Sponsor's Message

With so many stocking-stuffers being increasingly complex sold on price rather than quality, the level of post-Christmas carnage is likely to be high this year.

Of course when you can by a tiny radio-controlled electric car, complete with rechargable batteries, for a mere $9.95 it's only natural that they're not going to be a particularly long-lived toy.

It seems however, that if price isn't really an issue, our designers and engineers are capable of some really impressive results -- just look at the most recent Mars rovers for instance.

Now have your say Got something to say about today's column, or want to see what others think?  Visit The Forums While you're here, why not visit the Aardvark Hall of Shame and perhaps make your own nomination.

Originally intended to survive only 90 days in the hostile environment of the martian surface, the damned things are still going almost 12 months later.

It seems, to the surprise of all concerned, that they've withstood incredibly low temperatures, an accumulation of dust on their solar arrays, a shonky drive system in one wheel and being commanded to traverse the unnervingly steep walls of craters.

Now one of these amazing little devices is on its way to inspect the heat shield that saved its bacon during a fiery descent through the martian atmosphere.

When you remember that all this is happening about 20 light-minutes from earth, the sheer magnitude of this achievement is astounding.

What a cool toy!

But I say that with my tongue only partially in my cheek.

I'm wondering why nobody's brought out a much cheaper version of these rovers as a kid's toy -- I'm thinking it could be very popular.

When I was a youngster, my friends and I used to spend many hours trying to get our cotton-reel tractors to climb small mounds of dirt and stones by carefully modifying them. Notches were cut in the reels, rubber bands were placed around them like tires and all manner of other tricks were employed to assist these tiny vehicles in their climbing abilities.

Given just how cheap radio control equipment and microcomputer stuff is these days, surely some toy manufacturer could stamp out programmable, remote controlled rovers for under a hundred bucks. Hell, I'd buy one myself if I could afford it.

Would the availability of such a toy (with simple Lego Mindstorms type programming) result in hordes of kids setting up obstacle courses and challenging each other to compete by racing (albeit at 2Km/H) their rovers against each other?

Wouldn't *you* love such a toy for Christmas and wouldn't it be a great way to introduce kids to the concepts of simple programming and logical thinking while having a shirt-load of fun?

Damn, that's got to be better than yet another mindless PC or PS2 shoot-em-up game right?

Have your say on today's column

If you feel that this is a good thing and/or you hold a "geniune affection" for yours truly -- then you are welcome to gift me some money using the buttons provided. In gifting this money you accept that no goods, service or other consideration is offered, provided, accepted or anticipated in return. Just click on the button to gift whatever you can afford. NOTE: PayPal bills in US dollars so don't accidentally gift more than what you were intending :-)

Contacting Aardvark
I'm always happy to hear from readers, whether they're delivering brickbats, bouquets or news tip-offs. If you'd like to contact me directly, please this form. If you're happy for me to republish your comments then please be sure and select For Publication.

Other media organisations seeking more information or republication rights are also invited to contact me.

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Linking Policy
Want to link to this site? Check out Aardvark's Linking Policy.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!