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BTW, 'Clikits' is much too phonetically similar to a word that ends with 'oris'

Have you been to a movie recently? Every one I've been to in the past couple of years has been prefixed with a Lego ad of some sort. Before, they were mostly Bionicle(*spit*) ads, but recently it's been for their new creator / designer / inventer sets.

These new lines make me feel more secure for Lego's future -- for a while, they were very distracted by "action toys", instead of focusing on the one thing they do better than anything else: making supplies for *creative* building. It looks like someone inside has finally realized that if they're trying to be just another action figure company, they're going to die, and that the emphasis must be on *actual building sets*.

As for the prices -- yeah, they're a pretty expensive toy, but the quality is much higher than one gets with clones.

Have you been to a movie recently? Every one I've been to in the past couple of years has been prefixed with a Lego ad of some sort. Before, they were mostly Bionicle(*spit*) ads, but recently it's been for their new creator / designer / inventer sets.

These new lines make me feel more secure for Lego's future -- for a while, they were very distracted by "action toys", instead of focusing on the one thing they do better than anything else: making supplies for *creative* building. It looks like someone inside has finally realized that if they're trying to be just another action figure company, they're going to die, and that the emphasis must be on *actual building sets*.

As for the prices -- yeah, they're a pretty expensive toy, but the quality is much higher than one gets with clones.

They also interviewed a bunch of little kids who were all very uninterested in Legos. What a shame...
It really is a shame. Legos got me interested in a career in engineering, which in turn got me interested in the sciences at a rather young age. Hell I still consider Legos to be pretty cool especially the mindstorms kits and I am 19.

Lego Creator race to build it board game.

I can be a geek, give a geeky gift, and get my geek on with my non geek family.

What could be better?

-Adam

Liberty is a standard kit in the sculptures series at Lego's Shop at Home store.

It is possible to
order the specific pieces you want, although the prices aren't really any better than the buckets of assorted pieces.

My person favourite are the Lego Writing System Pens. The Anakin Skywalker Pen has an ergonomic barrel similar to the Pilot "Dr. Grip" Pens. They write reasonably well, plus you can take them apart and play when work is getting boring.

And, in reality, it's LeGo....even if the company won't admit it...the name of the company comes from the Danish words "Leg Godt" which mean "Play Good".

If the company won't admit it, why do they mention it on their webpages?

If the LEGO trademark is used at all, it should always be used as an adjective, not as a noun. For example, say "MODELS BUILT OF LEGO BRICKS". Never say "MODELS BUILT OF LEGOs".

The name of the product is Lego. The plural is Lego.

The LEGO company sells many products, including Creator, Designer, and Technic, which all include LEGO-brand blocks or bricks. They also sell products like Clickit and Bionicle, which do not contain bricks. There is at least one other company that sells toy bricks with are compatible with LEGO bricks. LEGO should not be considered synonymous with their toy brick products.

this is so depressing...I wanted to be a lego designer when I was a kid, and of course I've had dark ages since then that are still kind of going on, and few of my creations where anywhere near as cool as these.

Lego is coming out with some really cool stuff these days, getting back to their roots a bit, without being too blocky. Designer series come with pamphlets with like 30 or so creations (you can build 2 or 3 at the same time with the bricks provided) and the new Star Wars mini stuff, tiny scale, is really clever (though I've seen fans do similar stuff earlier.)

this is so depressing...I wanted to be a lego designer when I was a kid, and of course I've had dark ages since then that are still kind of going on, and few of my creations where anywhere near as cool as these.

Lego is coming out with some really cool stuff these days, getting back to their roots a bit, without being too blocky. Designer series come with pamphlets with like 30 or so creations (you can build 2 or 3 at the same time with the bricks provided) and the new Star Wars mini stuff, tiny scale, is really clever (though I've seen fans do similar stuff earlier.)

If you are using a non-ie browser the page loads with the Javascript error "document.all is not a function". They have used IE specific code... if you want to access the site using Netscape use this link

Also, try this one.

The cult recently opened one of their "temples" in California (of course). They have many local churches.

Like the Scientologists who have their "e-meter", these lego freaks have their or psuedo-technological props. They even have an mystic Oracle that you can ask questions on the internet. And just like the leader of the Scientologists, their leaders aspire to be JRR Tolkien. Not only that, these foul fiends have the temerity to rewrite the Bible.

And they are Holocaust revisionists, too boot

1. Exhibit A - one of their foul leaders proudly displays their trumped up "evidence"
2. Exhibit B
3. Exhibit C
4. Exhibit D
5. Exhibit E
6. Exhibit F

They worship strange, vile gods. And are building machines to take over the world.

The cult recently opened one of their "temples" in California (of course). They have many local churches.

Like the Scientologists who have their "e-meter", these lego freaks have their or psuedo-technological props. They even have an mystic Oracle that you can ask questions on the internet. And just like the leader of the Scientologists, their leaders aspire to be JRR Tolkien. Not only that, these foul fiends have the temerity to rewrite the Bible.

And they are Holocaust revisionists, too boot

1. Exhibit A - one of their foul leaders proudly displays their trumped up "evidence"
2. Exhibit B
3. Exhibit C
4. Exhibit D
5. Exhibit E
6. Exhibit F

They worship strange, vile gods. And are building machines to take over the world.

The cult recently opened one of their "temples" in California (of course). They have many local churches.

Like the Scientologists who have their "e-meter", these lego freaks have their or psuedo-technological props. They even have an mystic Oracle that you can ask questions on the internet. And just like the leader of the Scientologists, their leaders aspire to be JRR Tolkien. Not only that, these foul fiends have the temerity to rewrite the Bible.

And they are Holocaust revisionists, too boot

1. Exhibit A - one of their foul leaders proudly displays their trumped up "evidence"
2. Exhibit B
3. Exhibit C
4. Exhibit D
5. Exhibit E
6. Exhibit F

They worship strange, vile gods. And are building machines to take over the world.

The cult recently opened one of their "temples" in California (of course). They have many local churches.

Like the Scientologists who have their "e-meter", these lego freaks have their or psuedo-technological props. They even have an mystic Oracle that you can ask questions on the internet. And just like the leader of the Scientologists, their leaders aspire to be JRR Tolkien. Not only that, these foul fiends have the temerity to rewrite the Bible.

And they are Holocaust revisionists, too boot

1. Exhibit A - one of their foul leaders proudly displays their trumped up "evidence"
2. Exhibit B
3. Exhibit C
4. Exhibit D
5. Exhibit E
6. Exhibit F

They worship strange, vile gods. And are building machines to take over the world.

Only a few years back a colleague brought up this very issue, and we agreed that it looked really bad. Apparently, freshmen in college back in the Spectrum days performed better in introductory programming courses.

However, I think that since then things, or at least opportunities, have improved: I am thinking of Lego Mindstorms, perhaps combined with NQC, a simple C-like language for Lego's computer brick. This kit is simply marvelous in playability, and had I had that kit as a boy, I am sure that I would have learned programming at least as well as with my Spectrum.

I don't believe this has improved freshmen's programming abilitites though, but perhaps with time?

As others have pointed out already, Linux and all its programming environments will probably provide very good starting points these days. I have for instance seen Java introductions that are more accessible than what we had in the early eighties!

These days, his contribution is regarded as being the first of a series of studies showing that the fundamental building blocks of life are readily formed under a wide variety of conditions.

True.

Many basic blocks are still missing, and you can't do much with a pile of blocks anyway.

Most people think in terms of building a Lego lifeform, now that the blocks are available, but even building a "simple" lifeform from these bricks is somewhat akin to building a Gibraltar Bridge out of Lego (with all of the long ones missing and half of the existing pieces having the dots and dents the wrong way out, just to add insult to injury). Many others think that if you build DNA, you build life, but this is kind of like thinking that if you can just fab a raw Athlon wafer (by accident, out of sand) you've got a super-computing cluster on your hands. On top of this, life is dynamic.

A big jolt of required perspective is almost always absent when describing putative "building blocks of life". It would be fairer to say that Miller has discovered how to put some of the dimples on building blocks naturally, or perhaps that he's shown how some of the plastics of which those bluidling blocks are made could form under natural conditions.

Just think of what could be done when Lego updates Mindstorms to use this.

Just think of what could be done when Lego updates Mindstorms to use this.

Lego Mindstorms and it's RCX language. Fairly intuitive, robust, and you can get it to do cool real-world stuff.
While I think a child might be ok with making some little PC games, I think they would love it even more if they could build a dinosaur and make it walk like they want it to.

• LEGO is easy to use. It simply snaps together.A five year old kid (or even a 30 year old one) can learn to use it in 5 minutes.
  
• LEGO is powerful. You can build robots,Computer cases, and even Computers themselves with it.
  

Not only has someone considered it, but Lego has a whole educational divesion, formerly known as Lego Dacta. Check out the website. It used to be they had some cool sets you couldn't get elsewhere, but with the newly-improved S@H, regular people can get those too.

I refer you here and here (last page).

Both clearly state that "legos" is wrong. I was wrong by calling it Lego, it is LEGO. So?

Why Stanley, you are a troll!

This is one of those topics where people who are wrong are not going to change.

Stupid is as stupid does and all that, but for what it matters, the official word from Lego is:

1. The trademark LEGO should be written in CAPITAL letters.
2. The LEGO trademark should not be referred to in a generic way such as "LEGOS" of "legos", or as plural or possessive words like "LEGO's".
3. When using the LEGO trademark as a noun, please never leave it alone. Always add and extra noun, e.g. LEGO sets, LEGO products, LEGO toys, LEGO building bricks, LEGO universe, etc.

   (Quote from: http://www.lego.com/info/pdf/presskituk.pdf )

   So there you have it.

   "This is my Lego" is wrong.

   "These are my Legos" is worse.

   "These are my LEGO bricks" is correct.

Inspired by this i just created a lego Borg Cube. Even simpler than these.

Ritvik makes mega bloks. However, their site is very very useless. You can get them at Toys R Us, but I would suggest that you go to a local toy store (try one of the independant stores) and see if you can get them to order them in bulk?

I have no idea how these blocks are sold, so YMMV.

Lego also makes (or used to make) very large foam lego bricks. They show up on ebay and bricklink.com sometimes.

And after typing this entire post, i reread yours and saw that you were looking for 2 INCH by 4 INCH blocks... in that case what you probably want is Duplo, made by lego. look at lego's catalog.

Forgive me if this post is incoherent, I really should go to bed right now.

my best guess at what you are looking for is lego soft

i first saw them at legoland california, very cool. i would love a big set, just as soon as i have an extra couple of hundred dollars sitting around.

The cult recently opened one of their "temples" in California (of course). They have many local churches.

Like the Scientologists who have their "e-meter", these lego freaks have their or psuedo-technological props. They even have an mystic Oracle that you can ask questions on the internet. And just like the leader of the Scientologists, their leaders aspire to be JRR Tolkien. Not only that, these foul fiends have the temerity to rewrite the Bible.

And they are Holocaust revisionists, too boot

1. Exhibit A - one of their foul leaders proudly displays their trumped up "evidence"
2. Exhibit B
3. Exhibit C
4. Exhibit D
5. Exhibit E
6. Exhibit F

They worship strange, vile gods. And are building machines to take over the world.

The cult recently opened one of their "temples" in California (of course). They have many local churches.

Like the Scientologists who have their "e-meter", these lego freaks have their or psuedo-technological props. They even have an mystic Oracle that you can ask questions on the internet. And just like the leader of the Scientologists, their leaders aspire to be JRR Tolkien. Not only that, these foul fiends have the temerity to rewrite the Bible.

And they are Holocaust revisionists, too boot

1. Exhibit A - one of their foul leaders proudly displays their trumped up "evidence"
2. Exhibit B
3. Exhibit C
4. Exhibit D
5. Exhibit E
6. Exhibit F

They worship strange, vile gods. And are building machines to take over the world.

The cult recently opened one of their "temples" in California (of course). They have many local churches.

Like the Scientologists who have their "e-meter", these lego freaks have their or psuedo-technological props. They even have an mystic Oracle that you can ask questions on the internet. And just like the leader of the Scientologists, their leaders aspire to be JRR Tolkien. Not only that, these foul fiends have the temerity to rewrite the Bible.

And they are Holocaust revisionists, too boot

1. Exhibit A - one of their foul leaders proudly displays their trumped up "evidence"
2. Exhibit B
3. Exhibit C
4. Exhibit D
5. Exhibit E
6. Exhibit F

They worship strange, vile gods. And are building machines to take over the world.

The cult recently opened one of their "temples" in California (of course). They have many local churches.

Like the Scientologists who have their "e-meter", these lego freaks have their or psuedo-technological props. They even have an mystic Oracle that you can ask questions on the internet. And just like the leader of the Scientologists, their leaders aspire to be JRR Tolkien. Not only that, these foul fiends have the temerity to rewrite the Bible.

And they are Holocaust revisionists, too boot

1. Exhibit A - one of their foul leaders proudly displays their trumped up "evidence"
2. Exhibit B
3. Exhibit C
4. Exhibit D
5. Exhibit E
6. Exhibit F

They worship strange, vile gods. And are building machines to take over the world.

I'm guessing much longer. We have tried to comply as completely as possible with LEGO's Fairplay Document.

*We do not display the red LEGO logo.

*We have a disclaimer posted that denies any endorsement or support from TLG.

*We do not overly emphasize the LEGO trademark.

*Neither the words LEGO or MindStorms appear in our web address. (That was a major legal point a while back.)

*We do not use the LEGO trademark commercially.

*We do not not display any LEGO publications without permission or under false pretenses.

Okay, I looked at it. Heck, for the sake of argument, let's say that I'll believe Google started business made out of Legos.

Can you tell me why the heck there are always blurs of one type or another shielding the front of the box from view?

If only we had some sort of blocky, versatile material to do it with...

I agree that Lego has had a not so hot period the last ten years, but the future looks bright with concepts like mindstorms
Hey, someone even got one of their toys into space!
By the way, I think the line you were referring to was Black Star (at least that was the danish name)

I don't know that a bar code is necessary... but you bring up a really good idea - A lego sorter. A machine that takes in a ton of bricks and looks at each one and then enters it into a database.

I propose a kit made using only pieces from the Lego Mindstorms kit and the Lego Mindstorms camera ;-) Heck, if someone can make a photocopier, surely this would be possible.... and useful too!

AHA!!

> Consumers choose Disnyland - I choose backpacking, climbing, sailing, foreign countries.

Proof you are not a UNIX lover, you almost had me ad REI's, but then this remark came out. Everyone know's the UNIX lovers equivalent of Disnyland is of course Legoland (and not legoland california, either).

Nice try, you almost had me. Go back to starbucks with your mac and pretend to love Unix.

Check this one out:
Monthy Python Lego Movie

... it's all gonna run on Mindstorms bricks from right there in Billund! Don't think the tiny LEGO propellers will get them much, though...

I've got it... you need Lego Mindstorms. Just build some robotics to push the mouse around, whack random keys, etc. Best of all, such a system would be fully platform-independant. I bet Microsoft is already doing this, only they call it "genetic programming".

LEGO movie of the holy Graal

What can I say. I love it :-)

You can buy basic pieces in bulk from Lego Shop at Home, off the main Lego page. You cna buy some technic parts in bulk from Pitsco-Dacta.

I think Lego Mindstorms would qualify as the Erector Sets of today.

Ok maybe I've been in a cave for a while, but when I was a mere child I *loved* my legos and enjoyed constructing various projects, but nowadays it seems that most lego products come in these specialized kits (ie Star Wars, Dinosaurs, Pirate stuff, etc), and if you visit the Lego webstore you can't even get a simple kit of legos, I'm talking nothing but plain old blocks and basic parts...and the only way to get these are buy buying them individually,....and same goes with stores, on a whim I visited Toys R Us and same deal, no kit with JUST basic blocks.......whats going on?!

is Lego Mindstorms!

Also a useful tool to learn Java ;-)