Slashdot Mirror


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."

2 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. A scrap of meta-relevance by d5w · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Ok, struggling to find some /. relevance to this, I'll just point out that the name Beowulf does, in fact mean "bear" (it's an Old English compound "beo" ("bee") + "wulf" ("wolf") = "bee predator" = "bear"). So this is clearly the right infrastructure for hooking up a Beowulf cluster.

    Ok, slim material, but I did like seeing the status LEDs in the eyes.

  2. Re:Mundane into interesting... by NoMoreNicksLeft · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hmm. Aesthetics. Aesthetics is something that the consumate marketdroid will never understand. If they had existed in any great numbers 100 years ago, cars would have had great big fiberglass horse sculptures fused to the chassis, to make it look more like the "original". This is what they would think was "aesthetically pleasing", because they have no great desire to actually appreciate what a car was/is. They just use some hackneyed formula, and whatever garbage plops out on the other side of the equals sign, well, that must be what consumers want.

    Apply this to computers, and to a lesser extent, technology in general. A person that appreciates what a computer actually is, doesn't want one that looks like a teddy bear, or like some 1950's vision of the future, complete with some improbable Imac-esque form factor.

    Does that mean that I prefer clunky XT style cases, with their "mildewed in a lost cave for 12,000 years" beige? Lord no, simply that in loving the things beyond their plastic shell, I actually have a good idea what might make them look their best without trying to turn them into something they're not. Sleek polished black, with only the slightest hint of organic curves, subtle blue LEDs... you get the idea.

    Oh, and the wireless hub/switch thing? Sorry if that seems like it's nitpicking to you, but those are more than buzzwords to me. But thanks for showing to the world that they're nothing more than that to you.