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Netbook-Run Dice Robot Can Rack Up 1.3 Million Rolls a Day
stevel writes "The owner of games site GamesByEmail.com created Dice-O-Matic, 'a machine that can belch a continuous river of dice down a spiraling ramp, then elevate, photograph, process and upload almost a million and a half rolls to the server a day. ... The Dice-O-Matic is 7 feet tall, 18 inches wide and 18 inches deep. It has an aluminum frame covered with Plexiglas panels. A 6x4 inch square Plexiglas tube runs vertically up the middle almost the entire height. Inside this tube a bucket elevator carries dice from a hopper at the bottom, past a camera, and tosses them onto a ramp at the top. The ramp spirals down between the tube and the outer walls. The camera and synchronizing disk are near the top, the computer, relay board, elevator motor and power supplies are at the bottom.' While not called out in the article, the pictures clearly show a Dell Mini 9 running the show (and performing the optical recognition of the dice values.) No, it's not running Linux."
While not called out in the article, the pictures clearly show a Dell Mini 9 running the show (and performing the optical recognition of the dice values.)
Yes but there's not a lot of "optical recognition" going on. From the article:
The dice are "Michigan Red Eyes", which have different colored pips for each value. The different colors make it pretty easy to count rolls. For example, if 6 yellow dots are found in the image, there were three 2s rolled, no need to worry about determining the proper grouping or orientation of pips.
If you control the background as being black or shades of grey (which is what it appears on that dirty dirty Windows XP screen) then your task is a lot easier and less error prone. Well done on the designer's part but surely reduces the computational work load.
My work here is dung.
Finally a sensible way to play a 3000 pt Imperial Guard list!
cmd-q.co.uk - some sort of stupid fucking internet bullshit
Because any developer worth their weight in salt will tell you that RNGs are not truly random.
From TFA:
"To generate the dice rolls, I have used Math.random, Random.org and other sources, but have always received numerous complaints that the dice are not random enough. Some players have put more effort into statistical analysis of the rolls than they put into their doctoral dissertation."
So, basically it was to quiet complaints about the randomness of the computer generated dice rolls. I question whether it's really better, but the players think it's better and in this context I guess that's all that matters.
Because any developer worth their weight in salt will tell you that RNGs are not truly random.
No, they are not truly random. Nor is his dice machine, as the dice are possibly imperfect and subject to gravity or the way it reloads them into the hopper. Influences could be anywhere.
I would be interested in seeing him run this machine for 30 days and then compute the Shannon entropy on the results and then compare this to popular RNGs out there.
Although I would expect the RNGs (however flawed) to perform better, it would be interesting nonetheless.
My work here is dung.
...neither is anything else. (random), ...an actual random event..
It's a good thing I have my paradox absorbing crumple zones installed...
And yet, there is probably some bias in the way that the dice are thrown. This project is cool, but as a source of random numbers it is quite silly.
If this does not qualify as random, what does?
A dicerolling machine external to and slightly more complex than the universe itself?
I normally don't mind the arguments or objections that this or that is psuedo-random rather than truly random, especially when it comes to computer generated numbers designed to do X or Y.
But really these are physical dice. If this doesn't cut it for you, what will?
it can only roll D6s.
No problem. You can generate any die roll you like from D6's, just do a little math.
For a D8, just roll two D6's, add them together, and then take the result modulo 8 and add 1. Poof! A random number between 1 and 8!
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(If you're furious with nerd rage right now: I'm kidding. If you're not furious: don't try this at home.)