I guess it was only a matter of time...
Coming soon to the Vegas Casinos:

I always knew that Casinos like to take a big %
I hope the odd of winning are better than the possible combinations...hehehe

i wonder if the "ball" at the end of the lever will be a Rubik cube ???!!!

hey, while we're at it, why not propose several Twisty related "Slot machines" to Casinos.
(maybe that could be the 'niche" i have been searching for !)
...imagine in 10 years, you walk in a Casino,
and see all these Dogic, Megaminx, Professor Cube, Ultimate Skweb, Impossibball, Billion Barrel, Square one slot machines, o.k. the idea may be off the wall, but before this post we didn't know of the Rubik's slot machine...so like I always say: "Everything is possible"

P.S. Sandy, I guess you will have to put this machine in you TwistyPuzzle site, somewhere...

Micheal: Yes, probably. I'm a slave to my passion. I've added it to the digital stack of photos to add.

Speaking of funny little things, here's another that's completely unrelated. Check out this seller's feedback. Looks like they'll hit 100,000 unique positives sometime late this month or early next. A red shooting star. It'll be the first one on eBay.

http://cgi2.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?MfcISAPICommand=ViewFeedback&userid=onecentcds@aol.com&items=25

Sandy

I just checked it out. 93,047 unique positives out of 241,836??? 3,730 active auctions on line??? How do they keep up with the demand? Here I was super impressed last year (?) some time when someone actually got 10,000 positives! After this, can a million be far behind? Given that we're approaching the 1 BILLIONTH listing on eBay (my first auction was somewhere around number 3.6 million a few years ago), it's probably not too far off, all things considered. I give it 5 years, tops. I wonder which will happen first, the 100,000th unique positive for this person, or the 1 billionth auction? Is eBay planning anything special for the people who meet these amazing milestones? To be sure, any Joe or Jane Average could be the lister of the 1 billionth auction, but 100,000 unique positives definintely takes someone pretty special. So... who will be the first Twisty member to dare to reach so high? L8r.

Have a look at this page for partial answers to the "is eBay planning anything special" question:

http://pages.ebay.com/ebaylive/chatter2.html

I imagine there are a number of employees in the "company" called onecentcds@aol.com. And they clearly have software doing a lot of the work. Their auction pages are designed to minimize questions, and they only sell CDs without pictures. Lots of time-cutting things going on there.

About the 1 billionth auction... what makes you so sure it hasn't already passed by? Here's an auction I won a few weeks ago with a number over 2.1 billion:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2139763260&rd=1
And here's another one I won about a week LATER with an auction number under 720 million:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=716082780&rd=1

Then again, I doubt it has passed by. eBay would no doubt mark the occassion if for no other reason than to make news (read: free publicity). They would no doubt stage something special for the 1 billionth auction (as they did for the half-billion mark), and I'm sure they'd announce it well in advance in an attempt to encourage people to list more auctions and therefore pay more listing fees. Here's a little article on the half-billionth contest:

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=105&STORY=/www/story/03-15-2001/0001448235

And the winners were: http://pages.ebay.com/promo/halfbillion/

That was over a year ago, but how can we tell what number they're up to if both 720 million and 2 billion numbered auction numbers were used in September?!

About who will be the first Twisty member to reach "so high": I just can't see any twisty puzzle specialist ever reaching a level even close to 100,000, but I don't think 1000 is out of the question within four or five years time. I've climbed most of the way to 200 in about a year, although we collectors are likely to buy less once we own more!

I may have missed some people (especially Germans due to their privacy laws), but it looks to me like d.thornton has at least double the nearest eBay-active Twisty member with a rating of 492. Just a few feedbacks away from that purple star. Another often-mentioned (but not participating) person is yeolmathteacher, who has managed to rise to 439 since February.

I suspect that for most of us (save a few rare examples), collecting feedback through BUYING alone won't get us over the 1000 plateau before our collecting spirit fades out. Selling is probably required.

Bid response.

Sandy

Okay, a couple of mistakes there. I should have hit PREVIEW to preview it, not RESPOND!

I said d.thornton has "at least double", well, it should be almost. I won't name the person who's got over half, as he/she may be keeping their ID secret on purpose!

Finally, I said "Bid response." to close the post, which was a bit of a funny slip. "Big response." was intended!

Sandy

Little-sam ?

Michael

Uh... maybe!

Sandy