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Microsoft Research Showcase Explored
prostoalex writes "Every year Microsoft Research scientists show their achievements and developments at Redmond campus. Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports from Techfest, a number of other news resources and blogs are covering it. Read about network-enabled bear that allows parents to communicate with the kids, a mobile phone applications that not only checks, but predicts traffic conditions, and surface computing for digital homes." From the article: "The project isn't fully developed, but the ultimate vision is to have the stuffed animal interact with a child, doing such things as playing games and reading stories. Because the bear is on a network, a parent could also use it to interact with a child remotely -- communicating or even taking snapshots through an embedded camera."
You mean like Slashdot?
Zonk, do you even read Slashdot? Or just when you cash the paycheck?
A friend of mine who works on the redmond campus we telling me about one of the neatest things that they were showing off which seemed to get less attention from the media and others then the rest of the products. These were more pure concept items, things that were not really going to be marketed any time soon but wanted to show off where microsoft was heading. These were networked enabled appliances. While other companies have showed these off before this was the most comphrensive I had heard of.
Among the products included a microwave, fridge, coffee maker, toaster, dishwater and washer drier. These all tied into a control panel which could be accessed from a household computer which showed the status of each item. So if you had a load of laundry going you could see how much longer it had till it was completed. Or you could set the intensity of your toaster, etc. The neatest was the implimentation of RFID with the fridge. Using RFID tags which they believe will be on all products in the next 5 - 10 years you can look up exactly what products are left and get a full inventory. You can also set up triggers which will text your phone, send you an email, or something of that nature which will tell when something is empty or near empty.
It appears that Redmond is looking at taking over not just your computer some day but your life as well.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
Specifically, a Kodiak with fetal alcohol syndrome.
I, for one, welcome our new camera-bear overlords.
Years ago there was a component of a popular entertainment show in the UK called "My Little Friend" (I think), basically the producers would set up a soft toy (eg, teddy bear) with a speaker and place haiiden cameras in the room, then leave a child alone with the toy to draw a picture or something...when the adult was out of the way, the shows producers would sit behind the scenes and talk through the bear to the child...the children would often totally accept that the toy could speak without shock or anything, as if it were totally normal...the child would then be encouraged to have humourous conversations with the bear....hilarity ensued.
I never really liked the segment, I often wondered if the child would be damaged by this...enough people in the world already believe in rubbish like psychics, spirits, acupuncture, homeopathy and so on, is this just going to make the situation worse? letting kids use their imaginations is one thing, helping blur the line between imagination and reality is just going to make more gullible victims for people like Sylvia Browne and her friends.
Because the bear is on a network, a parent could also use it to interact with a child remotely -- communicating or even taking snapshots through an embedded camera.
Great, allow parents to get even more detached from their kids. Instead of playing with their kids now a parent can sit at their computer while looking at internet porn and paying their taxes and watching their kid through the creepy bear.
We need products that are going to allow for a more personal connection then we are doing now, not a more remote one. Vidoe conferencing and all that is great but what kids need is real connection, they need to see and play with their parents, not the bear with a camera and potentially a detached voice in it.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
Do we even want a device that can take a picture of children from remote? First, shoudn't we trust our kids enough to leave them in a private situation, when they think they are? Trust is basic in inter-human relationships.
And then you can think what would happend if someone discovered a security hole in this. If it is accessible remotely, anyone could take that pic, without anyone knowing possibly. Think about kiddie porn. Would you like your kids to carry a network-enable camera all day? No? Thought so!
Assembling etherkillers for fun an profit
that the original version of the beloved teddy bear was, in fact, a small wooden horse. Details at 10.
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
Until you go into your toddlers room late one night and find the MS teddy bear repeating submliminal messages while they sleep:
"Don't steal software"
"Only communists use open source"
"Support software patents"
My rights don't need management.
Creepy Ruxpin.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
Microsoft engineers watched Spielberg's AI at least once.
One of the most scary sci-fi short stories I remember reading is about a dystopian society where children are given talking teddy bears at a young age to indoctrinate them. As a result of this conditioning, the populace doesn't act against the dictatorship. A rebellion attempt is made over the course of 20 years by a group who manages to delete some of the "never kill, even in self-defence" moral messages the teddy spouts for one young boy. But the coup fails because the young boy still believes all the rest of the crap, and kills the group instead.
Because the bear is on a network, a parent could also use it to interact with a child remotely -- communicating or even taking snapshots through an embedded camera.
Here's an idea: interact with your child in person. It works better.
I am so tired of crap like this being developed which will have absolutely no good impact on anyone. Don't you think a child can tell the difference between a stupid bear toy and his/her parents? Who is it that comes up with this crap?
This post has been filtered for sanity.
Just when you aren't looking the bear will ask children if they want to buy the latest Microsoft ______ software for kids.. Or even the latest toy. I'd hate to see what happens if the bear gets hacked and spammers figure it out.
Why would I trust a Microsoft fridge, when they can't even write a secure browser or email client?
robot caretakers reading stories to kids? ha! everyone knows robbie couldn't talk!
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
This isn't a new concept by any means. Back in the summer of 2001 I had an internship with Whirlpool working on their wired home project. We had a table PC with a web based interface that would allow us to remotely control the fridge, washer/dryer, oven, microwave, etc. It had a "cool" factor to it, but I don't think it ever made it out of R&D just because it wasn't practical at the time.
The best implication I saw was being able to use it in conjunction with an oven that could refrigerate as well as cook, that way you could put whatever in it before you left for work, and then start it remotely from work so it'd be ready when you arrived home.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
... as "Microsoft Research Showcase Exploded" and was wondering why the summary was talking about stuffed animals and children instead of listing causualties. Now that would be some crappy programing!
A network-enabled bear running a Microsoft product alone with your child.
What could possibly go wrong?
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
these will be pretty popular with perverts
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
Damnit, at first i thought that said network enabled beer. :(
-------------
WrongPlanet.net
The Television Wiki
When will parents stop relegating their childrens' upbringing to toys (including TV) and start giving the children what is rightfully theirs: a human touch? If you can't be bothered to play a central role in your child's life, then don't have a child!
alt.sex.teddy-ruxpin (Usenet is for sick fucks, I tell you what...)
MSFT's cybernetic teddy bear is remiscent
of another teddy bear -- from Ted Sturgeon's
classic horror tale, "The Professor's Teddy Bear."
In that one, an alien intelligence embodied in a
young child's furry toy lends the kid strange powers,
powers that let him transform and destroy other
people. . . . Just like MSFT is doing, actually.
Yes, and for all the billions that MSFT has thrown
into "research" they've come up with surprisingly
trivial results. . . . They labored mightily,
and delivered a mouse (the famous MSFT mouse).
Anyone who thinks that a stuffed animal is a good substitute for the presence of a parent is bonkers. Imagine this scenario. The father is too obsessed with working at his startup company, so he buys one of these stuffed animals, say, a bear with network-control capability. He puts the bear in the kid's room and heads off to work. At the office, he activates his Web browser and remotely controls the bear with a Web form. Now, imagine the father acting in this way for a year.
Do you think that such behavior is good parenting? Such parenting is probably the first step to child abuse.
Perhaps, I am the oddball in this forum. I think that technology should facilitate the human experience instead of replacing it.
Network enabled bear? Stuffed bear? Toy bear? Teddy bear? Anything?
My patent-pending Mk-1 eyeball visual product quantity measurement system will solve all the problems that RFID couldn't!
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Well said.
...the bear wouldn't look anything like this, now would it?
The more personal Microsoft's toys get, the more crucial will be their security and safety. Everyone expects office equipment to fail. But the wrath of a mother who can blame her kid's mishaps on the Microsoft Corporation will outweigh the spin power of even the most well-financed legal and PR departments.
--
make install -not war
Microsoft unveils their new line of spyware for kids!!!
Cheers,
Adolfo
Why the fuck reproduce?
That was the creepiest slashdot summary of all time. As usual I have no plans of reading TFA
Real R&D involves exploiting and extending the sciences, not this sort of nightmare toy.
...would you call it "Mandrake Icebox"? Sounds better than a Microsoft fridge, if you ask me.
When doctors prescribe millions of people Vioxx, Prozac to teenagers, and countless medications without long term studies or independent monitoring, I think its ridiculous to criticize accupuncture. I you were a health professional, you would realize how little is known about the mechanisms of the 'chemical experiments' that pass for health care in the United States. Its interesting also how much health insurance companies pay for chiropractic care. Until Allopathic doctors have adequate scientific data for their treatments, I'll continue to go to my accupuncturist I formerly worked in "Western,"scientific health care myself- no longer.
I'm sure no Paedo would give a kid such a toy...
Everytime you look at porn a devil gets their horns.
It been proven scientifically proved recently that I am the world's greatest lover. Countless studies have confirmed my incredible sexual powers. And for only $99.99 a month I will give you my secret for sexual potency
I don't have or want kids, but I know lots of people that have 'em and really don't want 'em. They got through the legal period for putting them up for adoption becase they were whacked on post-natal hormones, and now they're stuck. These parents are doing their best, given the situation, but I could see as how having a creepy robot bear for the little monsters to dribble on would be helpful to parent's sanity...and maybe spare the kid some parental freak outs. Interacting through a bear would insulate the kid from the "I really want to throw you off a bridge, but I'm doing the best I can not to, because none of this is your fault" vibe. It's no worse than putting the kid in the wind up swing in front of the tv. Maybe even better. I hear those girls-gone-wild ads cause overating in nursing children.
Exactly right. There's no science for acupuncture. However, it does work in some cases.
... a Beowulf cluster of these things?
I wonder if this 'MICROSOFT IS INNOVATIVE' story is time to conincide with the patent vote in Europe tomorrow.
..predicts upcoming traffic conditions..n ces/trb/00326. pdf
Lets see MSN Desktop search....
http://desktop.google.com/
Teddy bear running windows...
http://www.aibo-europe.com/
Navigating photo libraries....
http://www.flickr.com/ ?
TouchLight,
http://www.minorityreport.com/
http://www.its.berkeley.edu/confere
I was tempted to agree with the AC until he/she brought up accupuncture. I think the widespread unquestioning acceptance that technology and will help solve all problems is a more dangerous problem than superstitious beleifs in "psychics and spirits." Accupuncture vs Cox-2 inhibitors, is a good example of this. At first the AC seemed to address the problem of unquestioning faith in technology, but, like many on ./,however, don't seem to understand the difference between healthy skepticism and pig-headed narrow-mindedness.
On top of all the other things that can go wrong, detached parent waits until 40 minutes into the call to tell you "Oh, by the way, Johnny tried to flush it. Could that be a problem?"
http://glacierdragon.smugmug.com - Check out my photos. No need to buy, even though I do need the money!
...a cuddly toy. That connects to a network. And has the possibility of taking video and pictures?
Because there's nothing like increasing the range of technology available to peadophiles...
Personnaly, I view the development of an AI Teddy Bear as further evidence that Bill Gates is destined to be the antichrist. IMHO, he is one of the few succesful people I have seen who is so pathetically brain-damaged that he really really thinks that people want to do away with all human contact and replace it with digital interaction. Just think, AI teddy will of course have to incorporate digital rights management. Which will prevent parents from providing custom input into the raising of their children. Only State-approved, licensed parenting algorithms will be allowed. And of course, *endangering* a child by failure to provide them with a state-approved AI-teddy will be classified as child abuse. Making AI-teddy the perfect tool for the coming totalitarian State to indoctrinate children in atheist PC behavior from the cradle. As a parent this scares me so bad that my hair stands on end. I am sometimes tempted to pray for Mr. Bill to have a disabling stroke before he can damage our society any further.
"Sic Semper Path of Least Resistance"
"The project isn't fully developed, but the ultimate vision is to have the stuffed animal interact with a child, doing such things as playing games and reading stories. Because the bear is on a network, a parent could also use it to interact with a child remotely -- communicating or even taking snapshots through an embedded camera."
Can you say "Chucky"?????
I can't envision a more terrifying concept...
Has Microsoft _ever_ invented a damn thing? This simply doesn't set right. They pervert technology, not invent, like IBM, Philips, etc.
Researchers at Microsoft have found that a small animated paper clip can aid people writing documents from avoiding common mistakes. One Microsoft spokesman stated "Our new Clippy assistand proves that we are on the leading edge of computer technology. Our new product can instantly and automatically correct any grammatical error. We see Clippy supplanting the need to teach grammer and spelling in schools. In our rigourous testing, Clippy has never made a mistake. It's a wonderful product, and a demonstration of our commitment to leadership and innovation."
"Because the bear is on a network, a parent could also use it to interact with a child remotely -- communicating or even taking snapshots through an embedded camera."
June 18, 2007
Threat Advisory from McAfee AVERT
Virus/Worm Identifier: W32/Bear.A
Threat Level: Critical
Threat Pathology
After being infected, MS-Snoogums(TM) performs one of the following four tasks, chosen apparently at random.
1) MS-Snoogums will attempt to strangle the nearest child.
2) MS-Snoogums will begin swearing and berating any child in the room.
3) If the child is identifiably female (using simple pattern-matching algorithms against three jpegs embedded in the code), MS-Snoogums will make choose lewd comments from a catalog of 47 built into its codebase.
4) MS-Snoogums will attempt to persuade the child to transport him to the nearest Wells Fargo branch. If successful, MS-Snoogums will use built-in IrDA port to hack Diebold Windows XP Embedded cash machines. Records are altered to show withdrawal from account of one "I. P. Nightly".
System Protection and Cure
McAfee AVERT is currently tracking the vendor response. Vendor recommends all children be provided with MS-My-First-Shotgun immediately as a protective measure.
#DeleteChrome
They probably have the most well-funded software research lab in the entire world and the best they can do is to recycle ideas from 10 years ago? Is it because their researchers are too well acquainted with the limitations of MS software that they can only think in a similarly short-sighted fashion? I've seen more innovative ideas at a high-school science fair.
Reading about the teddy bear, it struck me as a simplified, not very intelligent, version of The Lady's Illustrated Primer in Neal Stephenson's book The Diamond Age.
Since when is taking a picture of your kid 'interaction'?
Gee, it would have been nice if my parents had taken more pictures of me when I was a child...
StefanoB
this is a perfect case. Zonk modded a perfected valid comment down on his own.
We have a new Sims.
That teddy bear thing is entirely in the wrong direction.
Technology should enable people to have more spare time, and to be able to have more real, in person time with their kids, not giving them more excuses to bury themselves in work.
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
...none of this sems like real cutting-edge. None of this is going to change my world. How much do they spend on research?
IMO, once you're hooked into some huge dinosaur like MS office, you don't let go until you or it dies. And you don't do any fancy research on the side. Take for example Longhorn. That's looking more like Duke Nukem every day. And mark my words, when that appears, it won't be as revolutionary as the spin makes out. It will still have to run MS Office so it can't be that revolutionary or one of the only products that makes a profit for MS will die. Therein lies the catch.
I've heard the term roach motel applied to MS and this is it. All that expensive talent goes in and we get, what, a teddy-bear? Uh-uh. At least with google, expensive talent produces goods, things that make me go "ah". MSN makes stuff that makes me go "yuck". Amd I guess therein the difference lies.
h
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
Of all the items they had on display, the bear was probably one of the lamest. The surface computing demos were probably the most intriging IMO.
Pretty much everything interesting about all these inventions is going to depend on open standards for them to gain popularity.
b .p l?ID=39
Interactive toys? Well, yeah i can see how this would be sort of cool as a fluffy AIBO or RoboSapien - but if they wanted to do this, why are they waiting so long? I mean, I can do this with a robosapien and a Palm PDA, its not 'innovative', and it's not rocket science.
Microsoft is just rehashing its previous attempt at interactive toys (ActiveMates) which included interactive dolls of Teddy Ruxpin and Barney the Dinosaur.
Its taken MS years to go from having an actual product in the marketplace, to killing it, to putting it forward as a 'new concept'.
It's really f**king pathetic.
Surface computing? Like, BEEN DONE BEFORE!!
http://www.media.mit.edu/research/ResearchPubWe
Seriously, MS 'Research' is clearly just sitting round with it's figurative thumb up it's ass.
Microsofts one and only ability to 'innovate' anything revolves entirely around one concept - integration into the OS. It simply isn't capable of doing anyting genuinely innovative, it simply takes ideas, 'integrates' them into its OS and calls that 'innovation'.
Whats incredible is that 'integrate it into the OS' is the oldest, least innovative strategy in computer software, bar none.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Does it run Linux?
One Microsoft Research invention was a clock that has a hand for each member of the household and instead of showing time, shows the location of each member. No mention if it could tell time.
Obviously no one at Microsoft Research reads Harry Potter or they might have noticed the Weasley household has a clock that not only identifies the location of household members, but knows when they are in peril.
As for whether it can tell time of not, the Spy Kids movie had a watch that was so full of gadgets it couldn't tell time.
I wonder if they will mention these movies as prior art when they apply for patents?
Just to get all the predictability out of the way. Here's your thread to post your lame, inevitable BSOD jokes, people. Bears that crash! It's funny...BECAUSE IT'S MICROSOFT! Sorry, "Micro$haft," or however it's spelled in your IRC chatrooms. Meanwhile, it's been 15 years and Linux hasn't threatened the Windows monopoly one bit. The late 90s "golden child" media hype machine about Linux is over. That must sting.
enough people in the world already believe in rubbish like psychics, spirits, acupuncture, homeopathy and so on, is this just going to make the situation worse?
Homeopathy is not a blind belief. It is a science as much as as aluopathic medicine is. Homeopathy uses symptoms even subtle ones to diagnose diseases (much like Alopathy or regular medicine). And the medicines given are not some voodo but infact chemicals and extracts of plants and animals (in essence chemicals). The medicine is usually administered either as liquid or as sugar pills soaked in the liquid.
Homeopathy has been used in may parts of the world as alternative medicine.
Only thing about homeopathy is that it takes an extended period of time for it to heal than a quick fix which antibiotics give you. But the homeopathic healing is much more durable and can cure chronic troubles.
I personally have taken homeopathic medicine for my asthama and even though i carry my inhaler with me i havn't had to use it in the last 2 years.
....But can it run Linux?
For proof, please see any of the thousands of cases of abused children.And exactly what does a video game teach that wouldn't be better taught via parental interaction?
The same with this bear.
The same with TV.Actually, it was the standard until recently. The babies were looked after until they were old enough to start helping with the chores. They learned what to do by helping their parents.
They didn't have TV or video games or electronic bears (nor a lot of books). They just had human contact.Keep believing that. Or you could look and learn. Watch how the kids who aren't invited to play on the teams react to that exclusion.
Humans are social animals.
The tasks you've mentioned do NOT involve sitting in front of a computer.
But the bear is linked to the computer.
What this is designed for is the parent who is in front of a computer for some reason. I don't think this would be at work, because that would mean the parent's work network is connected to their home network.
Which leaves, parents working at home or playing computer games.
If both parents are on the computer that much, there is a problem.
This is designed for parents who are too self absorbed and shallow to be bothered raising the child(ren) they've created.
Kids love to help with the laundry and so forth. They really want to be close to their parents.
I'm afraid I have a personal agenda as both me and family members have suffered from serious health problems that are the result of "treatment" by FDA approved, widely used, medications. Now for a broken bone I'd still go to the local emergency room, but I resent my healthcare options being compared to results of childhood trauma. FU
There's a lot of scientific studies for accupuncture. Don't spread FUD
What amazed me about this year's techfest was that I wasn't as amazed by the things that MSR was showcasing as I had been in previous years. I was however impressed that there were lots of researchers working on Ink-specific problems (I.E. How to make the TabletPC usable without the keyboard and make writing pretty and so on), and I was impressed by the number of researchers that had TabletPCs.
/. memes. That's the kind of innovation that most outsiders don't have access to and don't consider. Microsoft will move the software industry forward, regardless of how many companies out there sue MS for lost profits. Bill Gates may be the worlds richest man, but he's not evil. If you had 40 Billion dollars of net worth, would you have converted more than 8 Billion to cash and given it away? If Microsoft was a corporate whore, why would it spend Billions of its revenue on researching in every single area of computer science? Why would it be the number 1 company in the US to donate money matching its employees? Why does Microsoft spend money each year encouraging all of its employees to give money to charitable causes and match those dollars through the company? Giving money to charity is not evil.
There were interesting groups doing bit-torrent-like P2P networks (although not as cool as the anonymous locality based system researchers showed the previous year), and there were groups continuing to make progress doing search. They did some neat research about breaking the problem of the human detector bitmaps that people use to try and block spammers (from hotmail and google and yahoo, etc). There were lots of hardware groups, but I didn't see anything there that struck me as too interesting. Maybe the stuff which involved interacting with cameras, or the pen that could read codes printed on paper and on the computer screen and let you mark up your digital document from paper. That was kinda neat. The laser/LED/stylus/pen toys they gave out to all participants were kinda cute, though. I like swag.
The coolest thing I have seen by far in the past few years was the researcher who took 3 months and developed a way to run ELF binaries on Windows. I don't think Microsoft will be developing that researcher's work, but it was quite cool. He ran some benchmarks and discovered that he could get Linux Apache running faster on Windows XP than on RedHat Linux (on the same hardware). Next to that, I'd have to say that I also saw some cool face recognition in video, and there was low-power GPS in MS Spot watches (they analyzed local radio station signals and did something like triangulation).
I'm always impressed by the amount of money Microsoft spends on research each year, and it's really neat to be a member of the community that can come back each year and talk with all the researchers and maybe, just maybe, find something that they did that I could build into a product that impacts billions of people.
There was a company which had a great research department which never developed the far out stuff their research department built... That company was Xerox, and we have heard their story.
The TabletPC comes with Handwriting and Speech Recognition built-in. It "just works" with software like Word or Outlook or MSN IM. Many thousands of MS employees volunteered to have their photos taken for an MSR project involving face recognition for Digital Photography or whatever purposes MSR wanted. MSR has access to the back ends of large internet services like MSN and every year, I submit my hard drives on all machines at work to their indexing experiment.
I'm saying that MSR is the new PARC, except that once a year, the company shuffles up the research and brings it into the product development. Now, I'll address some
Linux/OSS is definately a threat to Microsoft. Everyone at Microsoft knows their groups competitors. Microsoft invented the "sell software cheaper" strategy back in the day. That's WHY Microsoft Office became dominant. It wasn't as good as Word Perfect + Lotus 123 + e
Exactly right, and the point I was trying to make in my final paragraph was that in the proposed Microsoft future, which I tend to like (despite not being a great fan of Microsoft), people won't be sitting in front of computers all the time when they're using them.
You're limiting your point of view by assuming that computers are restricted to rectangular boxes in fixed places that people have to be gone to in order to be used. On the contrary, Microsoft wants computers everywhere (running Microsoft software), all networked into a big integrated system and designed for people to interact with. A network-enabled teddy bear is just another part of it. From the article itself:
In such a world, it's completely feasible that a parent might be keeping an eye on their child in the other room for a few minutes via a networked monitor on the refrigerator or a stove top, for instance. Sitting in front of a computer isn't necessary, nor is it desirable. If something's wrong, then put things down and go through and check what's going on. Meanwhile, the state of the networked cooking appliances can be monitored to some reasonable extent from the other room.
I realise that many kids do love things like laundry and when they do it's brilliant, but it doesn't mean that they'll want to be near their parents doing laundry or cooking all the time, or that the parent won't also have to deal with two or three other children. There will always be unpredictible situations where it's complicated for parents to be everywhere at once, and this could be seen as one possible way to add a bit more convenience to parenting if it's used appropriately.
Obviously bad parents could remain bad parents by using this in a bad way and rarely actually interacting with their children. But like many other things, just because it's possible for it to be abused by misguided parents doesn't automatically make it a bad thing.
At first glance, I thought it read "Microsoft Research Showcase Exploited"
Oh, man, am I glad that they use actual chemicals, whew! I thought for a second that they were using magic or something! That makes me feel so much better - chemicals!
Oh, oh, and I'm glad that homeopathic remedies take longer to work - I wouldn't want to have to take a sick day ever! This way, it feels much more like my body is naturally healing itself!
I'm sure glad you no longer have to use your two year old "asthama" inhaler that you still, for some reason, carry around...
Give me a break.
-ZOD-
no, there is no way to control the temperature through software - this feature will be available in service pack 4.
Until then, the manual workaound to raise the temperature is to open the fridge door for 'x' minutes every 30 minutes to lower the temperature by 'x-2' degrees.
There is no manual workaround to lower the temperature
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
There are many alternatives that work compared to side-effect inducing chemical goodies such as ritalin and prozac, for example. But these arn't chemicals! They can't work! Acupuncture works for many things, and there is even research that demonstrates it, quack. So you don't understand how it works, BFD. How exactly do SSRIs work? They raise seratonin levels within days, but it takes a month or longer before a patient is relieved. So obviously something else is going on. But we don't understand it, so we shouldn't use it, by your standards at least. Stop supporting pill pushers and perhaps actually try to treat yourself.
Crying does not change the facts.
Good parents spend time with their children rather than letting an electronic device babysit the kids. Bad parents defend their use of such devices.
The kind of parent you are is demonstrated by your extreme reaction to that and by you having to resort to false dichotomies.
Am I the only one who finds it funny that Microsoft RESEARCH showcases a teddy bear with network access. Where's the RESEARCH in that? I could get some random goup of grad students to put a little box in a teddy bear with wifi and have some lame gui and perhaps mp3 player reading a story. How does that get the spotlight in research?
So, right now, the parent would be sitting in front of a computer.
I'll change my opinion of that when it can be shown that the parent isn't sitting in front of the computer.
Damn you space moose
There have already been a few negative comments in the thread about the computerised bear. I guess the people reviling this idea have not see Steven Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence. The animatronic teddy bear, who asserts `I am not a toy,' was probably the film's most endearing character (see him in this photo) and immensely natural and loveable in his role.
Say what you want, but if you are so hopelessly blind to the future to not realise that toys WILL change as technology improves, then I have nothing but pity and disdain for you. If you don't think that infusing child's toys with love and compassion is good, then you will probably be a terrible parent. If you don't think that a fuzzy artificially intelligent childhood friend is a good thing, then I wonder what kind of dark and emotionally deprived childhood you had yourself.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
That would be a great marketing name.
Be informed my friend...
...it does not expire for another 3 years... and you only know the value of such things when u suffer from chronic illness.
when i say chemicals they are not active chemicals... and for your kind information everything in the medicine world comes from some form of chemicals.
for more info read this
And as for me still carrying my (two year old)inhaler