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Speaking of Monty Python, featured on
BBSpot's daily spot, is a Monty Python Lego movie in quicktime. Windows media version is here.
Anybody who likes Monthy Python and Lego, check it out. Hmm I guess that's everybody here...

the plugin never ran, so I just view source'ed and found the addy for the file. pointed Mozilla at it, and downloaded it right off Lego. and it's still in my clipboard, so I'll add it here

http://www.lego.com/studios/screening/media/montyp ythonlg.mov

this is the 3MB one

http://www.lego.com/studios/screening/media/montyp ythonlg.mov

I'm a bit of a Mindstorms fan, and have followed the development of the cubesolver in the lego forums for quite a while. The engineering of the robot is superb, but as mentioned before, the algorithm runs on a PC which sends manipulation instructions to the robot.
I've been working on a chess robot myself with the AI running on the RCX (the CPU brick), which is nearing v1.0. It's been fun to develop, considering you've only got 32K to play with.
Anyway, here's the link to my mindstorms page: Lego Chess

Technic Leo was just the best though. Cooler than the crappy normal lego, and wow .. people made some amazing stuff with it ..

If you had read the fairplay page you would have said "I think I'll go out and buy more bricks from the LEGO(tm) group."

Alice)
Essentially a 3D version of Logo. Users program 3D worlds and have characters which interact. Very cool (and no cost). The underlying language is Python.

Agentsheets
Stagecast
Both very good environments which allow children to build simulations of anything which interests them. They both use visual languages to reduce the need for keyboards.

ToonTalk
Users program robots to perform tasks. All done using programming by demonstration.

Lego Mindstorms
Yeah, don't need to write anything here. It's wicked.

Alternatively, you can wait until I develop my environment, but don't held your breath...:)

Lego Alpha Team is a game that makes the player solve spatial puzzles to continue to the next level. The puzzles require the player to place special blocks that change the direction of movement of the on-screen characters.

In effect, you "program" the movement to accomplish a specific goal. In fact, the playing process reminds me a great deal of programming. Kind of an edit-run-debug sort of process. You have unlimited time and lives to complete the puzzles (unlike actual programming, I guess).

All of this is wrapped up in a action/adventure story-line which keep it engaging. My eight-year-old son loves this game and I enjoy playing it too.

Check out the game's home page and a review at Kid's Domain.

trichard

The Lego company is very firm on this point. Page 11 of http://www.lego.com/info/pdf/presskituk.pdf states that "The LEGO trademark should not be referred to in a generic way such as "LEGOS" or "legos," or as plural or possessive words like "LEGO's."

If anyone's interested, they can see some of my other stuff here...

• Aegis: [lego.mindstorms.com] Vision-aware projectile firer; was designed as a squirrel repllent, but actually used to harrass coworkers stealing office supplies.
• BipedII: [lego.mindstorms.com] Single-RXC biped. Mildly nifty-looking, but not very challenging. Won the monthly Mindstorms Hall of Fame, though
• HanoiSolver: [lego.mindstorms.com] Solves the 'Towers of Hanoi' puzzle.
• K9: [lego.mindstorms.com] RCX dog with Vision Cam that fetches a white ball.
• Quad_I: [lego.mindstorms.com] Nifty-looking hybrid electric motor-pneumatic 4-legger.
• Xilo:[lego.mindstorms.com] Vision Cam controlled robot that plays a xylophone.

If anyone's interested, they can see some of my other stuff here...

• Aegis: [lego.mindstorms.com] Vision-aware projectile firer; was designed as a squirrel repllent, but actually used to harrass coworkers stealing office supplies.
• BipedII: [lego.mindstorms.com] Single-RXC biped. Mildly nifty-looking, but not very challenging. Won the monthly Mindstorms Hall of Fame, though
• HanoiSolver: [lego.mindstorms.com] Solves the 'Towers of Hanoi' puzzle.
• K9: [lego.mindstorms.com] RCX dog with Vision Cam that fetches a white ball.
• Quad_I: [lego.mindstorms.com] Nifty-looking hybrid electric motor-pneumatic 4-legger.
• Xilo:[lego.mindstorms.com] Vision Cam controlled robot that plays a xylophone.

If anyone's interested, they can see some of my other stuff here...

• Aegis: [lego.mindstorms.com] Vision-aware projectile firer; was designed as a squirrel repllent, but actually used to harrass coworkers stealing office supplies.
• BipedII: [lego.mindstorms.com] Single-RXC biped. Mildly nifty-looking, but not very challenging. Won the monthly Mindstorms Hall of Fame, though
• HanoiSolver: [lego.mindstorms.com] Solves the 'Towers of Hanoi' puzzle.
• K9: [lego.mindstorms.com] RCX dog with Vision Cam that fetches a white ball.
• Quad_I: [lego.mindstorms.com] Nifty-looking hybrid electric motor-pneumatic 4-legger.
• Xilo:[lego.mindstorms.com] Vision Cam controlled robot that plays a xylophone.

If anyone's interested, they can see some of my other stuff here...

• Aegis: [lego.mindstorms.com] Vision-aware projectile firer; was designed as a squirrel repllent, but actually used to harrass coworkers stealing office supplies.
• BipedII: [lego.mindstorms.com] Single-RXC biped. Mildly nifty-looking, but not very challenging. Won the monthly Mindstorms Hall of Fame, though
• HanoiSolver: [lego.mindstorms.com] Solves the 'Towers of Hanoi' puzzle.
• K9: [lego.mindstorms.com] RCX dog with Vision Cam that fetches a white ball.
• Quad_I: [lego.mindstorms.com] Nifty-looking hybrid electric motor-pneumatic 4-legger.
• Xilo:[lego.mindstorms.com] Vision Cam controlled robot that plays a xylophone.

If anyone's interested, they can see some of my other stuff here...

• Aegis: [lego.mindstorms.com] Vision-aware projectile firer; was designed as a squirrel repllent, but actually used to harrass coworkers stealing office supplies.
• BipedII: [lego.mindstorms.com] Single-RXC biped. Mildly nifty-looking, but not very challenging. Won the monthly Mindstorms Hall of Fame, though
• HanoiSolver: [lego.mindstorms.com] Solves the 'Towers of Hanoi' puzzle.
• K9: [lego.mindstorms.com] RCX dog with Vision Cam that fetches a white ball.
• Quad_I: [lego.mindstorms.com] Nifty-looking hybrid electric motor-pneumatic 4-legger.
• Xilo:[lego.mindstorms.com] Vision Cam controlled robot that plays a xylophone.

If anyone's interested, they can see some of my other stuff here...

• Aegis: [lego.mindstorms.com] Vision-aware projectile firer; was designed as a squirrel repllent, but actually used to harrass coworkers stealing office supplies.
• BipedII: [lego.mindstorms.com] Single-RXC biped. Mildly nifty-looking, but not very challenging. Won the monthly Mindstorms Hall of Fame, though
• HanoiSolver: [lego.mindstorms.com] Solves the 'Towers of Hanoi' puzzle.
• K9: [lego.mindstorms.com] RCX dog with Vision Cam that fetches a white ball.
• Quad_I: [lego.mindstorms.com] Nifty-looking hybrid electric motor-pneumatic 4-legger.
• Xilo:[lego.mindstorms.com] Vision Cam controlled robot that plays a xylophone.

lego.mindstorms.com/inventions and then under 'Special Mention' click the cubesolver link. Worked fine for me just now.

They have the TECHNIC Pneumatic Pack for US$ 27.99.

Between Lego, Pitsco and EBay you can get pretty much whatever you might want to build sweet Midstorms 'bots.

Happy shopping.

They have the TECHNIC Pneumatic Pack for US$ 27.99.

Between Lego, Pitsco and EBay you can get pretty much whatever you might want to build sweet Midstorms 'bots.

Happy shopping.

Now, as for your pissing and moaning: instead of badmouthing Lego on /., why don't you send them a constructive letter where you don't use the spelling "Windoze" and don't insult Windows users? Maybe, if enough Mac users sent enough letters Lego would be willing to port Mindstorms.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go and program my latest bot from my Power Mac 6500.

Now, as for your pissing and moaning: instead of badmouthing Lego on /., why don't you send them a constructive letter where you don't use the spelling "Windoze" and don't insult Windows users? Maybe, if enough Mac users sent enough letters Lego would be willing to port Mindstorms.

Meanwhile, I'm going to go and program my latest bot from my Power Mac 6500.

...these sets?

Was this the car you were talking about?

Technic appears to be alive and well. Though I must agree with you about the dumbing-down and relentless merchandising of everything these days. Growing up, I thought LEGO was a lot of fun without having to attach the Star Wars franchise or any other marketing crap to the products. LEGO were (and still are) just plastic blocks that stick together, and they managed to compete quite successfully with video games when I was a young'un-- there was many an afternoon that my ColecoVision sat idle while I was furiously building space shuttles and F-15s.

I loved the Technic stuff, I had a huge box of miscellaneous gears, axles, etc, a couple of the motors, and also the pneumatic stuff. I also have a huge town setup from sets from the 80's, the very first model of their battery-powered train sets, and enough track to circle the whole town... all carefully stored away until I have enough space to set them up again someday. Hell, I'm 28 and I still pull out the things once in a while when I'm in a creative mood. Once a LEGO kid, always a LEGO kid, I guess.

~Philly

...these sets?

Was this the car you were talking about?

Technic appears to be alive and well. Though I must agree with you about the dumbing-down and relentless merchandising of everything these days. Growing up, I thought LEGO was a lot of fun without having to attach the Star Wars franchise or any other marketing crap to the products. LEGO were (and still are) just plastic blocks that stick together, and they managed to compete quite successfully with video games when I was a young'un-- there was many an afternoon that my ColecoVision sat idle while I was furiously building space shuttles and F-15s.

I loved the Technic stuff, I had a huge box of miscellaneous gears, axles, etc, a couple of the motors, and also the pneumatic stuff. I also have a huge town setup from sets from the 80's, the very first model of their battery-powered train sets, and enough track to circle the whole town... all carefully stored away until I have enough space to set them up again someday. Hell, I'm 28 and I still pull out the things once in a while when I'm in a creative mood. Once a LEGO kid, always a LEGO kid, I guess.

~Philly

Lego Online Shop - here you can choose your country, or here is the shop with all the products.

Lego Online Shop - here you can choose your country, or here is the shop with all the products.

What is included in this kit is at the Lego web site here.

Somebody keep this guy away from the Dark Side developer kit

Macromedia released Director 8.5 with 3D support. It has a tool for creating interactive 3D using Lingo (the Director language). Most of the stuff that's being produced is kinda crappy, but you should check out the Lego site for an awesome example of a game. More to come, you can be sure...

You can get them at http://www.lego.com/bulk/.

There is plenty of them. (I didn't find the proper way to get them in red, so I changed the get url (the parameter) by hand ... %-)

You can get just about any Lego you want in Bulk from the Lego Bulk Ordering Site. You can get 2x and 1x bricks in bags of 25-100 in your choice of colors. They also have Roof tiles, Trees, Windows and much more avaliable.

You can buy bags and buckets o'bricks at shop.lego.com

-k

Lego will sell you two remote control tracked vehicles for $89. They call them Manas and are part of their Bionicle series. But nevermind that -- you get two IR remote control vehicles with three channels. Plus you can control them from the Mindstorms RCX.
-russ

Lucas has 1 trademark for the term "light saber", number 1126220. It's stated very carefully that it is a toy sword, and it is categorized under toys and recreation ... Minrad has one trademark application for the term "light saber", filed in April of 2000. It's categorized under medical equipment. Not anything remotely connected to toys.

It's true that trademarks usually are restricted to one domain of goods and services, but sufficiently strong trademarks can gain protection across trademark domains. For example, if a surgical tools company called its new tool "LEGO", don't you think the LEGO Group would have a right to sue?

The question here is whether LIGHT SABER® is strong enough and famous enough to cross domains.

While it'd be very cool to have your own droid to boss around ("Droid! Do the laundry!" "Droid! Clean up my desk!" "Droid! Bring me a martini!"), I don't think they'd be affordable - or practical - for quite a while. Plus, NASA currently doesn't have the resources to support the necessary service. And why buy a NASA droid when you can build one yourself using LEGO? Not only would that be cheaper, but it's much geekier.

The space versions, however, show great promise. Good article.

check out this beauty

more engeneerabe bits & pieces than you could shake an erection-set at!

AND it teaches kids some (very) basic programming concepts

Man, i wish i was 8 again

They also have some "technical" legos with motors and gears, or at least they used to.

To blame the downfall of British engineering on toys is wrong. British engineering is facing increased competition form abroad. To generalize, which is always dangerous, British engineering has been fairly innovative (box bridges, those reflective things on highways.....) but sometimes not as thorough and reliable. Look at the former British car companies for an example to see this problem is far from new..

In general though, through out the world engineers are under paid and under appreciated. (software "engineers" being an exception..)

As a Dane, critisism of Lego always touches a sensitive spot (you DO know that Lego is from Denmark, right? ;) but you are really on to something here.

The blocks are bigger now than before. However, I saw an interview with a chief designer/engineer at Lego on Danish TV a year ago, and he said that this was a trend Lego got into in the 90's, and that they wanted to move away from it, as many of their customers were complaining about it..... so there's hope :)

BTW, a tidbit you might appreciate: A couple of years ago part of the LEGO Technic assortment was targeted in Danish newspapers towards adult men! A picture of 40 year old man in a suit toying around with a few pieces. I thought it was so cool, but I don't think it was a commercial success. I guess girlfriends would rather buy sweaters than toys for they husbonds for Xmas.

Oh yeah.... another tidbit.... LEGOs longterm vision: Programmable intelligent blocks - think OBJECTS! Very cool that LEGO, which AFAIK inspired OOP, now wants to take the idea back and use it to develop themselves.

-Kraft

I mean, hey, it's not as if they don't have amazing constructions made of lego -- Legoland in Windsor only has millions of bricks worth of famous attractions, cars, trains, boats, and LOCKS that really work, pumping water up and down and everything. English engineers should be inspired by Legoland, which is just outside London...

• Start by convincing them that computers are general-purpose things that are ubiquitous and are getting more so: take apart a video game, show 'em where the computer is, put it back together and it still works... take apart a cellphone or pager, point to the TV, dig up a smart card, etc. It isn't what they do that's important: it is what they can be made to do that is cool.
• Next, go outside and do "people programming." Get a volunteer and have your class figure out how to get the volunteer to do something useful: make sure that the instructions are declarative and are followed verbatim.
• Next class, take the instructions that worked and program a Lego robot to do the task (or any logo with a turtle, etc). Seeing a lego monster doing the same things that the volunteer did outside should be suitably cool as to hook 'em.
• Keep the action going: robots are good, but glowing turtles (especially dynaturtles!) are ok, too.
• Don't play games - write games that the kids can extrapolate into the video games they see all the time. Mugwump and daleks aren't substantially different from Quake (illustrate the point by playing quake for a bit after writing daleks). Maze generation and solving is a good one to try: simple but powerful algorithms.

There are a zillion sites on the subject of teaching computer science to kids. The net of a million lies might not be your friend, but it can be a valuable source of information.

The solution to your problem is Lego Mindstorms and a nice script. (Posted earlier). Just build a little robot to load and unload the CD's from the tray, and then rip and repeat.

Sounds like a fun weekend project. You could have it queue up hundreds of CD's... and let it rip. (Pun intended)

This was posted some time ago...

Lego DJ thing

I think Lego should definately get with the program and start creating a contest of that sort for its "Lego Mindstorm" robots.

I think Lego should definately get with the program and start creating a contest of that sort for its "Lego Mindstorm" robots.

BTW You probably don't want to see this either. And we's USers, not USians.

--

For anyone wondering, you can find the set of Lego's used in this film here.

I would get the kid the Lego Mindstorms starter kit. What a perfect toy/tool. It will teach him programming in a fun and cool and most importantly, creative way. And it has great hackability! You can put your own code on there programmed in C and a variety of other languages, and he could get involved with others working with Mindstorms over the internet.

Check it out, Mindstorms are the coolest toy I have seen in years.

Recall that originally C++ used the Cfront compiler to generate C code which was then compiled as normal. Also, NQC for Lego Mindstorms is a replacement programming language that surpasses the functionality of the graphical programming tool Lego provides.

Perhaps someone will build a CFront-like compiler to generate YaBasic statements from a higher level language (such as Perl) allowing for more fully featured programming. YaBasic may be a small step right now, but I can see technically skilled PlayStation2 programmers coming up with replacement (or at least a wrapper) for YaBasic (though Sony UK is not off the hook for supplying a cheesy language for their system).

Note: I'm kidding about using Perl. Ugh... (shudder)

http://mindstorms.lego.com/darkside/ That just shows part of the Hoth battle, but it is animated.

Personally, im[sic] dismayed at such a level of irresponsibility from such a distinguished company.

Perhaps if they get enough of these notes they'll wise up... after all, Shopping Season is close upon us.

services@lego.com is the address to bug'em yourself. Yes, I know this is liable to slashdot'em. Serves'em right, IMHO.

I'm a big fan of parental responsibility; what your kid sees and does on the net is YOUR problem. But when I can't get in to have a peek and make sure the site is legit because someone insists on shoving a cookie down my craw, it rather sticks there. Yeah, yeah, there are other ways to track, but my inside addresses are NAT'ed and my outside one is part of a huge ISP's block, so a whole lotta damn good that's going to do them... but nooooo, Lego isn't satisfied with a good generic demographic, they want it ALL...

Well, they shall get none from me.

--
"If you don' like it, you can kiss my furry little butt!" -- MiB

Because it's made out of legos, dipshit. Welcome back to earth. Wait, this looks right, as does this. There is no reason they couldn't have made it look really good, *and* still function as a Mindstorm product. If they did that, I imagine more people would buy these overpriced toys.

Because it's made out of legos, dipshit. Welcome back to earth. Wait, this looks right, as does this. There is no reason they couldn't have made it look really good, *and* still function as a Mindstorm product. If they did that, I imagine more people would buy these overpriced toys.