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华尔街/日报报道大雁魔方的英文版 [复制链接]

inteli5

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发表于 2011-12-26 11:35:38 |只看该作者 |正序浏览

是不是大雁应该考虑申请美国和欧洲的专利？嘿嘿，不过里面说人家每年花50万美元律师费，看来难度大啊。

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204319004577088513615125328.html
One Cube, Many Knockoffs, Quintillions of Possibilities
Contestants Set Rubik's Speed Records, Using Hot-Rod Chinese Copies
By JAMES HOOKWAY

Watch some of the top competitors at the 2011 World Rubik's Cube Championship in Bangkok, Thailand.

BANGKOK—World champion Michal Pleskowicz presents a puzzle to makers of the Rubik's Cube.

The Polish teenager recently won his title in Thailand, lining up all six colors on all six sides of the cube-shaped toy in an average time of 8.65 seconds. "We can't compete with that," griped Chrisi Trussell, vice president of Rubik's Cube's distributor, Seven Towns Ltd.

Rowe Hessler in Bangkok at the Rubik's Cube championship in October.
One reason Mr. Pleskowicz and a new generation of Rubik's fanatics can solve the notoriously difficult puzzle in record time: They don't use Rubik's Cubes at all, instead substituting souped-up Chinese knockoffs engineered for speed.

The spread of these black-market cubes challenges the London-based company with a marketing brain teaser. Should Seven Towns crack down on the pirated toys? Or piggyback on the phenomenon of competitive speed-cubing?

Hungarian inventor Erno Rubik's famous mechanical puzzle has gained a second wind in recent years. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have adopted it as a symbol of geek chic. Celebrities including Justin Bieber and Will Smith show off their cube-solving skills.

The crème de la crème of the new wave, though, compete to solve the three-dimensional puzzle in the fastest time possible. They rely on high-performance copies bought online from underground Chinese designers.

Seven Towns doesn't want these ersatz cubes elbowing into the broader market; the closely held company sells about 10 million Rubik's Cubes annually.

But the firm also sees how the spread of the turbocharged competition is boosting the popularity of the toy, which has sold an estimated 350 million units since it was introduced to the world in 1980.

The pirated cubes are almost frictionless and bear as much resemblance to genuine Rubik's Cubes as Nascar hot-rods to family sedans. The blocks are sanded or configured to barely touch. This avoids cubes getting stuck during competitions, a dreaded hitch known by cubers as getting "locked."

Many top competitors use cubes from Chinese designer Bao Daqinq. Online favorites carry such names as the Zhanchi, or "spread wings," and the Guhong, "Lone Goose." Aficionados eagerly review and debate attributes of the models online in sites devoted to the practice. Mr. Bao declined to comment.

The company is waging a complex cat-and-mouse legal battle with its Chinese competitors, spending $500,000 a year in legal fees to defend its global trademark and stop unauthorized cubes from reaching brick-and-mortar stores.

David Hedley Jones, the company's business development director, belongs to a European Union-China group on copyright infringement, trying to slow the spread of contraband cubes in Europe. "We really spend a lot of time on this," he said.

Seven Towns sponsors the speed-cubing world championships—an evolving showcase for knockoffs—to generate publicity for the real deal. "There's a balance to be struck, but I think it's working," said Mike Moody, Seven Towns' managing director.

Many competitors fiddle constantly to build up dexterity and wear down stock cubes so they turn faster. "It takes about a month to break in a brand-new Rubik's Cube," said 23-year-old Australian Tim McMahon. Veterans describe a repetitive strain condition as "Rubik's thumb," developed from trying to speed-solve standard-issue cubes.

In the early days of speed-cubing—the 1980s—pioneers first pried open cubes, sanded corners and greased joints with globs of petroleum jelly to allow faster, smoother moves. The Internet opened new possibilities.

"The ones you buy online come with springs and screws so you can adjust them," said former world champion Breandan Vallance from Scotland, who took up cubing to travel the world. "There's less friction because there is less contact area between the su**ces, even if they do sometimes fall apart."

One price of speed, apparently, is reliability. A competitor at the Bangkok championships suffered a major breakdown when his cube "popped" in one heat, scattering dozens of pieces across the stage.

Competitors prepared for the Bangkok finals like professional athletes. During the contest, many avoided eye contact with rivals and fidgeted with their speed cubes, building up rhythm and speed as they rattled through 50 or more memorized sequences of moves. There are, say mathematicians, 43 quintillion possible combinations.

Some wore headphones and listened to techno music. Mr. Pleskowicz, the 19-year-old world champion, prefers Metallica. "It helps build up the speed," he said.

There are deviant competitions, including five-by-five and eight-by-eight cubes. Some compete blindfolded, one-handed or try to see who requires the fewest possible moves. Researchers using computers at Google Inc. last year calculated the absolute minimum was 20 moves.

Istvan Kocza from Hungary employed 22 moves at a contest in the Czech Republic last year. "That was due to a very fortunate scramble that nobody had ever seen before," he said.

In Budapest, meanwhile, the reclusive Mr. Rubik, 67 years old, is working on a new solution to the marketing problem—his own version of the speed cubes to compete with the Chinese.

No rush, though. "We've been working on it for five years," said Janos Kovacs, chief executive at the puzzle-master's Rubik Studio design firm.

Write to James Hookway at james.hookway@wsj.com

[ 本帖最后由 inteli5 于 2011-12-26 11:37 编辑 ]

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