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Comment Re:Does Anyone Really Use Their Wii Anymore? (Score 1) 354

My family does. Interestingly, the most ardent and consistent fan is my two year old, who'll sit on the coffee table with a wiimote in one hand while watching TV. He'll glance at the WII ever so often and flick the wiimote to "participate" in whatever he's got up on it's screen. My ten year old plays a couple times a week but it gets a serious workout when she has friends over. It is engaging enough that my wife's planning the kids a WII party and has tasked me with buying two more remotes as well as a new game (Mario, I think she wants). My teen came home on Spring break and had a whale of a time playing with her siblings.

Instead of seeing diminished use over time, I'm seeing the opposite. I, like the OP, had basically stopped playing after the first few week but the toddler has literally dragged me back to the WII and I now do find myself happy to spend a couple of hours with him on it over a weekend. I really do wish he'd stop thinking that 2:00 a.m. is a good time though...

Just in case I've given the impression that I've got screen-fixated, all-geek kids, let me hasten to note that the college kid sings, did the dance troupe bit, and parties hard with a (seemingly) alright clique, while the ten year old bikes, sings, roller blades, plays with bugs(!), does gymnastics and studies drums, piano and guitar. The two year old is active enough that my wife is insisting that we start him off at martial arts next year in hopes of bleeding off some of the boundless energy that makes watching him a tag team effort.

Feed Robotic AUR desk lamp doubles as collaborative lighting assistant (engadget.com)

Filed under: Household

If you've just not been in the DIY spirit of late, and would rather your lamp console you than just brighten up your surroundings, the AUR desk lamp should do the trick. Concocted as part of a Ph.D thesis on human-robot fluency and nonverbal behavior, the robotic desk lamp "serves as a non-anthropomorphic robotic platform," and was conceived around a 5-DoF robotic arm to "evoke a personal relationship with the human partner without resorting to human-like features." The so-called objective lamp seeks to "explore the relationship that can be maintained through abstract gestures and nonverbal behavior alone," and is animated using a "custom pipeline enabling the dynamic control of behaviors authored in a 3D animation system." A lot of fancy phrasing, we know, so click on through to catch it on video and let things sink in.

[Via Pasta and Vinegar]

Continue reading Robotic AUR desk lamp doubles as collaborative lighting assistant

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!


User Journal

Journal Journal: I'm in a good mood. So here's a little thing

Hillary Clinton says, "Bill, now the press is saying you lent money to that Monica Lewinsky for plastic surgery." He says, "You see how they twist things? What I said was that I blew a wad on her face."

Feed New Method For Crossing Blood-Brain Barrier Patented (sciencedaily.com)

Researchers have patented a new way of transporting medicine that may be able to safely cross the blood-brain barrier. The blood-brain barrier is a group of cells that line the brain's blood vessels, protecting vital brain structures from foreign substances. The barrier has posed enormous difficulties for researchers who want to deliver therapeutic drugs to the brain to treat tumors, infections and degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

Feed Red Wine Protects The Prostate (sciencedaily.com)

Researchers have found that men who drink an average of four to seven glasses of red wine per week are only 52% as likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer as those who do not drink red wine. In addition, red wine appears particularly protective against advanced or aggressive cancers.
Novell

Submission + - Novell goes public with Microsoft Linux deal

InfoWorldMike writes: "On the back of defending the agreement this week, Novell did as promised and published details of its landmark November 2006 Linux partnership agreements with Microsoft. Linux advocates are expected to scour the documents for signs of how the agreement may affect Linux and whether anything in it will put Microsoft or Novell in potential violation of the upcoming version 3 of the GNU General Public license (GPL). The GPL is used in licensing many components of the Linux operating system. Open-source advocate Bruce Perens said he would be looking to see exactly what Novell was given through the deal and whether there is any requirement for the Linux vendor to defend Microsoft's patent claims. "What I'm actually looking for is, to what extent was there a violation of faith?" he said."

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