| These Niles kids know their robotics
Access 9, the robotics team from Niles, won second place in the international competition at the FIRST Championships in Atlanta, Ga.All the students involved with the team are home-schooled. They have used their interest in building robots and the travel to the competition as active learning opportunities.FIRST represents "For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology." The Niles team faced competition from teams from schools and other groups from all over the world. Ninety-four teams from 22 countries gathered to participate in the two and one-half day tournament. The gathering was designed to challenge the children to explore a new frontier that impacts every facet of society from medicine to computers to the environment."We were told that we lost by a fraction and that it was so close some judges actually pulled out as they thought it was too close to call.
'Boy Culture' blasts off at box office
Q. Allan Brocka's new film, Boy Culture, blasted off at the box office this weekend, snagging a per-screen average that bested Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, 300, Shooter, and Wild Hogs. The film, an adaptation of Matthew Rettenmund's novel, opened on Friday in three theaters—one in New York, one in Los Angeles, and one in San Francisco. It netted a total of $27,835, according to Variety. Boy Culture's per-screen average was $9,278, one of the highest for any film currently in U.S. theaters. Boy Culture was probably helped by favorable reviews in both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. The film tells the tale of X, played by Derek Magyar, a hooker who falls in love with his roommate. On a larger scale, Boy Culture deals with the complexities of gay male relationships and monogamy. The film will open April 3 in Chicago and April 13 in Dallas, Washington, D.C., and Palm Springs, Calif.
The skinny on the Drobo storage array device
While not quite a robot as we here at Engadget typically think of them, there's no doubt that Data Robotics's Drobo storage array / external enclosure is making some interesting propositions with this new storage device. Here's everything the storage-minded need to know about the company and its forthcoming product: The device will come drive-free, and cost $700. It will launch in the summer. It does not use RAID of any kind. Instead, it uses pooled virtualized storage. Unlike RAID 5, which requires 3+ drives of the same size, users can add disparate SATA (I or II) drives of any size. The storage pooling impact is estimated as the size of the largest drive. So if your largest drive is 500GB, that will be the maximum amount of space lost from the storage pool for redundancy. With four 1TB drives you would get 3TB addressable storage, and 2.7TB after formatting.
Students 'Zero' in on robotics final
The robotics squad from Orchard Park Secondary School is in Atlanta, Ga., facing the world's best for this weekend's international final. After months of preparation, more than 130,000 students in 37 countries have been designing, building and testing robots to get to the FIRST finals. In all, 550 robots have invaded Atlanta. "It's pretty humming," Orchard Park teacher Stan Hunter said from Atlanta. He leads the only Hamilton team, Orchard Park Patriotics. Their robot, Zero, has a glitch they must fix quickly. Its camera was broken in the Toronto semifinal -- without it, Zero can't navigate. The 16th FIRST robotics competition has 8,600 students in 344 teams putting robots to the test in this year's game of Rack 'n' Roll. Robots must stack inflatable rings on a rack with protruding "spider" arms.
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