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DARwIn-OP learns to skate, contemplates NHL career (video) Feb 14th 2012, 06:22 On the list of dangerous humanoid bots DARwIn is easily topped by the bow-happy iCub. Still -- we don't trust this thing one iota. While we haven't seen it pick up any weaponry just yet, our friends to the north are teaching it one of man's most notoriously violent sports: hockey. Researchers at the University of Manitoba have managed to train the former RoboCup star to stay upright while shuffling about on skates. Smacking a puck into a goal, on the other hand, has proven somewhat trickier. Eventually Jennifer, as the autonomous hockey-bot has been dubbed, managed to get the hang of it, but we don't think the Flyers or Rangers will be offering her the big bucks just yet. And, honestly, before this little guy gets too good and turns into a bully on the ice, we'd get it to switch games -- curling suddenly seems like a perfectly acceptable past time. Check out the video after the break. Continue reading DARwIn-OP learns to skate, contemplates NHL career (video) DARwIn-OP learns to skate, contemplates NHL career (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Feb 2012 02:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink IEEE Spectrum  |   | Email this | Comments NASA pulls the plug on the mainframe computer era Feb 14th 2012, 05:12 It's the end of another era at NASA, although this one was perhaps more inevitable than others. Chief Information Officer Linda Cureton announced in a blog post over the weekend that the agency's last mainframe computer was shut down this month, marking an end to decades of room-filling computers. Of course, that last mainframe was considerably more recent than that pictured above. It was an IBM Z9 (pictured at the source link below), still quite a behemoth and useful for certain applications, but deemed unnecessary by NASA in the face of other more flexible alternatives. Feeling nostalgic or curious about those days gone by? You can find a bit of mainframe history at the links below. NASA pulls the plug on the mainframe computer era originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Feb 2012 01:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

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