You Can Now Play Solitaire and Tic-Tac-Toe in Google's Search Results (venturebeat.com) 55
Paul Sawers, writing for VentureBeat: Google announced a couple of fun little nuggets today: you can now play Solitaire and Tic-Tac-Toe directly in Google's search results. Available through the desktop and Google mobile apps, anyone searching for the keywords "solitaire" or "tic-tac-toe" will see the usual search results, but featured prominently alongside them you'll also now see a "tap to play" option which whisks you off to play the game. Google is no stranger to hiding so-called "easter eggs" in its products, including Search -- for example, last year it had a surprise in store to mark the anniversary of Super Mario. Moreover, Google already lets you play some games within Search, including Pacman.
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Here is one Gmail bug that has been around for literally years: you're used to running Gmail on a computer, and have set up mailing lists. If you are on the road with a mobile device and find that you have to use the Gmail app to communicate, you will find that although you can message with any person in your Gmail contact list, your existing mailing lists are inaccessible.
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I've never bitched about a Slashdot story before, but this is bullshit.
It's not lost on my that you posted as AC... Probably to CYA from all those that would search through your history to call you out an a lie. You wouldn't lie to us, would you?
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AI needs some improvement (Score:3)
I just won a game of Tic-Tac-Toe for the first time ever.
Re:AI needs some improvement (Score:4, Funny)
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Google's WOPR won't be online until spring.
Google, the only winning move is not to play.
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Back in middle school, I was so proud of myself when I figured out the thre rules to never losing a game of Tic-Tac-Toe. I've passed this down to my kids so now all our games end in ties.
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The real challenge is setting the difficulty to Easy and trying to lose.
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I just won a game of Tic-Tac-Toe for the first time ever.
Since it's trivial to write an algorithm that plays optimally and since a player using an optimal strategy will never lose, Google clearly did not try to create an "AI" whose focus is winning. Instead, they appear to have created an algorithm that is a fairly decent novice player. Which, actually is a good deal harder than optimal play.
Well, maybe not. It wouldn't be too difficult to take an optimal play implementation and randomly cause it to choose a bad move. For example, if it's playing X you could ha
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you saw the difficulty switch at top of the game? there is an option "impossible", which does what you would expect.
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Doesn't Oracle own the patent on Solitaire?
I see a flock of lawyers placing pre-orders for new yachts in the near future...
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I had a coworker who taught intro to computers in evening classes at a community college 15 years or so ago.
On more than one occasion he had a student get confused by the concept of "Right-Click with the Mouse" they would try to *write* "click" using the mouse.
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That's a unique one. The closest to that I get is a user who, when I asked her to right-click, said, "Oh, I call that opposite click."
I told her that was inventive, but nobody else used that term, and started to move on. "So when you right-click ..."
"When I OPPOSITE click!" she jumped in, and persisted on continuing to call it that.
Lame!!! (Score:2)
I won't be impressed until a fully interactive holographic version of Pokemon Go is projected from my display after I think about performing a Google search on LOL cats.
I once played the single player version tic-tac-toe on paper for 24 hours straight, I always won. I'm considering going pro.
Games, games! (Score:2)
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What I am waiting for is all the original Nintendo games, in time for the Christmas! ;)
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Well, if you're on a device that supports Google Play... https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
Chess (Score:3)
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Can I play the goolge CPU in global thermonuclear (Score:2)
Can I play the goolge CPU in global thermonuclear war?
Pic Tac Toe (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with Tic Tac Toe is that it's too deterministic. It will always end in a draw unless one player does something stupid.
That's why I made up a variant I call "Pic Tac Toe". On each player's move, they can choose to write either an X or an O. The first person to get any three in a row wins.
I don't know if anyone else has come up with this, or if it can also be proven to be deterministic. I suspect that it might be, but at least it adds a bit more variety to the game.
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Alternatively: Player one places a symbol. Player 2 decides which side to play.
Google Fiber? (Score:3)
Not the Real Thing (Score:2)
That Solitaire is not the Real Thing, which is the old Windows 3 to XP solitaire, the only one worth playing, with the Susan Kare design [kare.com].
It runs fine under Wine, btw. All you need is sol.exe and cards.dll.
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