Play GNU Chess On Your Scanner

leighklotz writes "Debian developer and Internet Mail Archive founder Jeff Breidenbach of PARC has made GlyphChess, a chess-playing copier using Python, GNU Chess and DataGlyphs attached to the bottom of the pieces. DataGlyphs are cool 2D barcodes made out of / and \ marks for ones and zeros that use the coding from CDs for error coding. If you don't happen to have a Xerox machine at home, it also works with SANE..."

Award winning...

[Omicron32]

And the "Most pointless thing ever" award goes to...

Chess playing copier?

[grub]

How do you undo a move, tear up the last page of paper?

soar losers

[frieked]

Do you get to send the winner a photocopy of your ass when you lose?

Analog Chess

[OmniVector]

Amazingly enough, it's possible to play chess using these strange "pieces" and a "board." Although the idea is novel i suppose.

Their web server

[dereklam]

Clearly, they're running their web server from the copier, too. Paper jam!

Just great!

[Eberlin]

A new and innovative way to get my arse whipped by a computer. As if losing umpteen times on the standard chessboard wasn't enough.

It's a cheap trick!

[American AC in Paris]

He's hosting the page on his own system so he can rob the computer player of precious cycles!

It's all a ploy to give him an unfair advantage over GNU Chess!

Wow!

[lostchicken]

We've /.ed PARC. They must still be using an Alto to host the site.

Re:Award winning...

[curne]

Nah, the Most-Pointless-Thing-Ever award still goes to inventor of the Helicopter Catapult Seat.
:-)

Paper Jam

[ArchStanton]

"PC Load Letter"? WTF does that mean?

Re:Is there anything like Slashdot only good?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a wealth of insight and useful information outside.

You know, where people are.

Concerning cool uses of a scanner...

[SharpFang]

We're setting up a PC. Some hdd conflict, won't boot. CD drive broken, doesn't work. Floppy drive okay but not a single bootable floppy around. Let's see what it provides more, maybe some network boot... I look through BIOS options. Oh well, SCSI. What do we have attached to SCSI? A scanner?! Hey, come on, get a pencil and write some startup code on that sheet of paper, maybe we'll succeed booting it from the scanner! ;)

Big deal

[stratjakt]

I can run Duke Nukem on a Cue Cat.

Re:soar losers

[Go Aptran]

Won't the winner wonder why he's getting a photocopy of two hairy loaves of bread?

Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?

[MarkGriz]

No, let's play global thermonuclear war.

Re:Chess playing copier?

[tomhudson]

nah, just put dots between the \'s and /'s. Now you can /. (slash-dot) and ./ (dot-slash), or .\ (dot-backslash) or \. (backslash-dot) your opponent.

Re:Award winning...

[swordboy]

Maybe not.

This actually just jogged my hamster into "what if" mode...

Wouldn't it be really cool if the chess pieces used RFID chips to identify themselves to a board (not a scanner, but a real chess board). Said board could move the players around with magnets. It wouldn't be too complicated if you designed it properly. The board would have to be large enough for the players to move in between each other... Actually, on a somewhat more complicated level, make it small so the other players have to *move* out of the way when the computer takes a turn.

Not only would it be fun for hours, but you could probably start a psychic chess network and charge people to play chess with their dead grandmother's.

Archeologic Implications...

[Tsali]

So all those glyphs from the Egyptians was really some sort of primitive multiple-player shoot-em up game?

Re:And when you win

[Anonymous Coward]

It was much funnier 15 seconds ago when frieked posted it.

Oh wait, you're dead.
*rummages through lane.exe's pockets*

Finally!

[zsazsa]

Finally, after more than 30 years and being spun off of Xerox, PARC finally comes up with a product involving copiers. And it's absolutely useless.

Playing chess on your scanner

[Alomex]

In a scale from 0 to Geek, he get's a 100.

Re:This is the problem with Linux

[tomhudson]

<quote> You have all these (admittedly talented) programmers spending all this time on worthless projects</quote>

... like Microsoft BOB? Clippy? DOS 4.0? Windows Millenium? IIS? (Well, maybe they weren't so talented after all).

Re:Analog Chess

[toxcspdrmn]

What's more, there's a two player version available.

MOD PARENT UP!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been saying this for years, but no one seems to listen!

Re:Analog Chess

[Captain Large Face]

Ah-ha! You have made a beginner's mistake there! You have failed to take into account the cardinal rule of the S.A.M. (Slashdot Audience Member). That is, when faced with an opportunity to socialise -- to use your example, play chess against a human opponent -- one must first try to find if the same opportunity can be synthesised by a non-human, and should that be possible and have more than one option, to take the option of the greatest complexity.

Re:Award winning...

[roman_mir]

...right, so it goes like this:
1. Design chess that uses RFID chips for identification to the board.
2. Design bord that could move chess pieces with magnets.
3. Start a psychic chess network.
4. Profit.

FINALLY!!! The step 3 has been described!!!

Re:Resources

[Unregistered]

I guess ethernet and GUIs would never have been invented.

Bah who needs 'em. I've got a CLI(and it even runs at 1280x1024 in framebuffer mode) and ethernet is overrrated. What does it do that i couldn't do with some hi-tech cans and string. Don't even have to deal with shitty construction cable breaking that way.

Re:Finally!

[c0dedude]

Don't worry. We're sure, like all other big ideas from PARC, it'll leave within a few days and start its own company.