Month: April 2005

We’ve no idea who Sakakibara Kikai are, apart from having a vague inkling that they may have the odd screw loose here and there, but they’ve come up with a two-legged, person-carrying robot vehicle that looks like it’d be ready to audition for a live-action Gundam film at the drop of a hat. Admittedly the Land Walker doesn’t so much walk as shimmy its 3.4-metre-tall bulk around the place (looks like there are wheels under those feet), and it tops out at a less-than-threatening 1.5 km/h, but it does have the looks, and even a pair of guns (which fire squishy balls, unfortunately). They also have some video of it, well, sliding around.

Via Slashdot Japan (Japanese)

Originally posted by Gareth Edwards from Engadget

Modify a Colecovision for S-video. Not for the faint at heart. Have your soldering iron ready!

Originally from digg / tommytrc / dug

An anonymous reader writes “University of Wahington TV Presents “behind the Scenes With Google.” From the site : ‘Search is one of the most important applications used on the internet and poses some of the most interesting challenges in computer science. Providing high-quality search requires understanding across a wide range of computer science disciplines. In this program, Jeff Dean of Google describes some of these challenges, discusses applications Google has developed, and highlights systems they’ve built, including GFS, a large-scale distributed file system, and MapReduce, a library for automatic parallelization and distribution of large-scale computation. He also shares some interesting observations derived from Google’s web data.’ ”

Originally posted by CmdrTaco from Slashdot

Not exactly our bag, but since you’ll all keep sending it in until I post it, here you go: Google is upgrading Gmail to 2GB of storage—no joke. They’ve also introduced Google gulp!, a beta version of their invite-only drink system. Taking a shot at themselves is classy, you see.

Google Gulp [Google]

Originally from Gizmodo

Routers, Cupertino, CA.-  April 1, 2005.  In a hastily called press conference today held outside the Apple Store #1 in Cupertino Bill Gates stunned the computer industry with the announcement that Microsoft has filed an intent of a hostile takeover of Apple Computer with the SEC.  The offer of $123.7 billion is expected to be sufficient to force Apple to agree to the takeover by the Redmond-based software giant.  Mr. Gates, who rarely does press conferences, appeared almost giddy in demeanor throughout the entire meeting with industry journalists, and was seen scribbling on a Tablet PC frequently while addressing questions from the press.  This was probably due to the Royal doodling mix-up earlier this year.

"The absorption, uh,  marriage of Apple with Microsoft is a natural fit and should be viewed as a good thing for the computer industry.  Microsoft intends to merge the two operations across the board and we hope that a couple of Apple executives will stay on during the transition period.  Microsoft intends to continue with the rollout of the next version of the Mac OS X, codenamed Tiger, but will likely change the name to Microsoft OS X 2005.

"We intend to address the complaint that Mac owners have raised for years and one of the first new products we will announce after the merger is the Microsoft OS X 2005 Tablet PC Edition, or MOX2K5TPE for short..  I  don’t know why Apple never produced one and it was a driving force behind our decision to move forward with the merger.  We will continue to sell the Apple computer line although all will be rebadged as the "Alternate Windows" product line and managed by the Portable Media Center Division."

In a brief question and answer session after the press release Mr. Gates addressed a number of issues raised by the press.  When asked if the huge cash outlay to acquire Apple would affect Microsoft’s bottom line Mr. Gates stated that they would simply stop the Microsoft "PCs at School Lunches" program for a week, which would provide the entire amount required.  The charismatic Microsoft executive also stated that he would see the iPod play Windows Media files if it was "the last thing I do".

Apple’s Steve Jobs was unavailable for comment.  Strangely, unofficial Microsoft spokesman Robert Scoble has not posted anything about this breaking story.

Originally posted by jk from jkOnTheRun