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• 5th-gen iPod
• Superconductivity
• LTE, NFC, and Wireles USB
• Kentucky Fried Chicken
• V.I.N.C.E.N.T. (but not B.O.B.)
• Carbon nanotubes
• the RS-232C interface

Extend the list by replying!

It "scored better"? You are vastly overestimating how much thought Intel Marketing put into the choice of the name. *grin* Actually, Intel Marketing is just copying Maybelline Turbo Boost mascara. Or maybe Vidal Sassoon Turbo Boost hair dryers?

Actually, in comparison, "SuperUltraMoreFaster Maker" isn't so bad. "Turbo Booster" gets 1,850,000 hits in Google. "SuperUltraMoreFaster Maker" gets exactly none. You're a creative genius!! Sorry, that means you'll never be hired by Intel Marketing.

My partly joking theory is that the staff of Intel Marketing long ago realized that Intel doesn't need marketing, since there is no one else besides AMD from whom to buy fast processors. So, it doesn't matter what they do. Mostly, they seem to do nothing. Sometimes, apparently due to boredom, they experiment with marketing. For example, buyers were offered Intel Bunny People dolls. How many buyers said, "Wow!!! A doll! I think I'll buy from Intel, rather than AMD"? The Intel web site is better now, but a few years ago, it was difficult or impossible to discover the Intel SKU of an Intel processor from the Intel web site, even after you spent 2 hours joining Intel's hardware buyer's organization. You could research processors on Intel's web site, but the Intel SKU wasn't listed. Wholesalers listed the processors by Intel SKU.

Intel's consumer division was so bad it ceased business. It would take many, many paragraphs to tell you how bad it was.

About 2 years ago, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett got bad press by announcing that Intel would go into competition with OLPC, One Laptop per Child: OLPC on 60 Minutes: Intel is evil. Typical story: Negroponte: "Intel should be ashamed of itself" for dumping its low cost PC. Look at the photo of Barrett! The photo looks like the personification of evil. *grin*

Now, Intel is trying to correct problems it has created by encouraging the sales of mobile computers with the Intel Atom processor, without communicating openly and honestly to customers that the Atom processor is very slow. For example, Intel: Some Netbook resellers saw 30% return rate.

Am I saying that, if I ran Intel Marketing, I could do better? Yes, I'm saying that. Maybe you could, also.

Logan, is that you?

And that Box wouldn't fit on your set up: http://www.jeffbots.com/box.html

They already tried something like this and it didn't work out. Everything blew up.

I don't know about that. I'm something of a serious DNA fan, and when the radio show was on I always pictured Marvin as short with a big head, just like the one that was in the H2G2 movie.

Nothing new here. However the application in space is. Here is something similar idea:

http://www.orientaltrading.com/application?origin=page.jsp&namespace=browse&event=link.itemDetails&categoryId=377320&BP=8109&sku=70%2F4498&cm_mmc=YHS-_-Party%20Supplies-_-Tableware-_-Disney%20Cars%20Crazy%20Straws
http://www.toyconnection.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TC&Product_Code=STRAW&qts=google&qtk=crazy%20straws
http://www.jeffbots.com/r2d2cooler.html

I have a 15-year-old cousin, when he was 10 he removed the password protection of "blocked" channels on his families cable boxes. When he was 12 he circumvented all of the internet kid-protection software my uncle put on his computer, he'd just log in as the admin and remove it, my uncle didn't even know what an admin account was or what it was for or how to log in to it. Go ahead FCC, waste more money and time on parental-supervision-replacement technology. I can see it now, real-life Rosies that chase the kids around, deleting porn and changing channels. I'm sure the little jerk will see it as a fantastically fun challenge to get around a new V-chip so he can download porn on his cell phone in school. In the meantime, my aunt and uncle will continue to scream from the mountaintop that they're wonderful parents, they pay attention, they do their jobs...I wonder what they'd say if they knew my cousin once made dynamite in their half-million dollar home, or what they'd do if they ever found out that he grew a bunch of pot plants on their property last year. So, todays-parents-suck-at-being-parents-posts +1.

Looks like a job for Rosie.

http://www.jeffbots.com/fembotexplo.html

In my mind, you show up at an Apple store dressed in a Hazmat suit and you are just begging to be mistaken for the Intel bunnysuit guys. Most people will probably see this and think it's advertising the new Intel chipped computers!

In fact that would be pretty hilarious, find some of the protesters outside the store and slap them on the back to let them know what a good job they are doing... with an Intel Inside sticker in hand.

Thanks for the heads-up. But I was really hoping that you got the name Conky from Pee Wee's Playhouse, as opposed to Trailer Park Boys.

Somehow, I shall struggle not to hold it against you.

MOD PARENT UP. Excellent comment.

Intel began self-destructing several years ago. For example, in my opinion, the Intel consumer products division released lame, unfinished products. Eventually Intel reacted to the poor sales by closing the division.

Like really, really scary horror stories? Here's one more scary than you've ever seen in film. Intel marketing has become detached from reality. Intel marketing people go to work every day, but they just pretend to have meaningful jobs and pretend to be doing something positive for Intel. They are zombies, and most of them don't appear intelligent enough to know that they are zombies. If you think this is an exaggeration, read this sentence from a recent email message from Intel Marketing (I'm talking here about Intel marketing, not Intel's advertising agency.):

"Pass any three of the four tests before July 26, 2005 and your company will get a certificate of completion - plus you'll receive an Intel BunnyPeople Character." Here's an explanation with photo: Intel Bunny People.

Intel has been giving those dolls away for 7 1/2 years. Maybe someone bought a huge number of them?

How many technically-oriented people are motivated by the idea of receiving a doll? It goes like this: 1) Give Intel marketing your company's address and phone number and email address, so that they can spam you in the future. 2) Sit through boring marketing-speak, written by people who don't know or care about Intel products, or any technical product. 3) Take a test. 4) Get a doll?

Intel management appears to have spun out of control. Apparently it is now all stock options and company politics, and nothing about actually doing well. The people in charge don't actually know what they are doing, and apparently care more about having their executive positions than making good products.

Intel is known in Portland, Oregon, where it is based, for being abusive toward its employees. I'm guessing that the present problems really began about 12 or 15 years ago, when the Intel management, just before an enormous increase in profits, pleaded broke and reduced the pay of employees by 10%. Intel is known for over-working its employees, and pressing them to work very long hours.

Once about 2 years ago, I decided to ask Intel marketing people to fix a problem with the motherboard web site. Intel's ordering model number, used when you place an order with a distributor, was nowhere connected on the web site with the marketing model number, like 845BGL. I asked them to fix that. I talked to several marketing employees, all of whom clearly did not intend to do any real work.

I could tell many, many stories about Intel's sink into depression, but that's enough for now. I will have to say, however, that Microsoft's marketing people are worse.

I consider this the optimal form-factor, personally. Ultraman is such a wussy.

Agreed about the Marvin in the TV series. I always imagined Marvin being smaller and looking a little like Twiki off the Buck Rogers TV series.

But without the penis shaped head ;)

I swear there was already a robot that could fetch you a beer 20 years ago... What amazing progress we make. Now it can dance too!

Actually, a lot of today's toys ARE the toys from our youth. My kids asked for a lot of stuff that I asked for at their age. Zoids, Rubik's Cubes, Transformers, GI Joe, etc. are all under our tree for the next generation. Robots, too. About 20 years ago my parents got me a Verbot (I wanted an Omnibot, goddammit); my older son is getting a Robosapien. Toys may change some, but the idea (and sometimes even brand) stays the same.

My only gripe with the toys these days is that they are cheap plastic renditions of what we had. Hell, you practically had to be up on your tetanus shots before playing with those metal Transformers and Zoids.

Movie tie-ins were the same back then as well, just different stuff. Ghostbusters, Star Wars, Gremilins, ET -- we had the same stuff just under the guise of a different movie. Just why, WHY, WHY, did they have to make a Spiderman glove that shoots web fluid. I can see my cats covered in this stuff within an hour of it coming out of the box Saturday morning...

It really has been a nice trip down memory lane this year. 20 years ago I had a HUGE Christmas becuase my father got a bonus at his job and my parents knew they would never, ever have money like that again. I got my first Atari (5200 -- with Pac Man! Anyone remember how IMPOSSIBLE it was to find that back then?), my first boombox, my first TV, my first robot, my first Zoids and Transformers. Equally, I received a nice overtime paycheck this year and was able to get some extra stuff for my sons, mirroring what I got when I was 10 (they are 8 and 10). I suppose I'm buying some of the toys more out of MY desire to play with them than anything else! :^)

I wonder if I can hack the Robosapien to use Bluetooth so I can control it from my laptop...

The idea that they would have C3P0 without first inducting Maria, who C3P0 is derivative of, shows a poor acknowledgment of the foundation laid for the future by Fritz Lang.

Check out: http://www.jeffbots.com/maria.html

This wasn't meant to be modded "Interesting." It's suppose to be "Funny." Twiki is the robot from Buck Rogers.

Robbie the robot and the "Robot" from Lost in Space are the same robot (or robot suite). kvn ps. get it right you tin plated ninny!

That's a pretty good Dr. Smith impression, particularly the way that it's inaccurate. Observe:

Robby

Lost in Space's B-9 robot

Of course they were fembots.

I always liked the Marvin from the Illustrated HHGTTG.

Actually, I liked the Zaphod & the Trillian too.

Hewey, Dewey, or Louie

...to counter the 912 "MP3" model, with a robot of their own.

As for that garish, yellow "HMV" model: yuck. Who wants a robot that looks like a 'Sports' Walkman or a droid from a Vogon Constructor Fleet vessel (assuming they'd match the color of the ship, of course)?

~Philly

This new theory attempts to fill holes in the currently accepted concept of the "black hole".

but wouldn't any of these attempts just collapse into the singularity as well??

Then all you're left with is Vincent and Bob...

While most remember the colecovision, few remember the ADAM. It was a PC + a full fledged colecovision.

Though I was very young and with no adult help (my step father was the anti-geek) so I never used the computer for much more then word processing. But still, on a nastalgic geek scale the system itself is a 10. Of course, when I opened that box Xmas morning I was a tad bit dissapointed. I had been asking for an Omnibot 2000 and the box was the right size.

Or "The Jetsons"

As long as fictional robots are being inducted, I'd like to nominate Rosie, the maid from the Jetsons.

Not only is it the wrong show, but he doesn't even know the character's name!

As long as they make it short, silver, give it Yosemite Sam's voice and make it say "biggie, biggie, biggie" all the time!

Is is just me, or does this thing bear a strong resemblance to our good friend Johnny 5 from the movie Short Circuit?

Now I understand why such a thing would go as to track "the position of virtually everything in the solar system," input Stephanie!

I wouldn't mind having an ED 209 minding my place. Although if someone did break into my house there wouldn't be much left of it at the end...

...how long before it will sing and dance on one wheel while serving maritinis http://www.jefbots.com/rosie.html though?

No, that's Twiki. Although, coincidentally there is a Wiki system named Twiki. Go figure.

While I am at it, here is a link for Erin Grey's "Filmography": http://us.imdb.com/Name?Gray,+Erin. No picture of her there, but all it takes is a quick trip to google to pull up hundreds...

______