[phrontist]

I've seen a few of these "Best Bot of All Time!" threads now, and I just don't get it. I'm aware that those of a technical persuasion have a penchant for quantifying/sorting their world, but honestly, I think these questions are meaningless. Believe it or not, there is a competition each year to rate these robots, and all the stats are on line! Want to compare bots from different years? Too bad, they've got different parameters, and therefore any comparison would be arbitrary. Is that a bad thing? Not inherently, but I have a strong suspicion this thread will quickly be a wasteful rehashing of past "popularity contests".

Oh, 1418's bot this year is definately the best of all time, followed closely by last years bot. Yeah. No question.