b3ta.com qotw
You are not logged in. Login or Signup
Home » Question of the Week » World of Random » Post 1183883 | Search
This is a question World of Random

There's a pile of scrap timber, rubble and general turds in the road opposite my work with a hand-written sign reading "Free Shed". Tell us about random, completely hatstand stuff and people you've seen

Suggested by Sandettie Light Vessel Automatic

(, Thu 21 Apr 2011, 11:38)
Pages: Popular, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

« Go Back

About 30 years ago
I was learning to program my ZX81, and I wrote a random number generator because I had lost the dice to a board game. However, 9 times out of 10, it generated the number three.
(, Wed 27 Apr 2011, 16:12, 13 replies)
What did it generate the other 9 times?

(, Wed 27 Apr 2011, 16:13, closed)
D BREAK - CONT repeats

(, Wed 27 Apr 2011, 19:53, closed)
it's things like this
that make me wish I had bothered learning how to code.
(, Wed 27 Apr 2011, 16:21, closed)
Dude!
Read the freaking question, that's clearly NOT random!
(, Wed 27 Apr 2011, 16:26, closed)
It was
You're just seeing a pattern in the randomness.
(, Wed 27 Apr 2011, 16:27, closed)
Technically it wasn't random.
It was pseudorandom and, depending on your code, perhaps not even that -- it could have been periodic or very weighted towards one number or other depending on how you obtained your seed value.
(, Wed 27 Apr 2011, 17:44, closed)
I once wrote a Sheepdog Trials game on a ZX Spectrum
It was kind of Object Oriented, as all the sheep used the same code to manage their flocking / dog avoiding behaviour.

But whatever I did, one sheep would always break away from the pack and attack the dog.

Never did work out why.
(, Wed 27 Apr 2011, 16:59, closed)
Sentience!

(, Thu 28 Apr 2011, 4:30, closed)
OOOoh. Mr Fancy Pants ZX81
Some of us only had ZX80s.

I remember the dice thing though. It was a cute bit of programming.

print "▓ ▓"
print " "
print " ▓"
print " "
print "▓ ▓"
(, Wed 27 Apr 2011, 17:21, closed)
and if you didnt have a wobbly RAM pack,
You only got as far as the 3rd line, then ran out of memory..
(, Wed 27 Apr 2011, 17:49, closed)
We have a working ZX81
and it still loads from 30 year old tapes!
(, Wed 27 Apr 2011, 18:25, closed)

and it still loads from 30 year old tapes! as a door stop
(, Thu 28 Apr 2011, 8:20, closed)
I had that problem on some form of portable Sinclair
I think I needed to see the PRNG. These days of course we have huge entropy pools on our machines. If you want to see PRNG abuse in action look at some Tool Assisted Speedruns of games.
(, Wed 27 Apr 2011, 20:58, closed)

« Go Back

Pages: Popular, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1