[start id: a black and white drawing cropped from p.29 of the Usborne Guide to Computer and Video Games (1982). The image shows a chessboard with lights and mechanical arm built in.
Image caption reads: "The robot arm on this chess-board makes all the computer's moves, and removes your pieces when the computer captures them. If the computer loses the game, it flings its arm about, flashes its lights and shrieks." end id.]
I assumed this emotionally dysregulated chess robot was just a 1980s fever dream, but apparently it exists, and glories in the name of "The Novag Robot Adversary":
Quoth the gorgeously Web 1.0 (but still updating in 2023?!) Chess Computer UK:
The Novag Robot Adversary is the most iconic of chess computers. There are several reasons. Firstly, for a product of 1982, its startling futuristic appearance. Secondly the robot arm which in terms of robotic character, comparative speed and range of movement is extraordinary for a consumer product. Thirdly the variety of functions - including autoplay, automatic setting up of the pieces for a new game, trace and review, best move, sound, lights, printer support, and not forgetting the tantrums produced by the ‘emotions’ button which involve waving of the arm, flashing lights and noisy sound. These functions all contribute towards a very impressive and entertaining machine, which was outstanding when it was first sold, and has not been bettered since.
That page also has videos of the machine in action, including this heart-rending footage of it losing its shit:
I am inordinately happy to learn about this.
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City on the edge of forever certainly does something to my psyche (not that i know what). That being said there’s an AU rattling around somewhere in my head where I just swap Kirk and McCoy’s episodic roles
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One of the rules of the Death Note is that if the method of dath or the additional conditions given cannot be met, the victim will die from a heart attack.
From a programming perspective, it matches this thing called a try-catch block. You write what you want to happen in the try part, and if an error occurs, you execute the catch part. So the Death Note, if written in code would have something like:
And what I'm wondering is if you could do things like write conditional statements to determine what way a person dies or if you could save parameters as variables within the Death Note and write them later.
I mean, Light found out that you can write the cause and conditions surrounding a person's death before writing their name and it still works so why not?
I would like to formally request the Shinigamis to provide me a Death Note so I can test these ideas out. I promise I will use only the most ethical testing environments.
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