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LEGO Mindstorms Will Survive

thufir writes "LEGO has released a press release, where they dismiss the rumour that MINDSTORMS is being taken out of production. For some reason the changes in product policy lead to the misunderstanding that they would totally drop the product. 'Hearsay has it that a product range like LEGO MINDSTORMS is no longer in focus. This is not true. On the contrary, MINDSTORMS, CLIKITS and BIONICLE are all good examples of products the company wants to stake on.'" See our previous stories, Lego to Stop Producing Mindstorms and Lego Goes Back to the Basics.

266 comments

  1. News for nerds, indeed by jargoone · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have a buddy I went to college with. Nice guy, very well spoken and everything. He's still single, and we're in our late twenties. I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with the several MindStorms "things" he has in various places in his house. I mean, they're cool, but jeezus, wait til you have one reeled in before you bust the Mindstorms out of the storage room.

    1. Re:News for nerds, indeed by aml666 · · Score: 0, Troll

      This would be THE primary reason for our existance. If all men were palm loving loners... the human race would end.

      --
      www.thejulingtoncreekplantaion.com
    2. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There will always be mouth-breathing, beer-guzzling, wife-beating trailer trash happy to squirt along half a dozen kids along with his eight grade education. No need to worry about the human race ending (due to lack of population).

    3. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Make money.

      That would be, as opposed to making less money and then spending it all on chicks.

    4. Re:News for nerds, indeed by The+Dobber · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'm guessing:

      Mumbles a lot and has a fixation with his Swingline stapler.

    5. Re:News for nerds, indeed by probbka · · Score: 1

      I'm rather guessing: says "Bah, humbug" often; expecting revelations and conversion sometime in late December.

      --
      Only requirement for good karma: be pedantic as much and as often as possible.
    6. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      There's nothing more pathetic than a geek who never got any in high school and then is fucking proud because he convinced some chick in college to marry him. For some reason however, these guys seem to think they're the shit. Must be some trauma from school I suppose.

      I'm a somewhat average looking guy who's also kinda geeky. I had (some) sex in high school and still have occassionally. I'm not into long lasting relationships however. I think there are much more interesting things in life than raising kids and trying to keep your wife happy to prevent a family crisis. So I choose to stay single. Why change that? It's perfect the way it is.

      You guys who think it's the greatest thing to bind a female to you for the rest of your life should really wake up... it's not. At least not for people who don't want to give up their creativity and/or personality.

    7. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Maarek_1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Perhaps he just hasn't met a person interesting and creative enough for him. Anyone who would think less of a person because they have Lego constructions in their house is not what I would call desired genetic material anyway.
      You should do what makes you happy anyway!!

    8. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As opposed to the one who rarely has a meanigful relationship, fails to grasp the meaning of what a family is about and then constructs some rationalization for it?

    9. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You guys who think it's the greatest thing to bind a female to you for the rest of your life should really wake up... it's not.

      And it's not (as many geeks seem to think) the solution to all your problems. It will only create more, believe me.

    10. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      fails to grasp the meaning of what a family is about

      Care to explain? You really seem to know your stuff there.

    11. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What do you do with your spare time, masturbate?

      Masturbate furiously.

    12. Re:News for nerds, indeed by The+Dobber · · Score: 1


      Good thing your Ma and Pa didn't share your view point.

    13. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What do you do with your spare time, masturbate?

      May I inform you of the thread topic again? :-)

    14. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Rallion · · Score: 0, Redundant

      True that.

      Girl I'm with now decided she wanted to be with me after she saw my collection of sci-fi books. Turns out it shared a good number of titles with her own. It's nice, we share interests.

      Now that I think about it, that's because years before I met her I had suggested them to a friend, who suggested them to a friend, who suggested them to her. But that's very much beside the point.

    15. Re:News for nerds, indeed by bertrandom · · Score: 1

      I kind of wish they had.

    16. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're on /. and you have a girlfriend?

      How utterly strange.

    17. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because you absolutely can't cope with the fact that there are people out there who don't share your ideals?

      Or is it just because you wanted to score a cheap +5 funny?

    18. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As opposed to the one who rarely has a meanigful relationship, fails to grasp the meaning of what a family is about and then constructs some rationalization for it?

      Actually, I feel that most people construct a rationale FOR having a family, not against it. It's pretty easy to explain, in rational terms, why you don't want to have a family. It seems to be pretty hard to explain why you want one without having to use crap like "saving humanity" and "everlasting love" as arguments though.

    19. Re:News for nerds, indeed by stangbat · · Score: 1

      This is true. And if anyone thinks differently I have a Lego Darth Vader and Emperor looking at me right now that would love to open a can of whoop ass.

    20. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Man, that joke never gets old! Keep up the good work.

    21. Re:News for nerds, indeed by bgarcia · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Anyone who would think less of a person because they have Lego constructions in their house is not what I would call desired genetic material anyway.
      OR.... maybe you can't get a date because you keep calling them "desired genetic material" instead of "women".
      --
      I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
    22. Re:News for nerds, indeed by perdelucena · · Score: 1

      Heretic! Dubbya wants you to get married. Also, this money can help other geeks to find someone to get married with too, you insenitive clods...

    23. Re:News for nerds, indeed by iocat · · Score: 4, Insightful
      It's an interesting problem. To think of it from the girl's perspective, try cats. If you went to a girl's place and she had a cat, you might think. "Oh look, she likes cats. This indicates a number of things about her, all reasonably positive." But if you went to her house and she had like 11 cats, you'd be like "oh man, she's a freak."

      A few LEGO projects may indicate a whimsical, curious personality. Too many LEGO may indicate to the women that they will always be second-place to plastic blocks, or other toys. I think most women look for some balance, and extremes in any direction -- too many star wars figures, too many lego, too much money obviously invested in the home theatre -- runs the risk of driving them away.

      Or it could be his bathroom isn't clean enough. That's always a deal-breaker with the ladies.

      --

      Dude, I think I can see my house from here.

    24. Re:News for nerds, indeed by iocat · · Score: 1

      Crap, I forgot to mention on that post how rad it is that LEGO isn't 86-ing Mindstorms! I thought they might not, due to its educational value, so its cool to see. I just hope they don't kill the Discovery series NASA LEGO. I haven't found a better way to interest a three-year-old in space.

      --

      Dude, I think I can see my house from here.

    25. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you're happy being single, then please, be single. I used to be happy being single too, now I'm not. I NEED a girlfriend now. And not just for sex (though I wouldn't mind the sex, obviously). I feel like life's experiences aren't as valuable if there's no one to relate them to, and like it or not, friends and family only go so far.

    26. Re:News for nerds, indeed by bluekanoodle · · Score: 1
      Too bad humans are not rational. We are pre-wired to have emotions, to feel love, to want to be part of the larger social order. (Well most of us, maybe you're a defect.)

      Then again, that's natural selection at work. Obviously your inability to comprehend the importance of family has been declared a weakness by nature and by you not mating, your defective genteic material will be remove from the pool, and humanity will become stronger. Go ahead with your rational beliefs, I'll take love and humanity any day of the week.

    27. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We are pre-wired to have emotions, to feel love, to want to be part of the larger social order.

      You've just admitted that you're a blind follower who can't think for himself. Too bad for you that you're pre-wired, unable to make rational decisions and unable to gain a deeper understanding of how the world really works in the process. Have fun living your life as a pre-wired robot then. I'm afraid you'll always be inferior to people who don't give a shit about love and humanity though. As is evident by pretty much every government in the world, these are the people who lead others.

      your defective genteic material will be remove from the pool, and humanity will become stronger.

      Make me care. I'm not out here to help humanity, it's my goal to make the world work for ME. And I bet so is yours, even if you can't admit it. I couldn't care less if humanity completely vanished after my death because, you know, I won't be around then.

      Anyway, I never said that I don't have sex, right? Since we all know the only way to have safe sex is not to have sex, my genes might be around for some time. Not if I can prevent it, however. Since unfortunately, keeping your genes in the pool requires devoting much of your life to boring tasks associated with family life.

    28. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, someone is going to die lonely and a virgin, that's for sure...

    29. Re:News for nerds, indeed by tordon · · Score: 1

      One word:

      Stalker

    30. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You?

    31. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why single out lower class whites? Isn't this also true of poor blacks and hispanics?

    32. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why single out lower class whites? Isn't this also true of poor blacks and hispanics? Because if we said that about blacks and hispanics, we'd be racist. You say stuff like that about white people, and it's funny.

    33. Re:News for nerds, indeed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you think dating is about anything else than genetics, think again. All your euphemisms belong to us.

    34. Re:News for nerds, indeed by bluekanoodle · · Score: 1
      Easy to call someone a blind follower when you have nothing to fall back on. Its kind of like the people who dress goth, because they want to be different, then end up looking like a every other "outcast."

      Judging by your poor logic and self delusions of being "different," you have no idea what it takes to lead people. After all if you had such brilliant insights into leadership, you could easily lead a revolt against against pretty much every government in the world. Hmm. I guess your not as special as you think you are, nor as smart.

      The problem I have with your attitude is not that I think every one should have kids, but that you think your better because you haven't bought into the lie of the "family." For me, there is nothing I'd rather do then spend time with my wife and kids. It fulfills me.

      You may feel differently, but I unlike you, don't think you're inferior because of that but rather that your inferior because of your judgemental, juvenile and selfish attitude.

  2. Bring back the old sets by Medieval · · Score: 3, Funny

    I want more castle lego sets. I had one really badass set a few years ago and now I can't find it anywhere, even on ebay. I don't even know what it was called. :\

    1. Re:Bring back the old sets by tuffy · · Score: 5, Informative
      I don't even know what it was called. :\

      Look for it here.

      (Just try not to /. them too much)

      --

      Ita erat quando hic adveni.

    2. Re:Bring back the old sets by snatcheroo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The older castle sets did kick ass. I remember salivating over the Sears Wishlist Catalogue for hours while looking at the medieval and sci fi Lego back in the mid 80's. The castles then were bigger and more complex as I remember. My one grudge was that every 1 or 2 years there seemed to be a completely new series and the old stuff was impossible to find all of a sudden...

    3. Re:Bring back the old sets by sielwolf · · Score: 1

      I gotta cosign you on this. The King's Castle was monstrous. My brother finally got it one Christmas and we did what we always did that time of year: take our multitude of castle sets, rebuild them into one giant complex on the dining room table and then blow them apart by shooting them with rubber bands.

      I also thought the Black Knight's castle was so badass looking but then it just disappeared off of the shelf :(

      --
      What is music when you despise all sound?
    4. Re:Bring back the old sets by Slappy00 · · Score: 1

      I soo wanted one of those castle sets and the old Technics (sp?) sets. I remember that one of the commericials said like "Storm the castle!!!" and i immediately started pestering my parents to get me one. Yah and the lego men looked much tougher with those Rollie-Finger mustaches on the pirate characters ARRR...

    5. Re:Bring back the old sets by Basehart · · Score: 1

      WOW

      I clicked on one of the early 60's boxes and was instantly transported 7,000 miles away and across time back to my old bedroom.

      What a trip. Thanks so much for that link, and of course the people who built the site.

      The cover designs are totally brilliant.

    6. Re:Bring back the old sets by styrotech · · Score: 1

      I had the same thing with the 70's ones. I'd pretty much forgotten about that stuff.

      The red hospital, shell service station, police launch, float plane, and the yellow dump truck and back hoe etc.

      I also got the technic tractor a bit later on too. Lego was one of the few toys my parents would buy me as a kid - good choice I reckon :)

      Oh well, back to being an adult....

  3. Whew! by Dilbert_ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I must say this is a relief... My first child is being born in a few months and I was afraid I'd have to start stashing away Mindstorm kits... It would have been like 'New-Coke' all over again ;-)

    --
    superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
    1. Re:Whew! by bob_jordan · · Score: 2, Funny

      If you were storing old-coke for an unborn child, make sure you kept an eye on the use by date.

      Bob.

    2. Re:Whew! by BoldAC · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I don't know... but this looks like a great way for legos to get a whole lot of free press.

      1. Hint that they are killing Mindstorm
      2. Tons of people talk about how great Mindstorm is
      3. Public gets informed about their great product.
      4. Squash the rumors and say "We will continue to sell the Mindstorm products that you love"
      5. You know the rest...

      Nice working of the system to get some free, targetted advertising. Bravo!

      AC

    3. Re:Whew! by mattdm · · Score: 1

      Y'know what's like New Coke? The change of the color grey for 2004 sets. Your old lego doesn't match your new stuff anymore!

    4. Re:Whew! by perly-king-69 · · Score: 1

      Not without precedent. Worked with Heinz Salad Cream in the UK a couple of years ago. Although it's hard to build a robot out of a condiment.

      --

      --
      This sig is inoffensive.

    5. Re:Whew! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      From personal experience, don't EVER mix up a batch of Cool-Aid if the little package is about 10 years old.

      It's a little bland until you get to the bottom of the cup and a tar-like substance is revealed.

      Oh, and don't taste the tar-like substance.

    6. Re:Whew! by jebell · · Score: 2, Funny

      I don't even want to imagine what "Salad Cream" is.
      (yes, I'm an American)

      --
      This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
    7. Re:Whew! by iabervon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm personally in favor of any advertizing strategy in which step 2 doesn't involve paying anybody. It's the mark of something that's actually worthwhile if people will actually preemptively eulogize your product, instead of just shrugging.

    8. Re:Whew! by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Where did they "hint that they are killing Mindstorm?" Oh, they didn't--only Slashdot did? I see.

      --
      "Sufferin' succotash."
    9. Re:Whew! by Doctor+Faustus · · Score: 1

      But are they bringing back the Mindstorms with high fructose corn syrup, or is it still the real cane sugar?

    10. Re:Whew! by Sepper · · Score: 1

      only Slashdot did?
      Fill in the blanks: The average Slashdotter is _________

      It's called "Targeted" Advertising.... Like this

      --
      I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
    11. Re:Whew! by Lord_Dweomer · · Score: 1
      " Where did they "hint that they are killing Mindstorm?" Oh, they didn't--only Slashdot did? I see."

      Ah, perhaps you should find out what a PR firm does sometime. It may not be the most ethical thing in the world, but people use PR plants all the time to stir interest. And Slashdot is a great site to target if you're going for the general demographic that congregates here.

      --
      Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
    12. Re:Whew! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I wonder how much they lost in stock value over a rumor....

    13. Re:Whew! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There was evidence to prove that Overly Critical Guy is a lying cocksucker, but he deleted it. Think independently.

    14. Re:Whew! by iocat · · Score: 1

      LEGO is privately held.

      --

      Dude, I think I can see my house from here.

    15. Re:Whew! by perly-king-69 · · Score: 1

      Relax. It's a slightly thinner, sweeter mayonaisse replacement.

      --

      --
      This sig is inoffensive.

  4. Yey! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Oh man, this is GREAT NEWS!

    Now, let's hope that Microsoft decide not to cancel MS Bob after all!

  5. Various languages for Mindstorm programming by tcopeland · · Score: 5, Informative

    Ruby
    Java
    Python

    Good times!

    1. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by shuz · · Score: 1

      You forgot C Good 'ol C the only langauge of that bunch that can really squeeze out all the performance of that little processor.

      --
      There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
    2. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by blancolioni · · Score: 5, Informative

      Ada

    3. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by JediTrainer · · Score: 5, Funny

      Enough with the toy languages.

      Real programmers will use Visual Basic!

      Ouch! Ouch! Stop hitting me!

      --

      You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
    4. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I've always thought they missed the boat by not using LOGO. Granted, more can be done with the others, but if your really trying to teach kids nothing beats logo.

    5. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This dude isn't trolling. He's obviously being intentionally funny. Or did you not see the 'ouch ouch stop hitting me" line?!

    6. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by 3terrabyte · · Score: 0, Flamebait
      Oh god, you're pushing your Ruby again?

      Love that empty sourceforge site of yours!

      --

      Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?

    7. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by tcopeland · · Score: 1

      > you're pushing your Ruby again

      Nah, just spreading the joy.

      > Love that empty sourceforge site of yours!

      Hm. The download area for the mindstorms project is here... I guess I'm not sure what you're referring to...

    8. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by sharkey · · Score: 1

      Huh, I would have thought Assembler would be the most logical choice.

      --

      --
      "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
    9. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by Speare · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Logo is nice if you have a more powerful robotic base; Mindstorms deconstructs robotics to a lower level.

      For example, the average Logo program assumes that the turtle has enough capability to turn 90 degrees then drive forward 15 units. That, in actual robotic terms, is quite a feat. You have to implement a well-clocked motion base with many sensors and motors before that would really happen. And then you're stuck with that specific motion-base on which you could try other robotics methods.

      In contrast, Mindstorms goes to the atomic features that can implement any sort of robotics base: the core actuators and sensors which could implement a turtle-like motion-base (though the base kit wouldn't have enough to make a generalized turtle), but can also implement many other non-turtle motion projects like arms, dollies, winches and walkers.

      There's nothing in the LOGO language which couldn't also drive those projects, but then the nature of the programs would be much more like RCX than LOGO. Instead of "turn 90", you'd have "turn until sensor 3 trips." The level of abstraction is just too low for what LOGO was best designed to teach and demonstrate.

      --
      [ .sig file not found ]
    10. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by rmohr02 · · Score: 1
    11. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sure looks empty. Oh, theres one file there. Nevermind.

    12. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by FreakyGeeky · · Score: 1

      Real Mindstorms programmers use either Not Quite C (NQC) or lejOS and Java.

    13. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by elflet · · Score: 1
      LOGO is old news -- there's far more interesting work being done in Squeak these days -- the re-vivified form of Smalltalk with a nice building-block (date I say "LEGO-like") approach to programming.

      (As long as we're speculating, it should be possible to put a stripped-down Smalltalk kernel on the RCX.)

      The teachers at my son's school are looking at it as a way to teach programming. At the same time, they have the students using Moose Crossing a kid-friendly MUD/MOO environment.

    14. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by nemesisj · · Score: 0, Troll

      My goodness. I've always wondered if there was anyone out there who ever thought Squeak was at all useful, and now I've come across one posting on Slashdot.

      I'll be damned.

      No disrespect, and I'm sure you have your reasons for liking it, but I've never ever had a worse experience than programming with Smalltalk in the Squeak environment. I had to use it for a school project, and I found 5 or 6 critical, repeatable bugs in the interpreter/environment. What a nightmare.

      If you're able to use this environment to accomplish ANYTHING, my hat is off to you.

    15. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by Lord_Dweomer · · Score: 1
      " Logo is nice if you have a more powerful robotic base; Mindstorms deconstructs robotics to a lower level."

      Man....I'd never program my Mindstorms bots in Logo. Jesus, if that robot moved at even HALF the speed I had that stupid little turtle zipping around at in highschool.....well, it would be a very expensive experiment.

      --
      Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
    16. Re:Various languages for Mindstorm programming by Anonymous+Coed · · Score: 1

      There's a very fine line between trolling and being intentionally funny.

  6. Good news! by tuxette · · Score: 3, Funny
    I'll have something cool to buy for my nephew (and future nephews and nieces) when the time comes!

    And yes, they're for my nephews and nieces!

    --
    People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
  7. at last something smart by dummkopf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    not only do geeks in my former physics department write grant proposals to get lego mindstorms and then race them, they are actually an EXCELLENT toy for teens to learn to program, robotics, ... what the standard lego building blocks do for kids in the age range 3 - 8, mindostorms do in the dange 8 - 15 (clearly these numbers are not bounded on top): foster creativity! so... why drop an educational tool which has proven to be excellent. i guess lego knows what is good and what is not. what i hated with lego (as a big fan since i can remeber), is that in recent year there have been more and more specialized blocks which are useless and completely kill the main goal of lego: use your imagination to make a plane out of bricks. giving the kid a wing was a bad idea, IMHO, because kids then would be bored. after all, you got the wing out of the box, so why spend time trying to figure it out!

    1. Re:at last something smart by crumbb · · Score: 1

      Go look at the "Designer Series" of sets that came out about a year ago. It's what all the slashdot crowd has been crying out for in these lego stories.

    2. Re:at last something smart by krb · · Score: 1

      Your comment on racing reminds me of one of my classes in college - a sort of "How Stuff Works" physics class. We had an assignement which was to build a mousetrap powered lego car, using a specific technics set. I'm not sure if the other people (mostly humanities majors) got into it like i did, but i loved that project. That car kicked ass...

      --
    3. Re:at last something smart by dummkopf · · Score: 1

      : ) by the way: the same guys who got lego from the NSF also got money to make a ropewing from a bridge. it's just a matter of how you sell it to the government.

    4. Re:at last something smart by krb · · Score: 1

      that's great! i love the NSF. They funded my summer internship too. Best summer of my life...

      --
    5. Re:at last something smart by joeyGibson · · Score: 1

      Not only good for teaching teens to program, but much younger as well. My five year old son has 'written' his first program using the RCS builder-tool that ships with the Mindstorms kit. He is just learning to read, but the fact that most of the programming bricks have an icon on them indicating what they do, he's able to get what he wants. He's learned by association what the non-icon-bearing bricks are and can write and run his programs with very little assistance from me. I was heartbroken when I read the original PR that sounded like they were killing it (especially since I just bought mine a week ago). I've very happy it's not going away.

      Now I can write more NQC code to control my RoverBot... :-)

  8. Good... by JoeLinux · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My Masters Program (no joke) has a project wherein we have to develop a minesweeper program using mindstorm. Other than the fact that BrickOS hasn't been updated since 2001, I was worried somewhat that I would be using a non-functional toy from here on out.

    Hmm....any other projects that work with Mindstorm that I should be aware of?

    Joe

    1. Re:Good... by shuz · · Score: 1

      I can see minesweeper being a relatively difficult problem using only one stock set. 1 light sensor, 2 touch sensors ect. I and 2 others developed an automated warehouse forklift using one rcx two light sensors and a touch sensor with 3 engines. That was a nearly impossible task for object avoidance and detection. The real trick is telling what is the barrel you want to pick up from the barrel you want to go around. We used the touch to avoid objects after they had been detected by a forward ir radar. Then with another light sensor facing down we black taped the floor around target barrels. Was a fun project but was hell to get the timings right.

      --
      There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
    2. Re:Good... by grungebox · · Score: 3, Interesting

      At UT-Austin, the first electrical engineering class requires you to design/program a Lego Mindstorms robot to travel along some path and do something at the end of the path. I'm not exactly sure of the project specs because they started the Mindstorms projects the year after I started EE, which kind of sucks. Apparently the Mindstorms thing has been a big success with the students, and it does get students into some cool programming almost immediately. One person told me the retention rate for EE majors beyond their first semester is a little bit higher since they started the Mindstorms projects. Perhaps that's a coincidence, but you never know...

    3. Re:Good... by oblom · · Score: 1

      Yup, AI 2 course in my school had two projects:

      - line following
      - soccer game

      Both done with Lego Mindstorms:

      http://oblom.net/robocup

  9. Re:Lego by rogue555 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's pretty cool. Basically, it's a microprocessor with some snap on sensors and motors. You then have the option of programming it with the included visual programming language, or you can use one of a miriad of more advanced languages availible.

    Back when it first came out, my Dad and I competed in a sumo cometition held at his work. It was really fun as a high scholl student to be able to play around with robotics and see how changes in code can affect the behavior of the system.

    --
    "That's not ironic, it's just mean!" - Bender
  10. What about the Mindstorms add-ons? by Goth+Biker+Babe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I was bought my Mindstorms kit a couple of years ago as a birthday gift. Recently I've been looking to upgrade it but all the add-on kits seem to have disappeared. The Ultimate Accessories Set, the Ultimate Builders Set, the Dark Side Set and the Mars Explorer Set have all vanished.

    The Lego shop doesn't list any of them other than the base set. People like Amazon list them but can't say when they will have any stock. They do seem to have vanished from the face of the net. I have managed to get a Mars Explorer set half price which suggests it's end of line. The only place I can get anything is BrickLink and at a price.

    When I saw the original /. post regarding Mindstorms I assumed that was the reason. Now they've said they're not stopping Mindstorms why have these other sets disappeared and is there any other way you can you get the extra sensors these sets provides?

    1. Re:What about the Mindstorms add-ons? by cmpalmer · · Score: 2, Informative

      While they don't appear to have the full sets, Pitsco has sensors, extra parts, and lots of neat Lego stuff intended for the educational market.

      Their print catalog is really cool.

      --
      -- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
    2. Re:What about the Mindstorms add-ons? by elmegil · · Score: 1

      When the previous article came along, I saw a handful of the expansion kits on EBay too....

      --
      7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
    3. Re:What about the Mindstorms add-ons? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I panicked and bought a 1.5 off of Ebay. Don't really regret it though as I got it for 130 and I have always wanted one, just never took the time to get one. Ultimate Builders Set looks cool too but I will probably just buy sensors etc as I need them from pitsco and go for regular technic sets for bulk pieces.

  11. Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by MoobY · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ... do they really want to keep the bionicle products? Maybe they're doing a good thing by involving more girls into building toys by keeping the clikits. Boys need bricks and stuff that allows them to be creative. They don't need 200 bionicle sets that still doesn't allow them to build a house. Where are the good old days that lego was selling boxes that had about 5 designs, and enough pieces that allowed you to plenty more designs of your own. I'm amazed that the bionicle products are profitable. After I bought one, I promised never to buy one ever again, as it didn't give me a better collection of bricks that allowed me to do more fun projects. (Note that the mindstorms set was great as there are over 700 regular technic building pieces in that one)

    --
    --- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
    1. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by mark*workfire · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Sorry, but my 11 year old can't get enough Bionicle's. Won't play with Meccano, KNex, or anything else, but Bionicles get hours of attention.

      Not only that, but he builds them, then the 3 year old destroys them, and they have a great time playing together with them. At only $5CDN each, they're great cheap entertainment.

      Definitely not for adults, but great for kids to spend an hour with the lego here and there.

    2. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by The+Dobber · · Score: 1


      Same could be said about the Star Wars and other tie-ins.

      That being said, my grandson loves the Bionicles.

    3. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by Raptor+CK · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But Bionicle brings in the cash. It's a building theme with a story, and as such, it's been doing well, especially since it's all homegrown.

      The trick isn't to look at Bionicle as a building kit for vehicles and structures, but to see it as an action figure building kit. This has become especially obvious as the limb pieces have become more and more diverse. Sure, it's slightly limiting, but it's also the single best source for ball-joint parts, which on their own aren't so bad.

      Kids buy it because their cool action figures. Everyone else seems to like ripping them apart for the useful pieces, and making some pretty wicked looking skeletons of whatever creature comes to mind.

      --
      Raptor
      "Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
    4. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by nucal · · Score: 1

      Kids are crazy about them, they generate a ton of profit. One thing that this means is that they can help subsidize less profitable lines like Mindstorms ...

    5. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Realize that Bionicles is more like a collectible card game than real Legos. I'm also sure that it makes a boat load of money for Lego, too.

    6. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by fireduck · · Score: 1

      from what I know, Lego owns/developed Bionicle. Sure it might seem fairly lame from a "build anything your imagination can come up with" standpoint, but it's spawned a movie, which apparently made some money, as another is in production. Since Lego owns it, they aren't paying licensing fees, hence costs are cheaper and profit higher. I'd presume they're liscencing out (or profit sharing) bionicle to the animation studio doing the movie, and that's another source of income.

    7. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by rcastro0 · · Score: 1

      Listen, I don't know what is your experience with Bionicles, but I decided about a year ago that was a good gift for my 8-year old nephew. After getting his one-robot set, he went about building all sorts of creatures with it. I am not kidding you. He built various types of insects and robots and could even ask me "what do you want me to build ?" and then do it right on the spot. No, it didn't come in any booklet. It all came from his creativity.

      I wish I had some pictures taken of what he came up with to post it online. But, anyway, I think we should not understimate the power of a child's imagination and creativity. I mean, I have seen 3rd world poor kids playing with corn cobbs, pieces of wood, broomsticks, boxes and plastic bottles -- and coming up with imaginative representations of things in the grown up world. Why would anyone think they couldn't do that with Bionicles ?

      --
      Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
    8. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by mlush · · Score: 1
      .. do they really want to keep the bionicle products?

      Aside from the fact that Bionicle is hugely popular and responsible for getting LEGO out of the red last time?

      Bionicle is not as generic as the bricks why is this evil? It is very very good at what it does, make robotoid creatures. My 5 year old son can (on his own) make a biped creature (with lots of heads and swords :-) which he can actually stand up. Consider the alturnative I could get him a SuperMegaSnod action figure which will always be the same (give or take torture by magnifying glass) or I could buy him a few Bionicle sets and let him make his own action figures.

    9. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by fuzzybunny · · Score: 1


      True. However, I bought the big-ass TIE interceptor a little while back, and spent a whole afternoon/evening putting it together.

      I'm 30 years old, having spent a lot of my childhood (until about 2 years ago) playing with legos. I'd completely forgotten how much fun they were, even with instructions to follow.

      --
      Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
    10. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by gfxguy · · Score: 1

      Definitely not for adults, but great for kids to spend an hour with the lego here and there.

      I've got the original set of six at my office (as well as a whole collection of Simpsons characters, LOTR characters, etc.)

      Of course, all they do is look cool as yet another toy collection, I don't use them, sadly.

      Now, the classic bricks - I've got a ton at home that my son and I play with.

      I'd love Mindstorms, but it's a bit pricey... don't have enough time to play with it to justify it. But maybe when my son is older it'll be great.

      --
      Stupid sexy Flanders.
    11. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by jacobito · · Score: 2, Informative

      What you want are the Lego Designer and Inventor series sets. They consist chiefly of traditional Lego bricks, include several designs in each set, and, by God, they don't seem to be advertisements for anything! The pieces are versatile, and you should be able to use them to build many models not envisioned by the original builders. The product line leads up very nicely to the Technic sets (which were called "Expert Builder" sets when I was a kid).

      If I had more disposable income, I would buy up every set in this series.

    12. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by markball · · Score: 1

      Yes, you can't build a house with bionicle, but you would be surprised at what can be built. There are also some more free-form bionicle kits that allow wider expansion of ideas.

      My son and his buddy have started making stop-action movies with their bionicles. The ball joints help!

      Now, until today I had never heard of "clikit". If you're complaining about legos that limit creativity, this is it. Girls play with plain lego (and bionicle) just fine.

    13. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by mlush · · Score: 1
      My son and his buddy have started making stop-action movies with their bionicles. The ball joints help!

      Thats weard I was just going to post and ask if anyone knew of stopmotion Bionicle films For his information the new balljoints seem much more grippy than before

    14. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by DeDmeTe · · Score: 1

      Amen to that. I have refused to give into the pressure to buy my 5 year old son any of the Lego "kits". You know what he got for Christmas?? A good old fashioned standard box full of standard Lego's. I have fond memories of building all kinds of things. It was a challenge. Especially building cars with my brother, smashing them together on the kitchen floor, and then going back to the drawing board to make them stronger and last longer. :-)

      --
      -Guns kill people like spoons made Rosie O'Donnell fat-
    15. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by Epsillon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Kids buy it because their cool action figures. Everyone else seems to like ripping them apart for the useful pieces, and making some pretty wicked looking skeletons of whatever creature comes to mind.

      Finally, someone gets it. My son has been buying Bionicle since they came out. To be honest, it's only done his education good, especially as he has researched the underlying mythology that goes along with the toys themselves, spurred on by the movie (which, IMO, for a kid's movie was excellent. Made a huge change from the usual gratuitous violence in cartoons).

      He also uses the parts to construct other models from his own imagination. OK, you need a few kits to do this, but it seems to keep him quiet and amused.

      To the nay-sayers, please allow our kids the luxury of being able to prove themselves. Just because you don't understand the ethos, doesn't mean they can't. After all, most of you get the kids to program the video...

      --
      Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
    16. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by Raptor+CK · · Score: 1

      Holy crap, I'm the biggest idiot ever.

      Kids buy them because they're cool action figures.

      Yes, I'm nitpicking my own post. Someone should, I'd like to think that I'm better than this.

      --
      Raptor
      "Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
    17. Re:Good thing they keep mindstorms, but ... by mclem · · Score: 1

      Hell, my (nearly) 6-year-old is totally devoted to 'em. And they stay together for about an hour, and then all the bits get yanked apart, re-assembled and combed over for about an hour, and I get...

      "Hey dad, look what I built out of my imagination."

      Nothing makes a Lego-geek/parent prouder, lemme tell ya... my kid's Bionicles kick the ass of any Pokemon garbage the other kids have.

  12. Where? by Al+Scagnetti · · Score: 1

    Can anyone recommend a good place to buy these? I don't recall seeing them in the local KB the last time I was there. Hell, they barely carry regular legos. Maybe they were just out of stock from the holidays.

    --
    'Round and 'round the mulberry bush...
    1. Re:Where? by FerretFrottage · · Score: 1

      toysrus had them last time I checked as did ebay (search lego mindstorm)

      --
      "Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
    2. Re:Where? by homer_ca · · Score: 2, Informative

      KB has very little name brand stuff. Most of it is overpriced, cheap no-name junk. No surprise they're in Chapter 11. Target has at least an aisle and Toys R Us has a pretty big section of Legos.

    3. Re:Where? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you order directly from Lego, you can get the current Mindstorms set AND a bunch of extras (remote control, extra motor, extra gears, rods, wheels, etc.) for just $29 more...quite a bargain. Wish I'd checked their web site more thoroughly before I picked up the base set.

      Robotics Invention System Kit:
      http://shop.lego.com/product.asp?p=K9916&t=5 &d=13& c=173FD784%2D51A8%2D45AE%2DBAB9%2D02E173AA327C

  13. Need cast iron mindstorm kits by FerretFrottage · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yeah, I built a little robot that kinda chased my kids around...that was all fine and good til he decided to Rage Against the Machine. There are still lego pieces in the fishtank.
    Great product, glad to see it is still going.

    --
    "Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
    1. Re:Need cast iron mindstorm kits by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 4, Funny

      So you're saying that you wanted your robot to win the confrontation?

  14. There goes my idea by shuz · · Score: 2, Funny

    To develop an updated RCX with more memory and a better processor all while developing a better battery sollution and working with Lego to market it after Lego realizes what they lost. *sigh*

    --
    There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
  15. When did legos begin to diminish creativity? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    (I submitted this for a /. poll a few days BEFORE the first Lego stories broke about cancelling certain product lines.)

    At what point did the introduction of increasingly sophisticated and purpose-built Lego pieces diminish the creative aspects of Lego construction?

    1961: First lego wheels
    1964: First Lego sets to include specific building instructions
    1974: Large-scale "maxi-figs" (solid bodies, poseable arms, heads w/ faces)
    1978: Town sets with mini-figures, trees, signage (gas, fire station, etc)
    1984: Knights, armor, swords, horses, wagon wheels, banners
    1988: Pirates, cannons, tree trunks and leaves, pirate flags, alligators
    1995: Aquazone, scuba gear, squids, painted canopies w/ sea-monster faces
    2000-present: Bionicles, Star Wars, Spider Man, and Harry Potter sets

    Another point in time? Actually, I'm not as interested in the date itself as much as the sequence of brick releases.

    1. Re:When did legos begin to diminish creativity? by bob_jordan · · Score: 1

      This makes me feel old. I remember the figures before they had poseable arms. Not only that, my first big box of lego came in a wood box.

      I wonder when they stopped using wood for the boxes.

      Bob.

    2. Re:When did legos begin to diminish creativity? by potus98 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Whew! This is a tough one. As you start to zero-in on a particular brick or set, you quickly realize how this becomes a slipperly slope.

      I'm okay with the mini-figures and town/castle sets -probably 'cause that's what I grew up with. But the aqua-zone sets had overly detailed paintjobs on many of the pieces that diminished the imaginative part and often limited those pieces to under-water adventures.

      But then I think about the town and castle paint jobs. They had pieces with Exxon stickers, police station logos, stone walls, etc... Did THOSE pieces limit my imagination and I just didn't know it?

      What about that little spaceship zooming around the moon logo on the space sets?

      Maybe all legos should be restriced to a single color and one of 8 shapes: You could have a line, a square, a "T", an "L".... DOH! That's another poll/thread!

      --
      This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
    3. Re:When did legos begin to diminish creativity? by potus98 · · Score: 1

      Wooden boxes!?!? Cool! Was the lego train set steam powered at the time? Sorry couldn't resist!

      Don't worry. I bet there's still wood fibers in the cardboard boxes they use today! :-)

      --
      This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
    4. Re:When did legos begin to diminish creativity? by Drakin · · Score: 1

      naw, you just turned them around and hid them inside walls...

    5. Re:When did legos begin to diminish creativity? by zaffir · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The painted faces were part of it, but it really got bad when LEGO totally dropped the cool, unique sets (anything from Pirates to Space Police to the Aquazone) in favor of the licensed ones that are 90% unique pieces.

      --
      "Upon attaching the waterblock to my penis, I began to notice that I know nothing about computers." -- JRockway
    6. Re:When did legos begin to diminish creativity? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was about 1983 that they introduced "prefab" wall pieces and "unibody" vehicles -- before then all the buildings and cars were made of bricks.

      That's right about when I quit playing with Legos^W, so as far as I'm concerned, that's when they jumped the shark.

      (Also, your history leaves out the introduction of Space sets around 1980.)

    7. Re:When did legos begin to diminish creativity? by potus98 · · Score: 1

      Imagine the product recalls and consumer relations crisis that would ensue from exploding lego bricks!

      "AHHH! MOM! I blew my finger off and the carpet's on fire!"

      --
      This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
    8. Re:When did legos begin to diminish creativity? by cowscows · · Score: 1

      I remember the early space sets, and I think they were pretty cool. There were some pieces with stuff painted on, but they were for the most part pretty generic. Control panels and such. It could work for a space ship controls, or an airport control tower, or part of a machine to crush other lego men, whatever. And they were rare enough that they became almost precious.

      The spaceship/moon logo I wasn't too thrilled about. Maybe painting the pieces to make them more representative of functional objects, things that couldn't be built at a lego figure's scale otherwise is where it should stop.

      --

      One time I threw a brick at a duck.

    9. Re:When did legos begin to diminish creativity? by JonKatzIsAnIdiot · · Score: 3, Insightful

      [X] Never did, but the Slashbots don't understand it.

      I don't understand whole 'Bionicles diminish creativity' thing. Have you ever actually watched a kid play with them? Mine do, and the stuff they come up with is pretty wild. They'll look at an instruction book and find something they like, but being too impatient/stubborn to actually follow instructions, they'll figure out how to build it themselves.

      The fact is, original Lego is great for building orthagonal structures, but terrible at anything else. Circles, angles, joints, gears, wheels - none of these can be built with 'regular' Lego blocks. Putting these things in gives the builder additional options and enhances creativity rather than diminishing it. Besides, how can you have a decent Rockshi vs. Hogwarts battle without them?

      The people complaining about 'diminished creativity' remind me of old farts sitting in their rockers complaining that 'things aren't the same as they used to be'. You (and they) are right - things are different. Lego has changed and that's good.

    10. Re:When did legos begin to diminish creativity? by jazman · · Score: 1

      Yes but you're not comparing like with like. If you go into Toys R Us and look for Lego you will ONLY find Bionicle and Harry Potter.

      A more accurate comparison would be:

      1961: Stop selling everything we've sold before and start selling only wheels
      1964: Stop selling wheels and only sell kits with instructions
      1975: Stop selling kits with instructions and only sell maxi-figures.

      You see the difference? None of the previous marketing drives SUBTRACTED from what was already on offer. But where can you now find town sets, castles, pirates, trains, technic and so on? You can't - and THAT is the problem with Lego's current marketing strategy.

      (Ok, so perhaps it's all available on-line. But I only found out about that within the last week, and for the last 10 years I've been taking a geek's salary into Toys R Us with a view to finally satisfying my childhood dream of buying unlimited amounts of Lego, and it's all this shitty Harry Potter crap - no trains, no Technic, no nothing.)

    11. Re:When did legos begin to diminish creativity? by potus98 · · Score: 1

      Good point! It's not like Lego replaced any of the older designs -they always added to the repwotoire(?!?) of pieces to choose from. A better way of looking at the issue is to consider what is commonly available when you shop mainstream outlets for Lego sets.

      Although few of the old pieces have ever been technically discontinued, many have been effectively discontinued through highly selective and focused marketing strategies "at the shelf".

      --
      This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
  16. Glad they're keeping Mindstorms by Bigman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was somewhat bemused when I read the previous press release, they can't be killing Mindstorms, I thought to myself. After all, of their entire range, Mindstorms is practically unique - the only cheap 'control system' experimentation kit for all ages. And yes, it is cheap, in the context of the alternatives.
    Don't know about the bionicals thing though, I've never really looked into it.

    --
    *--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
    1. Re:Glad they're keeping Mindstorms by Pope · · Score: 1

      Bionicles are more like action figures than traditional Lego toys. They were supposed to lure in the 7-12 boy market, but I have no idea how well they sold.

      --
      It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
    2. Re:Glad they're keeping Mindstorms by mlush · · Score: 1
      Bionicles are more like action figures than traditional Lego toys. They were supposed to lure in the 7-12 boy market, but I have no idea how well they sold.

      Very very well indeed. More background here.

  17. Troll, mod down. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just another troll trying to spread rumors.

    1. Re:Troll, mod down. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1 817&e=1&u=/zd/20040115/tc_zd/116601&sid=961207 51

      Not a rumour.

    2. Re:Troll, mod down. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Listen, from the beginning this was cut and dry to me. Open source programmers work to create a product that big business will sell. They are sitting in their board rooms laughing at you. You guys are making them billions now and you're not seeing a red cent. This is almost as funny as when Red Hat went public and those CEOs became filthy rich when all they did was polish off something you and your friend scotty worked like slaves to make for society. Idiots.

  18. Fish don't eat legos by FerretFrottage · · Score: 4, Funny

    Who said the robot didn't win :)

    --
    "Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
  19. Slashdot is a rumor site by Junks+Jerzey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Between this and all of Mac rumors that get posted...maybe the tag should be changed to "The latest dirt for nerds?"

    1. Re:Slashdot is a rumor site by buggieboy · · Score: 1

      Right. Like, I wonder what started these rumors and forced Lego into damage control mode in the first place. Could be shoddy journalism at slashdot, perhaps?

  20. Wait.....WHAT? by VistaBoy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    'Hearsay has it that a product range like LEGO MINDSTORMS is no longer in focus. This is not true. On the contrary, MINDSTORMS, CLIKITS and BIONICLE are all good examples of products the company wants to stake on.'

    Wait......they aren't going to take down Mindstorms, but then they say right there that Mindstorms is a product they want to stake on. That's the most confusing thing I've heard all day.

    1. Re:Wait.....WHAT? by MindStalker · · Score: 3, Informative

      You obviously don't know that "stake" can mean to place a wager on.

    2. Re:Wait.....WHAT? by AKnightCowboy · · Score: 1
      Wait......they aren't going to take down Mindstorms, but then they say right there that Mindstorms is a product they want to stake on. That's the most confusing thing I've heard all day.

      Why is that confusing? Do you not understand what "stake on" means? Think "focus on" as an alternative.

    3. Re:Wait.....WHAT? by rbolkey · · Score: 1

      "On the contrary, MINDSTORMS, CLIKITS and BIONICLE are all good examples of [emphasis mine] products the company wants to stake on."

    4. Re:Wait.....WHAT? by Myopic · · Score: 1

      You're confused, and I'm confused as to why you're confused. To me, they used clear english: they don't want to end the product lines; rather they want to stake their business future on the product lines. What part don't you (and the people who mod'd you up) understand?

    5. Re:Wait.....WHAT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps he thought "stake on" was the thing you do to vampires?

    6. Re:Wait.....WHAT? by Xzzy · · Score: 2, Funny

      Products (such as LEGO) are not vampires. Staking them does not kill them, and in the business world it actually means the opposite.

      Been marathon watching the latest Buffy DVD release too much? ;)

    7. Re:Wait.....WHAT? by GreyPoopon · · Score: 1
      To me, they used clear english: they don't want to end the product lines; rather they want to stake their business future on the product lines.

      And what's unclear about that is that the use of the word "stake" in this case is metaphorical and may be confusing to those who haven't heard it used in this context. Most of the rest of us don't realize this because we hear it all the time and automatically pick up on its meaning.

      For a full understanding, imagine that you are climbing a mountain and at the end of the day there is no ledge to sleep in. You must set up a hanging bed which requires that you drive a supporting stake into a crevasse in the rock. Which one will you choose? Now compare that choosing which product line to focus on. Choose incorrectly and it could do to your company what a similar mistake would do to a mountain climber. However, I think the origin of this usage of the word has nothing to do with mountain climbing.

      --

      GreyPoopon
      --
      Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?

    8. Re:Wait.....WHAT? by deprecated · · Score: 1

      Jesus Christ on a stake! People, figure it out already!

  21. Perl by twoshortplanks · · Score: 4, Informative

    Lego::RCX module.

    --
    -- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
  22. Now that they're keeping Mindstorms... by PaintyThePirate · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...they really should update it. It's been over four years since Mindstorms first came out, and Lego still hasn't made any significant changes or upgrades to it. It really is an excellent learning/building tool, but there are many limitations to the RCX. A newer model, say, RCX 3.0, with increased processing capabilites, more ram/rom, and possibly even Wifi or Bluetooth instead of IR would be terrific.

    1. Re:Now that they're keeping Mindstorms... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, the one thing the RCX needs more than anything is more I/O ports. I like to integrate Mindstorms with Technics sets (my current project is a front-end loader/backhoe); try controlling not just forward/reverse and steering but ten hydraulic cylinders. Using four or five RCX bricks is just out of the question.

    2. Re:Now that they're keeping Mindstorms... by sxpert · · Score: 1

      and 8 sensors / 8 motors would be in order. 3 isn't enough...

    3. Re:Now that they're keeping Mindstorms... by BuilderBob · · Score: 4, Informative

      The problem with the Mindstorms kit is that it has always relied on a few researchers output from MIT. The researchers used a (AFAICR) Microchip PIC with EEPROM to use as the CPU and an EPROM chip to store the single byte commands. There was also a smaller Mindstorms kit(can't remember the name) based on another MIT project called Crickets, which were smaller, with no LCD screen and only digital I/O. They are referenced on the linked page but the link is dead.

      The PIC they used has 13 dual I/O pins and some others, even a basic Brick would take 4 pins for the lcd screen, 3 for the logic inputs. I think there are 2 A/D converters which are both used and a reset switch, oh, and the IR (it has IR, right?)

      If they want the kind of things you ask, they need to upgrade the hardware, which they have never done. But with the latest chips they can easily get 4 ports (32 I/O pins) and a couple of A/D aswell. It will also have a new communication protocol allowing (essentially) less I/O lines for the memory and LCD and faster programming.

      The radio communications is a bit different, WiFi is out I think, the power needed and the overspec of the transmission (a TCP/IP header would take up a lot of space on the chip).

      The Bluetooth might be possible NOW, the communication is either by serial port (RCX 1.0) or USB (RCX 1.5/2.0?), all you should need to do is hack the software to use the port, its already set up to communicate in low-level code.

      The language was ripped off from LOGO (perfect for a robot really) and is easy enough to upgrade..even using some of the other interpreters/languages written for the chip.

      And yes, I did plan to make a clone, even down to rough schematics and language design. One problem with a clone is the accessories, the brick hardware is possible. The extra sensors are kind of tedious :( LEGO has the LEGO bricks as a common theme to make sensors easy, and they kept them simple (Was it anymore than a switch and a thermistor/resistor?)

      Oh for simpler times, when real work didn't interrupt.

      BB

  23. The day is young! by shuz · · Score: 2, Funny

    Well at least for CST time zone it is.

    --
    There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
  24. THANK GOD. by chowdmouse · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Had to be said....

    1. Re:THANK GOD. by chowdmouse · · Score: 1

      Not that my comment was particularly helpful, but don't see how that was off topic (thus modded down) with all the "goods", "whews", "yays", and miscellaneous other happy comments about Mindstorms not being discontinued. I'm just expressing succinctly what a lot of others did. Weird moderators. Oh...wait...unless it was the general "oops...he said the G-word" hysteria that cause knee-jerk reactions from most folks. Of course moderators do realize that "Thank God" is an idiom, right?

  25. My sentiments exactly by jdavidb · · Score: 1

    On the contrary, MINDSTORMS, CLIKITS and BIONICLE are all good examples of products the company wants to stake on.

    I'd be only too happy to drive a stake throught the guy who invented Bionicles. Not Lego at all.

    Glad to hear about Mindstorms, though.

    1. Re:My sentiments exactly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I'd be only too happy to drive a stake throught the guy who invented Bionicles. Not Lego at all.

      What anger, what vitriol! We could use someone like you looking for Osama ...

    2. Re:My sentiments exactly by thomasa · · Score: 1

      That is a bit extreme for a product that
      probably keeps lego alive.

  26. Bionicle? WHY? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Am I the only one who saw those Bionicle commercials the first time they came on and was like "WTF?". I was watching a mvoie on Cartoon Network I think and they kept showing these commercials for this Bionicle thing but they never explained what it WAS. Finally some months later I saw a comemrcial for LEGO Bionicle sets and figured out that that is what it was.

    But who came up with this stupid idea? They created some really convoluted mythology that makes absolutely no sense to sell what amounts to lego action figures with some kind of tribal futuristic snowboarding theme.

    If they really want to focus on their better products, they should have KEPT the harry potter and star trek sets and gotten rid of this nonsensical CRAP.

    Oh and the problem with stuff like star trek sets and harry potter sets is not that they have a theme, but that they have all these specialized parts that are completely useless for anything else. The whole point of lego is to be able to build the set and then take it apart and come up with new stuff to build. But when stuff like an imerial fighter or whatever comes with huge fixed wings as a single solid peice that will never look like anyhting but an imperial fighter wing, (or whatever those ships are called) you can't exactly use the parts to build a truck instead.

    Lego doesn't need to get rid of their specialty sets. They need to CHANGE them so that the come with MORE parts, and LESS specialty parts. Make the kids make the big flat vertical wings out of a big octagonal peice with some smaller octagonal peices stuck on it. But leave the bumps. Don't make one solid wing.

    And get rid of that stupid ass Bionicle.

  27. AI4U Free Minds for Mindstorms by Mentifex · · Score: 4, Informative

    A free Mind for Mindstorms and other robots is available in Forth, for when the Mindstorms robot has enough user-fillable RAM to load in the AI4U Mind.

    pbForth has long been a Forth programming language available for the "brick" of the Lego Mindstorms.

    An Aibo robot fan site features the JavaScript version of the free AI Mind.

    AI4U: Mind-1.1 Programer's Manual is an alternative AI textbook that describes the Robot AI Mind in the 34 diagrams of 34 chapters corresponding to 34 mind-modules.

  28. Rubik's Cube by markfive · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Awhile ago I was looking around for methods to solve the Rubik's Cube. I came upon this guy who created a cube solver entirely out of mindsorms. Complete with color recognotion camera. Pretty nifty if you ask me..

    1. Re:Rubik's Cube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That site links to another site that has a bunch of Japanese Mindstorm creations. http://www.mi-ra-i.com/JinSato/MindStorms/index.ht ml

      I cant read it, but the pix are neat.

  29. legoland an email unfriendly place by HeyBob! · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I couldn't find any way to contact anyone at Lego by email - just through customer service. It would be nice to send an email of encouragement directly to the management.

  30. Forgive me for responding to a troll.. by Baron_Yam · · Score: 1

    Humans are social creatures. A large portion of that social behaviour revolves around sex. Survival of life demands it: if you don't reproduce, then when you die, something that DID will take your place.

    As such, we're programmed to be happy when surrounded by friends and to be happier when we have a mate... forgetting for a moment that we also seem to be programmed to want a new mate about every 1.5-3 years and manage (mostly) to ignore that in favour of monogamy.

    So, those people who totally ignore finding a mate are, in fact, messed up - abberant - strange. Given the 6 billion people on Earth at the moment, I'm sure a few more non-breeders added to the sterile, gay, or whatever can only help us, but it still isn't 'normal'. Now, if we could only manage to ensure that all the anti-social and gays, etc were male, it would give the rest of us guys a much better chance of scoring that harem we've always wanted.

    1. Re:Forgive me for responding to a troll.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know about you, but I'm going to die whether or not I procreate. I've had an awful lot of sex and none of it has prolonged my life.

      Besides, people don't have sex (99% of the time) to have kids and reproduce. THey have sex because they want to get screwed. Hence condoms, birth control, etc. So if you are claiming that people who aren't driven by hooking up with a chick and having a family are messed up, then what's different about people who are driven by the same things, except they take precautions to avoid the actual procreation part?

    2. Re:Forgive me for responding to a troll.. by Manassas · · Score: 1

      Amazing that a discussion of Legos could turn to sex...only on /.!

    3. Re:Forgive me for responding to a troll.. by Morpeth · · Score: 1

      A troll remark, but it does require a response. I've seen so many guy friends who just hand their balls over to their spouse/gf and stop being who they were just to get laid on a regular basis - then again, some of these guys wives seem to loose interest in sex after marriage or their first kid... so I'm not even sure they're getting much anyway. I'd rather be single, than being like that anyday. "programmed to be happy when surrounded by friends and to be happier when we have a mate" Really? Yet another wannabe /. sociobiologist talking out there freaking arse. Yes, I have a degreee in philosophy and sociology, and don't have time/interest in rebutting that bs. As far as true happiness goes, it's doing what makes YOU happy, not what society tells you makes you happy. I know plenty of unhappy married friends, and many happy single friends, and of course vis versa, it's a matter of doing what fits you. Narrow minded twits like you have a hard time envisioning people living differently that you do, hence anything outside you're limited understanding is 'wrong'. You'd make a great religious zealot btw. I'm a 'serial monogamist' (had about 4 intimate relationships lasting 4-5 years each). A far as trolls like you saying I'm 'abberant' because I don't just let biology dictate that I do the marriage and 2.1 kids thing, guess what - it's called having a brain and exercising free will, and I'll call you weak willed sheep for saying biology is everything, and mind is nothing. I choose not to going with the societal pressure and 'norms' because I don't have the guts to do what I want instead of becoming some brow beaten p*ssy whipped pansy.

      --

      'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
    4. Re:Forgive me for responding to a troll.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, I have a degreee in philosophy and sociology, and don't have time/interest in rebutting that bs

      Please do it, because I'm having this discussion on a regular basis and would really appreciate some arguments from a professional.

      I'm serious.

    5. Re:Forgive me for responding to a troll.. by Morpeth · · Score: 1

      There's a lot to cover, but if you're serious, a great introduction to social psychology (and subjects like conformity, mass communications, propaganga, etc.) would be The Social Animal by Elliot Aronson, it's a staple for undergrad psych/soc students.

      Very engaging book imo, with some good case studies and such. It doesn't cover biological determinism as much as I'd like, but does cover a broad range that would probably be of interest to you for your discussions/debates.

      Good luck.

      --

      'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
  31. Because this 45 year old gorilla says so!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Shove it LEGO

  32. MOD THIS UP - NOT A TROLL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is unbelievable to me that this could be rated troll. The language used is rather offensive but the poster makes an excellent point.

    1. Re:MOD THIS UP - NOT A TROLL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny


      You aren't getting any either, huh?

    2. Re:MOD THIS UP - NOT A TROLL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe you and the OP could hook up. You might not be procreation compatible, but you'd have somebody to cuddle with on those lonely nights.

  33. It's been slow going, but by NickFusion · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The RCX Brick and a few other Lego bits are the heart of my 3D Scanner project.

    I need to set up NQC or LegOs for the next phase, and I need a good way to control the camera.

    Dang. Not enough hours in the day.

    --
    What were you expecting?
  34. project idea by ThePretender · · Score: 2, Funny

    Who will be the first to create a Lego Midstorm version of Gloria Gaynor singing "I Will Survive"? Would be a true expression of the meaning of this cinderella story :-)

    1. Re:project idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      I am ashamed to say that I already did this. Sort of.

      I programmed it to play the tones for 'I Will Survive', using my cell phone as a reference. I'd post the source code (NQC) if I still had it.

    2. Re:project idea by ThePretender · · Score: 1

      Best use of Anonymous Coward. Ever.

  35. Re:Bionicle? WHY? by Tellarin · · Score: 1



    star trek sets! wow, where are they? i want them!

    oh,... i guess you mean star wars,...
    well, than i agree with you

  36. Thanks to Slashdot by Lust · · Score: 3, Informative

    This clarification on the Lego website is a direct result of Slashdot. I read the original posting that Mindstorm may be discontinued and sent the article to my wife who is a primary organizer for the First Lego League here in Canada. She in turn sent it up the chain of command until it reached First in the US and then Lego. Lego responded with this clarification. So thank you Slashdot for providing the start of this process.

    1. Re:Thanks to Slashdot by KjetilK · · Score: 1
      Cool! I'd be interested in hearing why they're not releasing their own software under e.g. the GPL? It seems that LEGO would be perfect to release it, since they have solid community allready, the free software allready exceeds their own software in quality and comprehensiveness, and they make money primarily from hardware, not software (which is one of ESR's cases where he thinks there is nothing to loose by opening up). And most of all, it seems to fit extremely well with their philosophy, open building blocks, no constraints.

      Do you think you could bring in the argument and hear their thoughts?

      --
      Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
    2. Re:Thanks to Slashdot by Lars+Arvestad · · Score: 1

      If you go to Lugnet and hang out a bit, for instance in their Dear Lego newsgroup, you'll notice that they actually have people to communicate with the Adult Fans of Lego (AFOL) community. And they claim they are comitted to open up a bit more. I don't remember what they have said about their software (there might be other parties involved), but they will release 3D models of their bricks to the community. There are various other things they do right. Most importantly, they have not even tried to limit access to Mindstorm hardware.

      --
      Reality or nothing.
    3. Re:Thanks to Slashdot by KjetilK · · Score: 1
      Great! For us nordics, is there a Danish address we can write to and express our views?

      OT: Your sig:

      If it's hard to do, it's not worth doing.

      I tend to prefer another Dane here:

      Problems worthy of attack,
      prove their worth by hitting back

      -- Piet Hein

      :-)
      --
      Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
  37. It's all about the clikit market by sunking2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Little girls play with legos more than boys do now. My daughter (9 yr) brought into school all of my old legos from my mothers house because she said they were running out of them to use in her classroom. Aparently it's all the girls in the class who play legos at recess while the boys sit there and play their video games.

    While i didn't buy her any regular lego sets, she did get several sets of clikits. If they had some simple, fairly inexpensive lego kits that allowed for girls to make simple houses, malls, in all pastelly girl colors lego would take off again.

    At this point, girls generally have much more imagination and ability to sit down and play and build things. The key is breaking away from the theme based movie/fantasy themes and focus on what girls like, dolls, play houses, etc.

    1. Re:It's all about the clikit market by tmasssey · · Score: 1
      Am I the only person saddened by this? Recess is playing LEGO's and video games? What happened to, say, RUNNING?

      I'm all for LEGO's, and even video games in moderation. But no wonder children are having obesity problems...

      Sigh. I am getting OLD.

    2. Re:It's all about the clikit market by sunking2 · · Score: 1

      It's called 5 degrees out in New England. Even 25 years ago when I was in school we had indoor recess on the really cold winter days, not to mention rain, snow, etc.

    3. Re:It's all about the clikit market by bluGill · · Score: 1

      Kids today are whimps, back in my day rain, snow and really cold would keep us. But 5 degress? That wasn't really cold. When it was -10 (F, about -20C) we stayed inside, but other than that it was outside. Didn't happen often, 5F is common here.

      I recall a teacher in alaska telling about a really hot day, where everyone was outside, the boys haveing a snowball fight. One teacher turned to the other and said "hot out today, ain't it", and the reaponse was "very". The tempature was appearently -10F.

  38. Everyone complains but they haven't shopped lately by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I see everyone here complaining about the overabundance of specialized pieces. Have any of you gone down to wal-mart and LOOKED at the lego sets available. Yes, the dumb Harry Potter sets are there. Yes, the dumb NBA sets are there. Yes, the excellent Designer Series sets are there... WHAT'S THAT?! Excellent Designer Sets... I've never heard of them! Robots, Motor, Wind-up, Creatures... The Robots set comes with instructions for 49 different models and the pieces are excelent for making thousands more. Go look at what is available out there people.

  39. Re:Frist Psot! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Where did you read that he earns that?

  40. Sex and Birth Control (How far OT are we?) by Baron_Yam · · Score: 2, Informative

    Nature didn't anticipate birth control or uncontrolled overpopulation, thus our reproductive drives cause us to desire sex, not children... though some people do seem to get the itch for children. It's that excess meat between our ears causing all these problems.

    Nature prefers 'population control' using disease, starvation, and predation to 'birth control'. I prefer it the other way around.

    Oh, and grow a pair and don't post as an AC!

    1. Re:Sex and Birth Control (How far OT are we?) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, and grow a pair and don't post as an AC!

      How is posting as "Baron Yam" not anonymous?

  41. Star Wars status by porkface · · Score: 1

    The only Legos I buy anymore are the Star Wars sets, and I even have a couple of the > $100 sets.

    Unfortunately I don't see any mention of those specifically. Can anyone clarify this for me?

    1. Re:Star Wars status by eht · · Score: 1

      Don't worry, Star Wars is staying on too according to a post made by Jake McKee, Community Development Manager which i submitted 2 days ago

      2004-01-13 03:06:33 Mindstorms not going away and more LEGO news (articles,toys)
      Summary:
      pending (1)

      for more Star Wars Lego news I recommend From Bricks to Bothans

  42. So Studios is done then? by Iorek · · Score: 1

    That's too bad; I really liked the stuff. I haven't been using it much lately because I upgraded to Windows XP. I even had problems running it on Windows ME... I was hoping to see an upgrade from the 98 version at some point. Doesn't look like that'll happen now.

    I'd been noticing a lot of the Studios set in the toy store bargain bins... Oh well, I hear there are other drivers available for the camera, and lots of movie-making software in general, no doubt. Hell, I'll accept a lot if it means Lego will be profitable again.

    1. Re:So Studios is done then? by Iorek · · Score: 1

      I'll sheepishly point out that Lego's FAQ asks and answers the question I implied above: there is a Windows XP edition of Lego's Movie Maker software available. (Oh, and the FAQ also confirms that, yes, the Studios product line is done.)

  43. Yay! by psyconaut · · Score: 4, Informative

    I was kinda hoping that in a couple of years, my daughter might be old enough for Mindstorms....so glad it's staying in production.

    Oh, and one last time....the pluralization is LEGO!!! The product is LEGO. You play with LEGO. The company is LEGO. Americans are the only people on the planet who call is "Legos" or "Legoes".

    -psy

    1. Re:Yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seeing as Americans are always right (don't make us come looking for terrorists in your piece of shit country...), the pluralization is Legos. KTHXBYE

    2. Re:Yay! by CGP314 · · Score: 1

      Americans are the only people on the planet who call it "Legos" or "Legoes".

      Don't make us come over there and liberate your legos.


      --
      In London? Need a Physics Tutor?

      American Weblog in London

    3. Re:Yay! by mlush · · Score: 1
      >>Americans are the only people on the planet who call it "Legos" or "Legoes".
      >Don't make us come over there and liberate your legos.

      At least with 52 LEGO bricks for everyone in the world, you stand a better than normal chance of finding what your looking for :-P

  44. LEGO news again?! by craigmarshall · · Score: 1

    Is it just my imagination, or has there been a story about LEGO every day recently?! News for nerds? Stuff that matters?

    Craig

  45. Offtopic but... anyone remember Capsella? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I got a set of those when I was a kid... fun stuff.

  46. Obligitory Simpson's Quote by use_compress · · Score: 1

    Milhouse: My Busy Box! It's got everything! [turning steering wheel] Vroom!
    Vroom, vroom! [dialing phone] I'm calling Daddy!
    Jim Hope: Good for you, not being bound by the recommended age.

  47. Re:Bionicle? WHY? by nucal · · Score: 1
    But who came up with this stupid idea? They created some really convoluted mythology that makes absolutely no sense to sell what amounts to lego action figures with some kind of tribal futuristic snowboarding theme.

    Just wait until you have to learn the Bionicle alphabet just to play Legos with your kid ...

  48. Clikits? by Complicity · · Score: 1

    Am I the only one who thinks it kind of strange that Lego chose for the name of their "girls" line, a word that looks and sounds similar to 'clitoris'?

    I think I need more sleep...

    --
    - c -
  49. But will the improve it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    With today's watches having USB 2.0, 256 Meg storage and running linux, why does the MindStorm still have only 4 inputs/outputs, no real wireless connection and no real CPU/memory?

    And why is:

    The RC together with a battery compartment? Would it be much better to have them separeted so you can stick the batteries at the bottom, the screen at the top (point of mass lower)
    nd their radiocontrolled car has a receiver that is not very compact (and molde together with the batteries again :-( which really limits it's usefullness for let's say boats, trucks or other stuff.

    In addition, having some more different gears would be greta, because chaining too much gears in lego is not something which works good, so reducing the gears neccessarry wouldbe a cool thing.
    And finally make some bricks with LED lights in them! And some more different sized cables! Or how about a brick-plate (2x10 and 2x2 or something) with metal strips in it, so that you can save the cables and just join the bricks?

    All these changes are very cheap ( heh, its just some plastic) and compare this to the trillion new parts they made for starwars and harry potter etc. But the small changes would make Lego _much_ more usefull for robotics and RC models.

    Dont get me wrong, I love this stuff. This is why I care for it...

    Best wishes,

    Tels

    1. Re:But will the improve it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They have plates with metal inserts. They're hard to come by in sets but you can still order them from shop-at-home.

    2. Re:But will the improve it? by Shadwhawk · · Score: 1

      Actually, long, long before Mindstorms came out (it may have pre-dated Blacktron/Space Police), they released a handful of Space sets that include several of these. The flats have metal contacts running underneath and going up into the side of the studs. To these, you could attach bricks with LEDs and a simple little sound brick (which made a couple different siren noises). It ran off a 9-volt in a 4x8x2 (two bricks tall) battery case that had a 2x7 row of contacts down the middle.
      Here's a picture of the sets; I'm not sure any others were released.
      I had 6783. Last time I checked, though, it wasn't working. I'm gonna have to dig it out again and do some real testing.

    3. Re:But will the improve it? by cr0sh · · Score: 1

      I think you can get bricks with LEDs or lights from Pitsco-Lego Dacta, and I know you can get the metal-strip flat brick pieces. Plus, extra cables, sensors, motors, pneumatics (but unfortunately, for some reason, they don't sell the BLUE TANK), and other funky things from them...

      --
      Reason is the Path to God - Anon
  50. What, again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm sure it says something important about the slashdot moderation system that Mentifex gets regularly modded up here...

  51. hey, it worked on me.... by amacbride · · Score: 1

    I'd been meaning to buy Mindstorms for a couple of years, but had never gotten around to it. So when the story was originally posted, I finally ordered a set. I'm hoping to get it today.

  52. They never said that... by simpl3x · · Score: 1

    They stated that they need to refocus, and i would imagine that the role playing legos and expensive tie-in products like star wars will be the first to go. Lego is about building, not role playing. But Mindstorms is a great building product, and other companies (Dacta) support it. Mindstorms will likely never go away as a concept.

    That aside, people don't listen to the slashdot community in its natural technological capacity, why the hell would they listen to some crazed middle-aged guy talk about toys?

  53. Hey, I resemble that remark! by wikthemighty · · Score: 1


    ... actually, the only LEGO I have visable right off the bat in my living room is the Super Chief train with cars, on a streight piece of track running along the top of my fireplace.

    /30 and still hoplessly single...

    --
    "There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
  54. Dave Baum's NQCC? by wikthemighty · · Score: 1


    Is this still avaliable?

    Been using it for some time, but it has been at least a year since I've seriously worked with Mindstorms (no time!)

    --
    "There are people who do not love their fellow human being, and I _hate_ people like that!" - Tom Lehrer
    1. Re:Dave Baum's NQCC? by rmohr02 · · Score: 1

      According to apt, it's at version '2.5.r1-1' now. Unfortunately I can't find the date of the last update.

  55. Re:Bionicle? WHY? by Hatta · · Score: 1

    Funny, this is the first time I've heard of bionicle, and CN is pretty much all I watch. Just tune out during the commercials.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  56. Maybe you lack the imagination of a child by coolerthanmilk · · Score: 1

    You can use Bionicle sets to create quite the variety of things. My 6 year old has been playing with them ever since they came out and now has more than any other kid I know. They rarely look like regular Bionicles. He builds all kinds of things out of them, combines them with all his regular Lego and anything else he can get his hands on.

    Between his Bionicle, Lego and other creations, his room generally looks like a cross between an abstract art museum and a battle zone. Every little detail has a purpose he can explain to you. Maybe you need to be as creative as a kid to really appreciate them?

    Maybe it's just my son. I walked into his room one afternoon a couple of years ago and recognized what looked like a battle zone out of Total Annihilation made entirely out of Bristle Blocks, complete with rotating radar towers, turret guns, metal extractors, moho mines, etc. You could recognize all the units. And that was just with Bristle Blocks. With Lego he could do even more and with Bionicle, even more, not less.

    1. Re:Maybe you lack the imagination of a child by DeadScreenSky · · Score: 1

      Don't suppose you have a pic of that TA setup? Sounds really cool. :)

      --
      There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon
  57. Re:Wher's the HP Article!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Especially funny, considering HP is funding SCO's campaign.

  58. Re:Bionicle? WHY? by dwm · · Score: 1


    Don't get Bionicle?

    Don't sweat it. Just means you're old. :^)

  59. Re:Bionicle? WHY? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You mispelled "CNN"

  60. Motor Movers by mbbac · · Score: 1

    What do you guys think about this set? It does have a few specialty pieces, but from the large picture it looks like that only means the tail and claws -- which seems acceptable.

    I wonder if this is part of their newer focused lines or if this is one of the lines that'll get the axe. I obviously haven't kept up with Legos much.

    --

    mbbac

  61. Re:Everyone complains but they haven't shopped lat by Iorek · · Score: 2, Informative

    Hear, hear! Those creator, designer and inventor sets are excellent, and Lego should be commended for "getting back to their roots," so to speak.

  62. Re:Bionicle? WHY? by digrieze · · Score: 2, Informative

    Remember, LEGO is not an American product (although the company would probably tank if they couldn't sell here).

    The BIONICLE line is built on one version of a Norwegian mythology about earth spirits (or daemons, in other versions).

    Lego didn't come up with the idea, they just came up with new names they could protect in court.

    --
    It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
  63. When I were a lad... by maroberts · · Score: 1


    We used to try and build indestructible Lego vehicles, which we would test by ramming our effors against each other in a demolition derby.

    Mindstorms could add a whole new level to a form of Robot Wars. Anyone tried using it in this way?

    --

    Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
    Karma: Chameleon

    1. Re:When I were a lad... by Short+Circuit · · Score: 1

      We did that, too, a long time ago. I was in 5th grade, and in a waiting room at the local mental health clinic (Pine Rest) ... We're much better now.

  64. Bah, that's easy. by devphil · · Score: 1
    My Masters Program (no joke) has a project wherein we have to develop a minesweeper program using mindstorm.

    Tsk. Just get one robotic arm, and have it type out "xyzzy". Then look for the white pixel as another arm traverses the board. Done!

    (As it happens (no joke), I'm starting formal Master's work next quarter. Watch the bastards stick me with something like Freecell.)

    :-)

    --
    You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
  65. Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1. George Lucas and his friends make a couple of phenomenally successful films about some adventuring space farmer.
    2. Lego licenses a deal for said movies and makes a product line out of it.
    3. ???
    4. Paramount profits!

    Star Wars! Not Trek! And you call yourself a geek?

    Unless, of course, you're talking about some sort of home-made Romulan Empire fighter...

  66. Damn! by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 1

    I was hoping to buy another Mindstoms on a shelf-clearance special.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.
  67. Thank you! by CaptMonkeyDLuffy · · Score: 1

    Many many thanks for posting that link... I'd been needing to track down old lego manuals for some old sets that had been pulled out of storage, and hadn't gotten around to it. This should make things go quicker.

  68. Mindstorm Videos of Bad Coding by Sim9 · · Score: 1
    I do some research work with mindstorms, and I've recorded some interesting behavior with them.

    Here are two videos of Bad coding + mindstorms:

    Bad Coding
    Bad Design

    Hope that's not too offtopic, just thought you'd enjoy those :)

  69. Re:Lego by corebreech · · Score: 0, Redundant

    It is extremely cool. I got my niece and nephew one for Christmas, and had the totally righteous pleasure of helping them build a robot and watching them program it (well, watching my 10-year-old niece program it, my much younger nephew had ideas of his own as to the proper use of the technology.)

    This is great news from Lego. *This* should be their future. There are so many different directions they can go with this the mind staggers at the possibilities.

    What I want to see are smart bricks, i.e., bricks that are able to communicate with one another in some limited fashion. They've already got the ability to send power through the little Lego connector dealies, why not data? This would allow an assembled robot to communicate its design to the computer; it would also allow a program to discover whether the robot has been damaged.

    And how about RFID tags for these bricks? The most fabulously awesome robot would be one that goes around the house looking for lost Lego pieces.

    It needs to be cheaper too. By cutting the cost in half they'll end up selling way more than double the units. The way it's priced now, your average mom and dad are going to choose something like the XBox instead... they're not going to understand the tremendous potential these toys can unlock in a young mind.

  70. Re:Bionicle? WHY? by deprecated · · Score: 1

    Uh, no. That is not accurate. The setting and characters were sufficiently derived from Maori mythology that the Maori complained. Unless you were referring to some hitherto unknown tropical island off the coast of Denmark, or Norway. Whichever.

  71. A: Point of Purchase by jpnews · · Score: 1

    Bionicle sets are the only LEGO product I see at stores with no toy department. In other words, they're sold at grocery stores, drug stores, convenience stores, and gas stations. These are places where a parent is more likely to pay $5 for 18 plastic pieces. At Wal-Mart or Toys-R-Us, the selection is huge, but so is the competition. At Texaco or Walgreens, if your kid wants LEGO, he's getting the overpriced Bionicle, and that's that.

  72. OT: Doh! by maroberts · · Score: 1

    Slashdot lost (cue Hovis music) and (end Hovis music) tags.

    --

    Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
    Karma: Chameleon

  73. Re:Bionicle? WHY? by digrieze · · Score: 1

    Thanks, I've heard that also. My source was a friend from Norway who showed me a book of Norwegian mythology that, except for the character names, read like the audio script for the Bionicle movie.

    I suppose there was enough similarities for several cultures to make claim to it. Either way, the BIONICLE toy set was hardly invented by LEGO, and it really doesn't fit into their previous toy offerings.

    --
    It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
  74. I still do by herc_mk2 · · Score: 1

    I did that last week, with my 6-year old son.

    He usually goes for more mass, I go for crumple zones and bits that are designed to break away. We're pretty evenly matched (on several levels).

    There are some perks to being a Dad -- being able to play Lego any time is one of them.

  75. Yay! by Cyno01 · · Score: 1

    Glad to hear it. Unlike most people here it seems, i like the star wars legos. Like everyone else i built star wars craft out of regular legos but never had enough large plates for wings or the right cockpit. A couple specialty pieces aren't that bad, and anyone saying they cant be used for anything else doesnt have any imagination. I havnt avidly collected the minifig scale sets, i only have one or two i think, but theyre in the bins. On my shelf however, i have the first 3 collectors sets, the x-wing, tie interceptor and naboo fighter(havn't wanted to shell out the big bucks for the corellian corvette and star destroyer), aside from the cockpit on the tie and a few smooth bricks with markings on them there really aren't any specialty pieces. Along with the bigass collectors sets i also have all 20 or so of the mini models, which are great. No specialty pieces at all except ones with markings. I'm looking at the new 5 i just got, the mini star destroyer doesn't have any "special" pieces at all, mostly plates, except for a pair of minifig binoculars as turbolasers. Everyones always wanted oficial star wars legos, you know you have because your own versions weren't that great, now stop bitching about it.:p

    --
    "Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
  76. Facing up to it by xihr · · Score: 1

    The rumors were started by Slashdot. The original Yahoo! News article quoted in the "Lego to Stop Producing Mindstorms" Slashdot article said absolutely nothing about them dropping Mindstorms at all.

  77. Re:Lego by EddWo · · Score: 1

    Wow, great ideas.
    I've often thought that you should be able to make a robot with sensors, actuators and simple logic built into the eactual bricks themselves, rather than just one massive central computer. Imagine if the bricks themselves contained NAND gates and so forth, you could learn about logic circuits at the same time as building a robot, but without all the messy soldering.

    --
    "Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
  78. Things the spellchecker misses... by AstroSurf · · Score: 1

    "_led_ to the misunderstanding" instead of "lead to" Used to be an editor. Can't help it.

    --
    Astro
  79. Lisp-based languages for Mindstorm programming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are also Common Lisp and Scheme environments developed for Mindstorms:

    http://www.yuasa.kuis.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~yuasa/xs/in de x.html
    http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~feeley/papers /ll3.pdf

    My understanding is that they run autonomously on Mindstorms.

  80. Check out the 'Belville' themes by LRJ · · Score: 1

    at LEGOshop.com - their aimed at getting girls more interested in LEGO.

    --
    LRJ
  81. Re:Everyone complains but they haven't shopped lat by LRJ · · Score: 1

    Yea!

    I usually get at least one big LEGO set for xmas, this year I got a bunch and a couple were these new sets that are part of their new 'Inventor' series - they're somewhere between the standard Technics sets and the Mindstorm. I still put my Rebel Blockade Runner together first, but these Inventor sets are pretty cool.

    --
    LRJ
  82. Re:Bionicle? WHY? by mlush · · Score: 1
    Thanks, I've heard that also. My source was a friend from Norway who showed me a book of Norwegian mythology that, except for the character names, read like the audio script for the Bionicle movie.

    Interesting .... Do you recall what it was called?

  83. AAAARRRRGGGG by LRJ · · Score: 1

    I have assembled just about all the Master Collector Series Star Wars models, between the 8 sets that I have (totaling close to 10,000 pieces) there are probably a total of 10 custom pieces - and even those I'm not too sure are custom, they may have just come from a set I haven't seen. The majority of the parts in those sets are just different colored versions of pieces you could get in their old castle, western, space, mining, etc.... sets - nothing too new. Yes, there are some decals (again, maybe 20 total) that you can put on the pieces to give them a more detailed look but you put the sticker on a normal old LEGO brick.

    --
    LRJ
  84. BFD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Big fucking deal.

  85. Re:Bionicle? WHY? by digrieze · · Score: 1

    No, although next time I see him I'll ask. Apparently LEGO is big in Norway with the kids also, almost to the point of fetish. My friends told me that they have a lot of time on their hands in the Winter. Interestingly enough, while they said that it was in the 20s' outside and they Yorge had a large screen live picture from a Miami webcam up, he said it just looked warmer than looking out the window.

    --
    It doesn't matter what you wrap your emotions around, Reality is a brick wall specifically designed to scramble eggs
  86. Re:Bionicle? WHY? by mlush · · Score: 1
    No, although next time I see him I'll ask.

    If you remember could you pass it on to me, mlush AT hgmp dot mrc dot ac dot uk