Some other math/crypto sci-fi

[Alan Olsen]

On Thu, 25 Jan 2001, dmolnar wrote:

> On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Alan Olsen wrote:
> 
> > You could do a collectable card game based on the patent mess, but the
> > idea of a collectable card game has already been patented.  (Now owned by
> > Hasbro now that they bought Wizards of the Cost.)
> 
> Wait, there are non-Hasbro collectable card games, aren't there? Do they
> all simply license from Hasbro? 

The WotC patent was recieved well after there were other card games in
production.

WotC said that they were not going to press the patent.  I have not heard
much more about it since the original flap over the patent being granted.

> In any case, simple collectible cards would be all right to start with. So
> what if they "happen" to fall into patterns. They're algorithms!
> 
> "I'll trade you a Floyd-Warshall for a Rabin-Miller, but only if you
> throw in a Nisan-Wigderson Derandomizing Pseudorandom Generator...I'm low
> on randomness." 
> 
> Instead of Mana, have "time," "space," "randomness," and other complexity
> measures. (Death to the first person who suggests "ink.") Trade off
> between the two as appropriate. Special cards ("Blum Speedup Theorem")
> affect resource consumption. Maybe offer other cards which give benefits
> at a cost ("Superstitious Mathematician" - halves time required to run
> algorithms, but doesn't believe in randomness so you lose all randomness
> counters...)

This could get quite silly very fast.

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