Lego Logic Gates
Thud457 writes "LEGO Logic Gates - It's like Babbage, but with bricks. All the gates except XOR are here, and he goes on to develop a clocked flip-flop. While practical mechanical computers may be out, even at the nanotechnological scale, nanomechanical memory may be in. "
'Tis but a small step to a 64-bit processor with 2 MB of cache. Of course, the bricks might burn up upon power-up, but it's a small price to pay!
Can it play .Ogg files?
... just as long as we don't get a little lego man instead of that bloody paperclip I don't really care
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
Let us know when theres a NetBSD for it so we can build a LegoLAN
Next, CmdrTaco will build a duplicate article out of Dupe-lo blocks!
Vote for global prefs bug
"The previous bandwidth issues should be solved now that I have a new server"
Not for long.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Have you seen the size of these things? Putting them in any kind of robot would be kinda stupid.
:)
"Here I am, brain the size of a planet...made out of lego.."
I think you'd have more luck with the nano versions of these gates. But good luck trying eh
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
Look at it as an open source approach to news.
That is, until /. arrived....5:30am and the site's already running slow. How much longer you think it will hold up?
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
.. a Bionicle cluster of these ...
and projected power decimated."
A spokesman said Steve would only use the white bits of Lego.
The road to hell is paved with NAND gates.
/usr/bin/fortune
--
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
How long will we have to put up with this LEGO monopoly? Will Megablox answer this challenge? That upstart Knex, perhaps?
Back in my day we had to build our mechanical analogs of digital circuits out of Tinkertoys! And we liked it! What's this new fangled "plastic" stuff anyway. Wood! that's the way to go.
On a slightly more serious note: If we had built some of these in my CS3?? class instead of just diagraming them on paper I might have paid more attention. But I doubt it.
I don't think, Therefore I'm not.
At how many (K)hz will this thing operate when it's finished? How many FLOPS will it achieve? Could you overclock it by adding oliveoil to the gears?
Someone should make a Lego computer, and then run a CAD program on it, just for irony's sake.
I'd be happy with an BF interpreter made out of Lego...
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
I for one welcome our new EMP proof lego robot overlords.
!hoD
He could build a Lego vacuum-cleaner made of Lego, but that's like canabalism. Before he knew it, he'd have a Legoid-lifeform eating his other projects and growing stronger.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Are you nuts? Valve's DRM system eats up 25-30 megabytes even when HL2 isn't running. Do you have any idea how much Lego costs these days? :)
Everyone can understand NO and everyone can understand some, you could even build a computer out of chimp or small children.
Creating a computer out of small children would be a very challenging task, due to their unique logic properties which I've outlined briefly below:
When placed at the beginning of a circuit, a small child acts as a logical inverter -- a "yes" input becomes "no", and a "no" input becomes "yes".
However, when placed at the end of a circuit, the same child acts as a NOR gate -- all output is "no", usually with a corresponding increase in amplitude. This output is usually looped back on itself creating a recursively louder "NO!" output.
The work depicted in TFA seems awfully similar to the rod logic found in Neal Stephenson's book Diamond Age. This begs the question, is Neal a prophet? Has he foretold the future? Will I be getting my pizza in thirty minutes or else the Mafia comes and apologizes personally?
Only time will tell. Until then, I have to thank this lego-builder for making my life more interesting. Now I know what I'm gonna do for Christmas, play with Legos and make logic gates!
Lord, I'm such a geek.
H0ek
Think you're smart? Prove you've got brains!
I found a new device, the vacum tube, to be about 60% cheaper and faster than Legos. They are gonna make me rich, I tell ya, rich!
Table-ized A.I.