Hasta La Gadget!

A 36-year-old Bucks County, Pennsylvania resident was sentenced to eight to 20 years in jail for a beating. The judge reportedly gasped upon seeing images of the victim. The man was high on prescription drugs. When the police arrived, he told them that he was Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The man, Milan Marinkovic, apparently doesn’t remember the incident. He told the press, “I woke up in a holding cell at the police station,” his mind a blank. When police arrived at the scene, the faux-Jedi master was standing above Sean Delp, his 30-year-old victim.

Delp says that Marinkovic approached him in a parking lot, seemingly unprovoked. Marinkovic choked him, punched him, elbowed his face, and finally stopped on his head, rendering him unconscious.

“I hope one day that he can function in society without waking up with blood on his hands, but I don’t know when that will be,” Delp told the press.

Upon viewing the images, the judge told Marinkovic, “”This is, without a doubt, the worst case I’ve ever seen involving a beating that did not result in death. This was absolutely an attempt on your part to kill this man.”

So much for the Jedi mind trick.

NTT DoCoMo recently launched the Samsung Galaxy S in the Japanese market and now we’ve come to discover that it’s chosen a very forceful personality to represent the product to its discerning audience. Darth “roundabound” Vader has been starring in the carrier’s latest round of “always with you” ads, wherein he serves as a (sort of) human representation of the phone, thus lending some anthropomorphic qualities to the cold slab of technology awaiting you in the shops. This whole outlandish idea really shouldn’t work, but somehow it does — we want a little Vader in our lives too now. Video after the break.

Continue reading Luke, I am your smartphone (video)

Luke, I am your smartphone (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 26 Nov 2010 07:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What, you didn’t think the Kinect open source community would just take a break for the weekend, did you? Microsoft certainly wouldn’t want that, and after seeing how much shadow puppetry warmed our hearts, we wouldn’t want it either! Thankfully, someone in this world can now track a wooden stick to emulate a lightsaber in real time, bringing one classic meme that much closer to actuality (and the promised Star Wars Kinect game not even parsec closer to release). If that’s not enough, we also have a demo made that converts hand-waving to MIDI notes — which, as creator Ben X notes, puts him one step closer to Ableton Live integration — and a pretty pretty wild visual of body dysmorphic disorder (and a chubby cat) courtesy of the powerful open source Cinder library and a Vimeo user who goes by “flight404.” If those were appetizer and two-part entree, respectively, our post-meal coffee would be a pretty sharp critique on Kinect Joy Ride — where it seems, on at least one track, you can nab a bronze trophy by staying as still as humanly possible. All the footage you seek is after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Kinect lightsaber, and other inevitable milestones for the open-source robot eye (video)

Kinect lightsaber, and other inevitable milestones for the open-source robot eye (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It looks like we might finally be catching up with a long,
long time ago in a galaxy far, far away–in a couple of years, at least Researchers at the University
of Arizona have reportedly designed
an almost 360 degree hologram that updates at a rate of two seconds–not quite
animation-level, but a step in the right direction, perhaps.

Said researcher Nasser Peyghambarian, “We foresee many
applications, including for example, car or airplane manufacturing. They can
look at the hologram and design the system they have in real-time and look at
the model and make changes on it as they go.”

He didn’t mention anything about messages from the Rebel
Alliance, but we all know he was thinking it.

The group has been working on the technology for some time.
Back in 2008, they created a black and white 3D projection that updated every
four minutes. The new technology updates more than 100 times faster than that.

Just don’t expect the thing to land in your living room any
time soon. Says Peyghambarian, “I don’t think you can see these in our
houses in less than seven to 10 years.”

Australian designer James Lillis has become something of a minor celebrity after word got out that he designed two one-piece women’s bathing suits sure to turn the heads of Star Wars fans the world over. The two swimsuits, one with Darth Vader’s head and a rainbow passing through it and appropriately named “Darkside,” and the other all-white with blue patterns on the front and back made to look like R2-D2 and called “Artoo,” are $85 US and available now.

Lillis told ninemsn that he’s been backlogged with the thousands of orders placed in the past few hours, but orders are still open. No word yet on whether or not George Lucas is taking a cut of those sales, or how long they’ll be available to order, but if they vanish all of a sudden there are plenty of other geeky clothes in Lillis’ collection, including a swimsuit with a galaxy painted across the front and back and a variety of Star Wars themed t-shirts in his RedBubble Store.