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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."
Some girls just don't have a sense of humor.
I to wondered what the heck "Teddy Borg" is for....
Then I saw the poll at the end.
Desirable to geek chicks.....
Guess this is why I'd never get into MIT. These guys KNOW how to get laid!
I think the project could have been helped a lot by using an actual Borg Teddy Bear.
--Metrollica
"Bother," said the Borg. "We've assimilated Pooh."
Let's see them put a network switch inside a *real* bear. Then I'll be impressed.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Yah. I was thinking I could do the same thing with a wireless hub and a stuffed bunny (anntenne in the ears).
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
Well, if you didn't have an iPod, you could bring one into a computer store and leave it innocently hooked up to the ethernet port of one of the demo machines (and put a hard drive inside it, of course) and steal office apps.
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
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
What's the point of this? Maybe networking a bunch of animals together? Or the proverbial Beowulf cluster of stuffed animals?
Wow, I can see this. Put MicroATX PCs inside teddy bears... one paw for power, the other for net... create beowulf cluster...
"See that pile of stuffed animals over there? That's my teraflop supercomputer."
Just watch out when your male cat starts coming in to hump the nodes. Gives a whole new meaning to "wiping data".
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Ok, slim material, but I did like seeing the status LEDs in the eyes.
Close...
See that pile of stuffed animals over there?
that is my Bear-Wolf cluster.
Check this out
I made a quilt full of old ATX boards. it is a Tera-Mr.Floppy SuperComforter.
comment directly in my journal
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.
Put one of those wireless netcams in it. Give it to the hot chick down the hall, Instant Free DormPorn. Of course this is very illegal and I am not responsible for the beating you will recieve from her boyfriend and subsequent jail time if you get caught.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
"Awwww, what a cute teddy bear! His eye's even light up!" (reaches out and grabs bear, ripping out cables in the process)
"Nooooooooooooooooo! Not my game of Quake!"
"I don't trust goats," --To Catch a Spy
Yeah. I stopped reading right there. I don't want to know how to access the bear's ports, thank you very much!
Imagine how many hits you'd get if you turned your stuffed animal into a webserver... brings new meaning to "server farm"...
What's the point of this? Maybe networking a bunch of animals together?
:-)
:-)
I think they were bored. Now, I think it would really funny to put a small embedded processor in the bear with an IR receiver and transmitter. The IR receiver would harvest the signals from your TV/VCR/DVD remote control, and then the bear got "bored", it would replay those IR commands in random order
Or for the more ambitious, it could have a more powerful processor and an 802.11b interface. It would listen for wireless networks, and try to gain access. Then, of course, it would automatically run exploits against any host it found.
Either one of these bears would make a great gift for an unsuspecting recipient
A dingo ate my sig...
I'm surprised nobody has posted this yet.
The ping in the last picture on the Teddy Borg has the IP 18.238.3.106 listed. I can ping it from here.
First person to crack up buy the round after work.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
you could also call it a server "farm"...
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? */