rod03801: I doubt that it's that kind of isue. The problem with the images occurs after the missing move. Up until then everything's fine. That suggests that something on the server is getting confused. They have tooltips on the points to show how many pieces there are. A point with "b2" would have two black pieces. The tooltips for these of the dodgy images are things like "612", ie. no colour and way too many pieces. Also, the dodgy images are on points which don't have pieces, for instance the bearoff tray when the game is far from the bearoff stage.

playBunny: I think it has something to do with their recent changes to the look of the site. I wish I could remember where I read somehow that you might "fix" it. Maybe changing the size of the board/pieces in preferences? I might be just dreaming though. I swear I read something on one of their discussion boards about it though. I have a vivid imagination though.

playBunny: Weird indeed. It was OK the last time I checked though, back in 2007.

Pedro Martínez: That game goes wierd at this point, unless it's just for me.

http://goldtoken.com/games/play?g=306620;v=1762

Clicking on the > arrow gives a page with bar and bearoff images that don't show. This happens just after a missing move in the game record at 882. After that there are more and more missing images. Do you see the game properly?

aaru: http://goldtoken.com/games/play?g=306620

aaru:This is why I don't play this game...

Almost 500 moves & still playing -> AntyTryktrak (Varazslo vs. DeaD man WalkiN)

pgt:That's no way to talk about a fellow BKer!

Pedro Martínez: I think we should leave gammon out of this in case the swine take offence.

Pedro Martínez: Now that's the one that made me laugh!

But, in fairness to the others, maybe they paved the way.

grenv: I beg to differ. I have just used the online computing power capacity and the result it spat out was a gammon and a half.

alanback: The answer is clearly 4 kgs.

pgt:I think it's the answer to a riddle my father used to ask:

If a hen and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half, how far must a raindrop fall to split a shingle?

playBunny: It's absolutely clear to me. We should not be eating the eggs of battery hens.

gogul: I haven't a clue what you're talking about.

playBunny: To renounce not only on atomic bombs, but atomic power as well..

A strong CPU is pointless in anyones home.

gogul: Why not using online computing power capacity?

What for?

playBunny: 'My 3.0 GHz AMD'

Why not using online computing power capacity?

Isn't there a nonsense board or something for this kind of thing?

gogul: I'm glad that mine was a hint. Yours arouses curiosity. It's more of a riddle!

playBunny: if we don't mind the stones from the sky anymore, there is still the fire under the roof. Thank you, yours was a hint.

Bwild: I'd like to talk with Cheney immediatly. Can I?

Or will he give me a clout just for asking?

gogul: I prefer italian meatballs, which during the stoneage , were made from pterasaurs

alanback: it's a bit like italian football.

gogul:This whole discussion is just pterrible!

playBunny: I have to let that fall. If I'd ever been high this could tell me that pterasaurs 'peut-être' droped petas (stones if Internet was correct)!

gogul: Did you know that the recycling of tetrapacks to roof tiles is a Brazil innovation?

That would be have been good protection against the droppings of ptetrasaurs, which inhabited Brazil up to about 70 million years ago.

paully: Did you know that the recycling of tetrapacks to roof tiles is a Brazil innovation? :)

alanback: I think that model glows in the dark, blue and red

Thad:Yes, I believe a tetrahertz is a rented fish. ;-)

Thad: ah. Mega, giga, tera, peta ...

gogul: Shouldn't it be 'terahertz'?

Nice infos about power and outcome. As the keyword Tetrahertz gives less than 100 results with google (german), I'm guessing that you'll muddle on for a while like it is now.

AlliumCepa: A millisecond is a long time for a modern computer. My 3.0 GHz AMD can produce over 250,000 dice rolls per second using a very basic formula (although it doesn't do anything further with the dice).

But for online backgammon you need to take into acount the context in which the dice roll occurs. There's an html page to be generated for each dice roll. Fencer fills each game page with loads of information, some of which requires access to the database. I think that 1 page per millisecond would be impressive even for a server written in Java.

Czuch: True. Can it proceed several things in the same millisecond or would that just be fast. One for a pc geek.

AlliumCepa: dices? like a salad?

Why all this talk about the randomness of the dice? There appears to be no evidence that it isn't.

AlliumCepa: do they smell like napalm?

Czuch:This is probably also true with physical dice  :-)

So... from what i read of the discussion on the BK board, it seems like the dice might be contingent upon the exact timing of when it is rolled, or am I misunderstanding still?

CryingLoser: if Fencer implemented his RNG according to the first way, then
sooner or later somebody will count the cycle of the numbers...

Er, how "later" can your scale go?!

alanback:
Yes, the assumption was that the generator has for each game a new initialisation. As you mentioned, there is also a second way possible, just one RNG for all games.
And only this second way is the right one - if Fencer implemented his RNG according to the first way, then
sooner or later somebody will count the cycle of the numbers...

CryingLoser:Are you assuming there is a separate incidence of the random number generator for each game?  I think that is very unlikely, and that it is more likely that the same RNG is used for all games on the site.  This would make it impossible for two players to anticipate any cyclical result.

Czuch:
There is a way, but a *very* hard one: The random numbers generators in programming languages are implemented as a function modulo m (for us with unknown m), in the simplest such random function there is a start number s, and the random numbers r1, r2, etc. are generated as s mod m =3 etc. There exist math proofs that random generators that include the modulo
function, even if they are not so simple as the one before, are always cyclical, i.e. after some thousand random numbers r1, r2, ..., rx they start from the beginning.
So if you play some very slow dice game like Anti Backgammon with a friend and the goal of both, not to win but to count the dice numbers, you may find out
a repating sequence of about 5000 - 6000 numbers. And
in a real game you can after 4 - 5 moves guess the next "random number". (Have not tested it, would be too hard effort just for winning some games...)

playBunny: Yeah, I know... it was just a recent 3 day period where I logged on and my first three games each day all had the same dice roll ( not the same roll all 9 games, but the same one for 3 games each day)


We do not know when the dice rolls are generated, is that it?

For awhile, I thought it was when the player actually clicked to see the game for the first time after it was their turn again. But then it seemed like it was generated right after the opponent made their move, but was only revealed when the next player came to see it?

You are right, there is no way to know for sure, except ask Fencer?

Czuch: Whenever someone says "it seems more often than random that ..." about a random process it seems more often than not that it's their brain seeming things and not the random process.

Without knowing how BrainKing's dice are generated I can say nothing with certainty about the rolls, however, as I see absolutely no benefit to Fencer or the players in having every dice generated according to the clock it would surprise me greatly if it were the case.

But it's moot anyway because there's no way for us to determine the timing of dice events.

playBunny: What about dice rolls in relationship to the time? For example, if 10 different people were to make a roll in different games all at the exact same time, would there be any type of correlation, IE would they all have the same dice rolled, or a higher rate of this?


I know it seems like sometimes I will log on and play a few quick moves, and it seems more often than random that I make the same roll in all the games....


Also, I think I remember being told that in casinos, the video and or slot machines give any specific result on one play, based on the exact time that you pull the lever or hit the play button? Something like all the potential outcomes are spinning around in the machine, and which outcome you get is based purely on the timing of when you hit play?