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."

Comments

It's Raisn d'Etre

[Chef_TM]

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!

What kind of teddy bear?

[Metrollica]

I think the project could have been helped a lot by using an actual Borg Teddy Bear.

Bother

[GSV NegotiableEthics]

"Bother," said the Borg. "We've assimilated Pooh."

Re:Bother

[Tim Macinta]

"Bother," said the Borg. "We've assimilated Pooh."

Ah, now there's a way to defeat the Borg that was never tried on Star Trek... offer up Pooh as bait and then after his consciousness has been assimilated, point the Borg at the HoneyNet project.

Pish posh.

[Dan Crash]

Let's see them put a network switch inside a *real* bear. Then I'll be impressed.

Re:i admit it...

[tb3]

Yah. I was thinking I could do the same thing with a wireless hub and a stuffed bunny (anntenne in the ears).

Re:Uses?

[duren686]

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.

Re:Uses?

[aussersterne]

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".

Re:Uses?

[emptybody]

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.

People here just don't get it

[clark625]

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.

I think they missed it

[NumberSyx]

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.

Re:I think they missed it

[nlh]

Give it to the hot chick down the hall

Ahh...herein lies mistake #1...you seem to have forgotten at which school this was done...

Not what I had in mind...

[imadork]

The switch will be located inside the bear, so we need to find some way to have the ports accessible from the outside

Yeah. I stopped reading right there. I don't want to know how to access the bear's ports, thank you very much!

You too can ping through Teddy Borg

[nathanm]

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.

Re:You too can ping through Teddy Borg

[Anonymous Coward]

Just look at this....

[root@localhost root]# nmblookup -A 18.238.3.106
Looking up status of 18.238.3.106
RECURSION <00> - B <ACTIVE>
FOURTHEAST <00> - <GROUP> B <ACTIVE>
RECURSION <03> - B <ACTIVE>
RECURSION <20> - B <ACTIVE>
FOURTHEAST <1e> - <GROUP> B <ACTIVE>
SLUG <03> - B <ACTIVE>

[root@localhost root]# smbclient -L RECURSION -I 18.238.3.106
added interface ip=10.88.20.10 bcast=10.88.255.255 nmask=255.255.0.0
Password:

Sharename Type Comment
--------- ---- -------
OPENGL Disk
MYMUSIC Disk
SHARED Disk
IPC$ IPC Remote Inter Process Communication

Server Comment
--------- -------

Workgroup Master
--------- -------
[root@localhost root]# smbmount //RECURSION/shared /mnt -o ip=18.238.3.106
Password:
[root@localhost root]# ls -l /mnt
total 49639
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 4225 Sep 12 09:14 hallbudget.wks
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35725704 Jan 18 01:21 sp6i386.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 12739202 Nov 6 01:56 star wars episode 2 teaser.mov
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2359352 Dec 22 1998 XZerg1high.bmp

[root@localhost /]# umount /mnt
[root@localhost /]# smbmount //RECURSION/opengl /mnt -o ip=18.238.3.106
Password:
[root@localhost /]# cat >/mnt/asdf
Test
[root@localhost /]# cat /mnt/asdf
Test

Oh dear! World writeable share.....

Re:You too can ping through Teddy Borg

[*xpenguin*]

oh common, this is probably the first and last time in your life you can say, "i hacked a teddy bear's samba server"

Re:Teddy Ruxpin Borg?

[AndroidCat]

Nah, the bet thing to do to a Teddy Ruxpin is to wire it to the speaker phone in the conference room.

First person to crack up buy the round after work.

Re:Uses?

[zaius]

you could also call it a server "farm"...

Complaining about story

[KirTakat]

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.