with counting all the fallen dominoes...
;)
Does anyone have the rundown on how many people and how many weeks that took?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
How did they do that without cheating? By cheating I mean using something other than dominos and/or having a person stop and restart the falling process midway through.
(I know, RTFA, but I don't speak German.)
considering how the careers of the manufactured bands are going downhill, maybe it was fitting that a backstreet boy placed the final piece.
wish they had placed some of the artists and knocked them down too. that would have been more fun.
It just horrible enought it took place in my town here in the netherelands.
Every year they're trying to keep the netherlands pos #1 of the dull domino worldrecord.
Instead of trying to get us back at #1 of education country.....
Oh, you forgot to mention that there were add-brakes were build in of 5 minutes. So the live-broadcast did not to interrupt te broadcast fot commercials. How they did it ? With a pendel moving slowly to a key, pushed by a domino.
I remember one time on America's Funniest Home Videos (back in the day, of course, when it was hosted by the King of Cool, Bob Saget) they had this one where two guys spent all night at a video store stacking up empty boxes. They covered the floor, counters, and racks with those semi-transluscent VHS boxes and knocked 'em all down with one super huge domino effect.
The bummer part was when some dude who got whacked in the crotch won the grand prize for the show.
http://www.walkingtaco.com
Why do I have a feeling Jamie Kellner, CEO of Turner Broadasting, had a hand in making them put commercial breaks in falling dominos.
Looks like there are more questions than answers in the post (as usual):
What: (we got this)
Who: Domino expert Robin Weijers and his crew (hundreds of sturdents and volunteers)
When: yesterday
Where: Leewarden, the Netherlands (not Germany)
Why: To beat the Japanese, of course!
The Dutch and the Japanese routiely dance around this world record. I've been around for 3 of these so far and within 6 months a Japanese expert (also with students and volunteers).
The only difference: They have domino robots. We have windmills. Well, usually - I actually went out last night so I missed it...
...and HOW much counting to get to 4 million?
A friend of mine was involved in this back in the '80s. They don't really count the dominos. They weigh them. Given a certain tolerance in the weight, you can calculate the uncertainty in the number of stones. The exact number is not all that important, it's more that you can establish that you beat the previous record.
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
first, theres no backstreet boy named jim, so i looked at the article to see who it was
well, it was in german, so i searched for "backstreet" and found out it was Nick Carter who setup the last piece.
I was too preoccupied with the post Sausage-week festivities that I didn't realize that it was Domino day!
Like a few people already said: this is beginning to be a recurring event on Dutch television.
;-)
It's organized and televised by SBS6, a Dutch network, so I don't know what the links to RTL (a German network) is all about... The link to the program is here
They did come up with a few nice new things though... I aspecially liked when they had domino's falling under water, and at one point they even had a bubble of air rising to the surface, knocking down domino's as it went...
I'm curious to see what they come up with next year...
PageTurner Reader: open-source e-reader for Android with cloudsync. http://pageturner-reader.org
for a "Boy Band" topic and icon here on Slashdot?
We've had news about copy-restricted NSync Cds, rumors of boy band Star Wars cameos, and let's not forget the recent poll winner regarding Lance Bass's ongoing space drama. Now they're involved in German domino sports as well?
This is a posting rate greater than the Internet Explorer topic!
4000000 dominos: $400000
Travel expenses for 89 people to Germany: $60000
28480 minimum wage man hours spent setting up dominos: $146672
Renting a Backstreet Boy for 90 minutes: $5000
Realizing you're thirty, a virgin, and still live in your parents basement: Priceless
German is my 3rd language, but here it goes anyway.
UNAUTHORIZED TRANSLATION
------------------------
NEW WORLD RECORD
In the FEC Hall in Leeuwarden the builders are celebrating their big success, the biggest chain reaction in the world has completed successfully. Up til the last second it remained suspenseful, the stones that had remained standing were officially counted by a notary.
With 3,847,295 fallen domino stones, the attempt at a new world record has succeeded. In some fields some stones remained standing, but the final field with 1 million stones cleared completely.
Goose bumps were felt already at the beginning of the spectacle: the 10 second countdown was performed loudly. "Backstreet Boy" Nick Carter set off the domino avalanche at exactly 9:00 PM: the 22-year old pop singer placed the final stone, and by doing so unbalanced the two meter high "Domino Scale" with its five meter span.
Now "Domino Man" Robin Weijers and his 89-person team can enjoy an additional entry into the Guinness Book of World Records. While preparing, it was forbidden to cough or sneeze inside the hall. Robin Weijers: "Because of the amount of stones, space has become limited inside the hall. One false move and the catastrophe is complete".
THE SCALE STARTED IT!
[picture] The approximately two meter high "Domino Scale", through which the world record attempt was started.
In the past year 3,540,562 domino stones fell over, and up to 13.72 million people watched the TV event of superlatives.
HISTORY OF RECORDS
On November 5. 1999, domino expert Robin Weijers and his team built up 2.5 million dominoes in the Prince Bernhard hall in Zuid-Laren. Up to 14.2 million viewers followed the event live on TV, when 2,472,480 stones fell over. Give or take a few, 3,112,000 stones were toppled on November 3. 2000, again in the Prince Bernhard hall. In front of up to 13.2 million viewers, 2,977,678 stones fell over in a live broadcast. Then last year. Linda de Mol and Robin Weijers' team placed 3.75 million domino stones in the "Mecc" hall in Maastricht. The 90 person international team had worked seven weeks on the 75 different projects. On November 16 everything was ready. The Australian superstar Kylie Minogue started the biggest chain reaction in the world with a flick of her fingers. And again up to 13.72 million viewers watched the spectacle with the stones weiging 8 grams.
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
Thank you, I wasn't going to waste my time looking at a site about dominoes.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
Becausw english is an utterly ugly language or as my (french) grandmother uses to say:
Spanish is like singing, french is like talking, german is like spitting and english is like vomiting.
Greetings,
Rince
... that this crap made it into slashdot, i mean, as a german i can say, that rtl does this crap every year, and no one is interested in except a few ppl, having nothing better to do on a friday evening. there is something in the newspapers, like, domino world record (once again...), and thats it. ok, i admit, it was cool, when they did it the first time, but to see this fscking dominos fall and fall and fall..and fall.. and fall. . . . . boring.
If you enjoyed watching all those millions of dominoes toppling, you ought to check out Fiat Lux If you enjoy anything to do with CG animation, you should also check this out. It's a rather impressive CG short of thousands of dominoes about the size of the monolith from 2001 (The small one that appeared before the apes - not the giant one in space) toppling through the interior of St. Peter's Basilica. As an added bonus, if you like shiny objects, the domino-monoliths are highly reflective. It's quite a sight to behold. My crude explanation doesn't do Fiat Lux justice. Go check it out for yourself!
What the hell is Polish then? Trying to regurgitate your intestines?
They were not even synchronized with the little pendulum breaks. That was so stupid you missed 5 minutes of dominos and then had to watch that damn pendulum for 5 other minutes. They tried to fill that time as best as they could but still it would have been much better to use the same breaks as the others.
Other than that, the show was amazing!
True warriors use the Klingon Google
"They even had time delays of more than 5min each, built into the system to allow for advertising intermissions."
Exactly, afterall they have to put atleast something worth watching in the show.
What's under yellowstone?
>110 comments and no one posted the reason why dominos are so important in a true geek's life.
Don't forget to think different.
I was half expecting it to read the largest nuclear chain reaction of the world in that successfully ran off. Up to the last second it remained exciting until those in the stands and everything from miles around was reduced to a fine dust.
On the plus side there would be one less backstreet boy.
This comment was generated by a Squadron of Ultra Ninjas
Ok, next time i see her i tell her that an anonymous coward on slashdot thinks she's an idiot.
Just because English is derived from a beautiful language doesn't mean that it is still beautiful itself. But it's anyway a matter of taste. British English sounds very nice to me but when i hear Dubya talk...
Rince
The biggest domino effect was the release of Windows 95 - all those PCs falling like flies over the 24hour period, horrors!
Maybe 'NSynch singer Lance Bass should have placed the last domino, since his space trip might not work out. This might have given him the needed publicity (for what?).
Indeed, how the mightly have fallen.
Oh well at least the Netherlands is doing something other than smoking hash
:)
You mean the netherlands is doing something else than smoking hash, organizing the implementation of a new coin, putting research in optical media, keeping a big part of trade going around the world, paying a big part in useless joint strike fighters, (Am I the only one who sees the pun in this btw?), keeping their people happy, exporting crappy DJ's that foreign people seem to adore, etc, etc
These days we're even in political chaos, now that is unusual for this normally poltically quiet country. It might get a good turn on it tho
Oh and FYI the average of dutch people smoking weed/hash is lower than that of the US or the UK...
Hope this information has saved you from ignorance...
The way to corrupt a youth is to teach him to hold in higher value them who think alike than those who think differently
And why, again, does domino manipulation constitute hacking? I ask only because I am ignorant of the answer...
I had sex 10^2 times. Sadly, I missed the domino rally.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
British English sounds very nice to me but when i hear Dubya talk...
Sure, but what does his speaking have to do with English?
If you replace the dominos with embedded linux systems and hold it concurrently with defcon you could have a contest to see who could hack the most systems before they fell down.
I got root on all your d0mino3z!
Cue the beowulf cluster jokes now.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How is setting up dominos considered hacking?
A planet where apes evolved from men? Long live the apes.
It was just setting up dominos which were meant to be tumbled.. It's like getting in my car and driving it to the store and saying "I just hacked my way to the store." .. I think the guy posting it just didn't want to say "Well, I spent 5 days setting up little kids dominos with 100 other ADULTS because we're too old to be playing with stuff like this but anyways, here's the story!!! Wherees my barney doll?"
No, English isn't based on Latin.
England has been overrun so many times in the past, it has taken on words from many different languages. English orignally came from Saxon. When the Normans invaded England, they brought over their Norman French. So, it's basically Saxon with a massive Romance vocabulary. The syntax of the language is hardly Romance, however.
The 100 most common words are Saxon based though.
You can even see who conquered who in the language. For example, pork and hog. Pork is Old French. Hog is Anglo Saxon. The people who worked with the animals used one word that had a connotation of dirty, while the people who ate it used their own word for it that means it's nice, clean, and edible.
English, then is more closely related to modern German than Latin. Actually, Afrikaans is the closest modern relative to English.
I'm sorry my rant, calling English a Romance language is one pet peeves.
As an added note, commas can be just as effective as scientific notation. I wouldn't take it much farther, but it takes even less thought to read than exponents.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
with lotsa other foreigners tossed in for maximum commercial coverage.
Anyway, it IS pretty spectacular stuff, here are some facts:
4.000.000 dominoes
51 projects
85 x 90 square meters of building space
100 domino builders
Builders are from Holland, Germany, France, Spain, Belgium and Italy
27 basic colours
1.320.998 painted dominoes
331 variety of dominoes
Their main (sponsor) site with more info.
90 minutes, live on TV in 5 countries. I'll buy that tape, makes for good party background stuff.
Maybe the editor wanted to write 4*10e6 (4 * 1'000'000) or (4e6)e2 (2'048 * 2'048 ~= 4'000'000), but, damn, he's an editor, not a mathematician nor a true nerd - he'd have learned the scientific notation way before starting to write on a website.
Sheesh.
The editior didn't write that part, the submitter did.
Plus, scientific notation is almost a worthless custom. In any scale that we work in, we (as humans, not just geeks) create new measurements when our old ones become too cumbersome to use anymore.
Oh, I'm sure that it has its place--but it's hardly the most intuitive thing ever thought up by science...
"one of the top hacking feats" can never be executed by a backstreet boy. it's just impossible.
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Oh I just thought it would be community-spirited of me to introduce a variation on the 'imagine a beowulf cluster of these' posts!
I had no idea it'd burn any of my precious karma!
But on the other hand, if karma can't be burnt as a replacement for fossil fuels, what use is it? Oooh I feel all toasty and warm!
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Technically, dominos are supposed to be used in the game of *gasp* Dominos.
A 'hack' is an implementation of (physical)objects in a new/different and impressive way.
Therefore, the fact that these dominos were used in a way like this and on an impressive scale like this deems this feet to be a hack.
For more info: Steven Levy - Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
Here's a little tip from a geek who is actually married to a female human... Some of them (including The Bride of Monster) actually like the Backstreet Boys, so knowing their names might come in handy when you want to have a conversation about something she likes, because the story that of that sed-regexp-in-a-do-loop I threw together at work the other day for one of the Guys in the Ties (to save him half a day's manual editing work that was holding up hundreds of thousands of dollars of a customer's cashflow) was kinda neat, but not something she can relate to that well, beyond the obvious "Monster did something at work that made the higher-ups happy - maybe that means he'll keep his job if there are layoffs". Who am I kidding - if she were a real geek, it wouldn't have impressed her anyway, because it was trivial, and with a little thought she'd probably have shown me a more efficient way to do it! (I do hope for one of the Monsterettes to eventually achieve that status, however.)
So, here are the names of the other 4 Boys, in the interests of helping fellow geeks get some play:
- A. J. McLean
- Brian Littrell
- Howie Dorough
- Kevin Richardson
Litrell and Richardson are cousins, and are married (Kevin's wife is from near here, and Brian's wife is expecting their first child) while McLean is engaged For now, this little HOW-TO will have to substitute for the lack of[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Spanish is like singing, french is like talking, german is like spitting and english is like vomiting.
:)
Actually, based on my experience, I'd say: English is like talking, French is like lisping, Spanish is like mumbling, and German is like gnawing on a piece of granite.
But YMMV