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The Teddy Borg is Alive!
probabilistic writes: "Check out what bored MIT students are up to -- a few of my friends, in their never-ending quest for network connectivity and female companionship, created the Teddy Borg. It might look like an innocent teddy bear, but behind the soft exterior lurks a GigaFast 5-port 10/100 ethernet switch."
I'm sure there could be a million inventive ways to hide our mundane technology into things that are more decorative.
How about hiding a switch inside a picture frame... or even better a wireless switch...
Computers like any other technology component ultimately should be invisible or at the very least appealing to home users.
I have a feeling that this bear, like many other "whim" ideas may be the beginning of something much better.... A step in the "refinement" of home computing.
Some girls just don't have a sense of humor.
Only if it was a cool case mod, which Slashdot routinely coveres, and which is basically what this is. And it is really well done, not just a "toss in a router and trail the cables out the back". The three points that I like are the power and uplink leds inserted into the eyes, the placement of the power and uplink cords into the GitS/Matrix standard "nape of the neck", and the color coordinated jacks in the paws. Where the hell did they get hot pink RJ-45 jacks and cable heads?
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Judging by people's posts thus far, most just don't get it. What's the point to this--it's just a switch in a teddy bear? Heck--I could do this on my own. It's not that interesting. Oh wait, since it was students at MIT, it must be really neat.
Frankly, I doubt most people here could ever get it. This teddy bear is so cool only because it makes a much nicer UI than a cheezy box with a few blinken lights and ports. It's soft and fuzzy. It's not beige and scary. If I had a daughter, I'd love the idea of giving her a laptop and a switch like this. All of a sudden, the idea of a "sleepover computer party" wouldn't be so gosh darn nerdy. They could stay up all night playing with Virtual Barbie or whatever is the software of the year.
Plus, what's so special about these MIT guys is that they have documented the heck out of this little endeavour. I'd gladly hire one of these guys to work with me. Sure, it's not the best idea every conceived--but at least it's documented. I could now go and reproduce their efforts without much thought.
In all, it seems rather impressive to me. It's a neat new UI that's not typical. It's documented to all heck. That beats half of everything I've ever done.
Long, cute, or funny Sigs are just another form of over compensation, used by geeks, nerdz, etc.
i submitted a story last week about IBM embedding strong cryptographic chips in their computers and it was rejected.
Just a theory, but it seems as though the flavor of stories change at different times of the week. Fridays tend to be more cooky, wacky, fun, pranks. Weekends are more of the softy stuff, like JonKatz movie reviews and amusement parks. Monday morning it's back to business with new breakthrough discoveries and lawsuit announcements. Of course, you've got to stick in the random noise of zeitgeists being brought to public attention, and political happenings.
In summary - you probably should have waited to post your IBM story on a monday morning.
Or, paid Taco a subscription fee... :(
- passion
I don't think this story was posted because people thought it was something impressive. It was posted because people thought it was something funny and original, not every story posted has to be an earth-shattering breakthrough so stop complaining about it. And the fact that its from MIT has very little to do with it I imagine, its just a funny story that Timothy thought we might enjoy.
/* Of course I'm real, but can you prove it? */