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  • #31
    Wow, great story, I really envy you, lucky bastard. I remember wanting the black sports car.
    Cake and grief counseling will be available at the conclusion of the test. Thank you for helping us help you help us all!

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    • #32
      Yes, that's a great story, Blake.

      Interesting also to note that someone came here for purposes other than visiting the Copenhagen porn shops.

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      • #33
        Legos are obviously a gateway drug to future Civ addiction.
        Apolyton's Grim Reaper 2008, 2010 & 2011
        RIP lest we forget... SG (2) and LaFayette -- Civ2 Succession Games Brothers-in-Arms

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        • #34
          That's a great story Blake

          Anyway, regarding the topic of the thread: my Mindstorms kit just arrived from USA!

          eBay
          Customs (charged me another 22% on the amount I payed, I wish they found a proper job, the leeches)

          I now have the Ultimate Lego kit. I still don't know exactly what to do with it, but I'm sure I'll think of something.

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          • #35
            Originally posted by VetLegion
            I now have the Ultimate Lego kit. I still don't know exactly what to do with it, but I'm sure I'll think of something.
            Get some kids - they are experts playing with such
            With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

            Steven Weinberg

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            • #36

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              • #37
                With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

                Steven Weinberg

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                • #38
                  I had that pneumatic truck- the connections were a complete *****. Oh well, set me in good stead for my work with bioreactors I guess!

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                  • #39
                    Great story, Blake.

                    I've had contact with the LEGO company twice myself, once as a ~9-year-old for a primary school project and a few years back for a uni project (although fun to do it was nothing particularly exciting, we used Mindstorms to model factory processes -- the one cool thing was that our smallish student project was used as basis for an entire sophomore course at another university that one of our counselors now works for, and my own faculty also greatly expanded its Mindstorms activities after our test case). In both cases I found that they are indeed an exceptionally generous company, there's some extremely helpful and friendly people working there.

                    I was a huge LEGO nerd myself as a kid. I breathed that stuff, it was my life. I still have thousands of euros worth in my parent's attic. Unfortunately though they (my parents) are moving to Bahrain in a few months and are selling the house, and as I don't have room in my apartment to store the LEGO myself I'm gonna have to sell off my childhood memories in the next few weeks

                    I grew up during the transition period from the generic stuff to the more specialised sets, and also had the awesome fortune that one of my uncles was a LEGO nerd during his childhood (but no, it wasn't him who introduced me to it) and he still has some of it so I've had access to some very early stuff from the 50s and 60s as well.

                    I have to say that the late-generic LEGO is much better than the really early stuff: better materials, far more shapes and sizes, greater variety in colours, etc. It just allows for more and more creative designs. But it's a testament to the early LEGO that it still interlocks perfectly with the most modern sets and it's still perfectly usable (i.e. even the most of the more fragile pieces haven't fallen apart in 50 years of near-continuous use). As a kid I enjoyed playing with the old sets every bit as much as with the modern ones.

                    The early custom sets (such as the early pirates) *were* a lot of fun to play with in their own right, but they've definitely gone overboard today. And of course all of the best home-made designs I've come up with over the years have been with the more generic pieces. Indeed, my very best work (a giant mansion -- although I did have some of the technical stuff I never was too much into it) was made of the most generic bricks available and most of it consisted of only 2 colours (only the furniture had a little more variety).
                    Administrator of WePlayCiv -- Civ5 Info Centre | Forum | Gallery

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                    • #40
                      Oh, and Legoland is awesome If you have any kind of interest in LEGO you should definitely visit some day, even as an adult and even if it's a bit out of the way (only part of Denmark worth visiting, sorry Danes).
                      Administrator of WePlayCiv -- Civ5 Info Centre | Forum | Gallery

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                      • #41
                        Originally posted by Locutus
                        (only part of Denmark worth visiting, sorry Danes).
                        No offense taken - you obvously haven't seen much other than legoland.
                        With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

                        Steven Weinberg

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                        • #42
                          I wonder - does LEGO (the company) survive only because of intellectual property protection?

                          It's quite easy to replicate LEGO bricks, so the price should by now have fallen almost to the production cost due to competition, and LEGO should have gone under a long time ago.

                          What gives?

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                          • #43
                            Well, the company has been in a kind of crisis the last couple of years - one thing is the oil price another is a bit of bad management, third competition from other toys.

                            About the concept, well, they have been pretty tough on anyone trying to copy it so that haven't been that much of a problem.
                            With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

                            Steven Weinberg

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                            • #44
                              What about China? IP law was always weak there.

                              Also, LEGO could have patented some form of interconnecting bricks, but not all forms. There should be plenty of competition. On the other hand, perhaps kids today play with PlayStations exclusively.

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                              • #45
                                Originally posted by VetLegion
                                It's quite easy to replicate LEGO bricks
                                You'd be surprised, there's a lot more to it than meets the eye. The manufacturing process to get just the right result (sturdy resilient bricks with very little tolerance that allow for stable constructions but can still be easily pulled apart) without much waste is quite complex and the variety of bricks LEGO produces is huge. Few companies have been able to put comparable products on the market, although some do indeed exist. Frankly LEGO competes more with other toys than with copycats.

                                LEGO survives through a combination of legal protection (primarily trademark and unfair competition related, to a lesser extent copyright and patent law but those for the most part have expired by now), brand loyalty (they invest a lot in marketing and have a loyal fan base that spans multiple generations -- if I buy a kid a toy I would never buy a LEGO knock-off myself, it'd have to be the real thing) and constant innovation and diversification (Mindstorms being a case in point, other examples are the theme parks, video and board games, Brickfilms, pop culture themes (Star Wars. Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, etc), Clikits, Bionicles, Serious Play, etc).

                                But as BlackCat points out LEGO is currently in a bit of a financial crisis and it's not inconceivable that they'll fall victim to their own success eventually. That would take a lot though, they've still got a lot going for them.
                                Administrator of WePlayCiv -- Civ5 Info Centre | Forum | Gallery

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