Incredible life-like robot dog
I received this link today, via Oszkar, about a robot developed by Boston Dynamics, called BigDog. As you can see below, this robot has very natural movements, is able not only to keep its balance, but also to regain it in case of abruptly loosing it. Move to second 35 to see what I’m talking about. Or better yet, watch the entire clip to see the whole feature set:
I have to say I’m pretty impressed. That was quite a kick! Robotics have evolved a lot during the last years! More >
Visual Studio 2008 & .NET Fw 3.5 – Overview
As you probably know by now, Visual Studio 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5 were released last week. This is the RTM version of VS2008 (Release to Manufactures) and means that is available only through MSDN Subscriptions (the Standard, Pro and Team System editions) or free to everybody through the Express Editions.
Because I have an MSDN Premium Subscription through the Microsoft Academic Program, I started downloading the Team System edition. After some unexpected interrupts from the ISP and my PC going Standby, I had my ISO.
Instalation
Before I started the setup, I remembered that I More >
A package from 2 friends
Actually from 3. No: 4!
During this summer, some of my Microsoft Student Partners colleagues were selected for internships in Redmond, at Microsoft’s headquarters. Among them were my 2 good friends, Bogdan and Razvan Hobeanu, who worked in two separate teams, in the Windows division. They had a pretty nice adventure there, along with some other friends like Andrei Csibi and Alex Ghiondea, but you can learn more from them, here [Romanian].
We even got to talk on the phone from time to time, and on one of the occasions More >
Disgusting Marketing
<rant>
As time passes by, I personally find it more and more difficult to find quality products. Actually I mean quality products at an affordable price. There are a lot of products on the market, each one with extraordinary features at a very good price, accompanied by various awards.
But the fact is that I find it that most of these flashy products are nothing else that variations of some reference (and more expensive) product, made of inferior parts and manufacturing. And the awards… well, if you want to know, you should read Andy Brice’s article on software awards.
Besides More >
Static constructors: populating static collections
Static Constructors
As Wikipedia explains, a constructor is a special method that is used to initialize member data. This member data can be object’s data, i.e. for each individually object (instance of a class) these fields are initialized with specific values, or class’s data known as static data, available to all instance objects as 1 global resource.
We all know object constructors, but are there any other constructors? Well, YES: static constructors!
Static constructors are used like “normal” constructors, but are prefixed with the keyword “static” and are used to initialize static members. This initialization occurs when the class More >