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..."

Misleading

[binaryDigit]

Heck, I thought that they programmed one of their advanced copiers to play chess. Not just simply using it as a hohum input device. I agree it is a cool way to test their glyphs, but not very interesting beyond that. The thought of programming your scanner/copier in python scratches that nerdy itch much nicer.

talk about a long time to play

[chadamir]

I think it would be much more productive and fun to scan your butt and draw a face on it. On a much more serious note, chess already can take upwards of 2 hours to play, especially if you're playing one of those super careful people. Playing it like this would have to be a weekend event. It is an interesting technical feat though, but really provides no advancement for current technology. I sat here for 5 minutes trying to think how it might help further a current idea or help people with disabilities, but it doesn't -- at all. The purpopse of new technology should be to do things quicker/cheaper. When technology becomes more advanced and provides less functionality, we might as well bundle it with windows.

misleading title

[magarity]

It seems from reading the article that the copier does NOT play chess. The copier inputs the positions into the computer, which then plays chess.

While you can buy pressure sensitive boards to attach to the computer, these are pretty expensive. It's a lot easier to play chess on a real board instead of the screen. Notice that when grandmasters play computers there is a person who runs the computer and moves the pieces. So overall, this is a pretty cool hack if you happen to be a serious chess player who also has a sufficient copier already sitting around.

Re:Resources

[metamanda]

The salient part was not so much the leg as that it was done over christmas when everyone else was watching Charlie Brown specials. The glyphchess thing was supposed to be just gravy. Besides, someone posted a comment further up detailing some of the actual useful stuff they got out of it... it actually helped them debug the dataglyphs toolkit, and makes a nice demo to show to people who might want to give us money for that toolkit.

I don't get why people get pissy about cool hacks like this being "useless". Art is also useless. Sitting around watching The Bachelor is useless. Getting a PhD in math is useless. People do this kind of thing because it's fun to them. What's the big deal?