George Foreman USB iGrill

luciusism writes "ThinkGeek.com is now selling the new George Foreman USB iGrill This grill is computer controlled, accesible over the internet, and is powered by USB. I couldn't wait till Christmas so I clicked on the "Add to Cart" button as soon as possible. I recommend you do the same before this gets sold out!"

But How Does It Handle...

[GTRacer]

...Remote (grease) Buffer Overflows?

GTRacer
- This is a 4/1 thing, isn't it? HIBT?

Re:But How Does It Handle...

[thinduke]

And what about butter overflow?

Re:But How Does It Handle...

[K-Man]

It sends an out-of-band message, in this case the waistband.

The Real Thing!

[Stackster]

That has to be real. No way I would ever think that that grill is an April Fool's joke. Never.

Wonderful

[Suicide]

Great, now even my computer can cook better than me...

Re:Wonderful

[jdkincad]

For some reason, I doubt that's all that great of an accomplishment.

Re:Wonderful

[ackthpt]

Great, now even my computer can cook better than me...

If you're an overclocker, you'd already know this. ;-)

What Department?

[buzzsport]

Shouldn't this be from the George, George, George, George, and George department?

Re:What Department?

[Angry White Guy]

I actually heard him in an interview on that subject. He said that in his line of work, one had to plan for some memory loss, and that he unsuccessfully attempted to have his wife change her name to George as well.

Obligatory

[AndroidCat]

#include "monty_python_bruces_sketch.txt"

Linux Drivers?

[TedCheshireAcad]

How long before we get Linux drivers for this thing?

NetBSD

[Zach Garner]

I don't know, but NetBSD already runs on it!

Re:NetBSD

[Matey-O]

Bah, BSD is DEAD!

It must run some exotic OS

[TopShelf]

Well, it certainly doesn't look like it supports Java...

Re:It must run some exotic OS

[AndroidCat]

Nah, you have to get the heated iCup for that.

Re:Linux Drivers?

[Trashman]

There's a Patch for the 2.5.x kernel (CONFIG_USB_IGRILL). I think Alan Cox is back-porting it to the 2.4.xAC series.

Trashman@foobar:~$ igrill-shell
igrill-shell> status
Current temp: 180degF (82.22tempC)
Cook time: 10m, 42s
Stay Warm mode: on
Overcook mode: off
Cook to: Medium Well

igrill-shell>

Wait a minute...

[_PimpDaddy7_]

It's not firewire? I don't want it...

-RoxyGuy [roxyguy.com]

firewire.......

[cassady_]

is only for the flambe option.......

Hey, that would make a nice

[Sergeant Beavis]

Beowulf cluster (runs and hides until April 1 passes).

This might be nicer though?

[T-Kir]

How about the iBrator [mecha.net], would be a lot more "fun" having a Beowulf cluster of these little babies rather than a bunch of grills ;) (unless the users are into S&M)

Although I don't know wether ThinkGeek would ever stock them (if they existed of course)!

Nice try

[slappy_guru]

I already have the WI-FI grill !!!!

Yay for overhanded humor.

[IIOIOOIOO]

The last sentence ruins it, and makes the joke obvious for even the most thickwitted of slashdotters.

Re:Yay for overhanded humor.

[molarmass192]

Oh crap ... do you mean to say that I just bought 3 "April Fools Jokes" at $99 a pop? :D

Re:Yay for overhanded humor.

[GeckoX]

Isn't that what your Aibo is for?

Feh

[jdkincad]

Maybe if it was a USB coffee pot...

WHAT???

[The Bungi]

No FireWire? Not even USB 2.0? WTF is this? And they dare put an 'i' in front of the name? How dare they!

Re:WHAT???

[M.C. Hampster]

No kidding. I would think that FireWire would be more appropriate for a grill.

groan...

Re:WHAT???

[The Bungi]

You deserve to be punished.

Re:WHAT???

[micromoog]

I think he should be reworded.

Re:WHAT???

[Dman33]

RTFA man! It is USB 2.0!

From the article: The George Foreman USB iGrill conveniently connects to your home or office PC using USB 2.0 technology

(I cannot believe I actually posted a RTFA comment about something that is a joke in the first place... my apologies)

Re:What kind of fuckin idiot are you? RTFA!

[The Bungi]

Hmmmm. Someone needs a hug. And a new account - this one's hitting the negative karma really quick.

This can't be that great...

[rice_web]

George Foreman! Pshah! Jimmy Dean Sausages. Now that's a winner.

Re:This can't be that great...

[secolactico]

George Foreman! Pshah! Jimmy Dean Sausages. Now that's a winner.


Not to mention a wiener.

*ducks*

in other food news...

[outsider007]

Taco Bell Corporation has announced that they have bought slashdot and are changing the name of CmdrTaco to CmdrTacoBell.

Gives new meaning to the phrase ...

[A nonymous Coward]

... Toxic Hell

I clicked the Add to Cart button!

[Surak]

Hey, no fair! I really wanted one!!! :-P

Re:I clicked the Add to Cart button!

[vt0asta]

Damn, Damn, Damn. I am such a sucker. They really should make this.

Taco is a tease

[The Tyro]

It's really a rather neat idea, if you think about it, and even plausible (except the rather obvious sentence about how it needs no external power supply).

Computer-controlled cooking? Heck yeah I'd buy it, since I have a tendency to endanger the entire household whenever I step into the kitchen. Seriously, I can't even make microwave popcorn without painfully-detailed instructions (and you could probably still get Salmonella from it!).

Curse you, Taco... I would have bought this, even in that stupid dayg

MMm...

[grub]

MMmmm... salmonella...

Am I supposed to leave a piece of raw meat on this all day until I start it up when I leave work? I really don't see the point.

Re:MMm...

[grub]

Well fuck my hat.. I forgot it was April 1. I guess the repetition of the Evil Bit story has left my brain more numb than usual.

Re:MMm...

[Spoing]

I forgot it was April 1.

Now now...does it really matter?

Got you covered

[A nonymous Coward]

Whirlpool Polara GR556LRK [consumerreports.org] combines an oven and cooler.

Re:Got you covered

[Sgs-Cruz]

Heh, on an off-topic note (but then again, WHO CARES!! GO WILD!! APRIL 1ST, BABY!!), an item similar to that screwed up when I went to Florida about 9 years ago. My family and I (I was in grade 4 at the time) went down in a rented minivan... and we borrowed a combination heater / cooler from some friends of the family. We kept all our easter chocolate in it. Unfortunately, the thing had broken and they had fixed it themselves, and put the heat/cool switch in backwards. We knew about the problem.

Of course, w

Mmm time to eat cajun

[idfrsr]

I won't be impressed until we managed to slashdot one...

Just think of it... post story to slashdot... eat blackened chicken...

this is proof that if it wasn't for geeks nothing really unnecessary would ever get done!

Obvious April Fool

[swasson]

Just look at the URL:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/looflirpa/igrill.sh tml

Re:Obvious April Fool

[peter_gzowski]

OMG, maybe thinkgeek has been hiding backwards messaged in URLs for years! Maybe that's why a friend of a friend of mine's second cousin committed suicide after ordering that green laser pointer... Something to think about...

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/ocatllik/deathray .s html
http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/dedratersinoi tpollo plaenyobwoceht/comonsense.shtml

AMD

[MCMLXXVI]

And I thought AMD's drew a lot of power to run. Imagine what kind of power supply you will need to power this through the USB.
1000 watt power supplies here we come.

Re:AMD

[Gothmolly]

Dude, its a joke.

It was good until ...

[binaryDigit]

... they got to the part about being run off of the USB cable, it was actually something that you could see being made. If they were going to spoil it anyway, then the very least they could have done is make it a joint Apple project and have it powered off FireWire and have it play MP3's while it cooks and downloads all it's info from the fddb (FooDDataBase).

USB 2.0 - Woo Hoo!

[ZipR]

So glad they're using 2.0. With 1.1, cooking steaks took hours. I wonder if they'll offer a firewire version for Mac users?

No Need

[Styros]

iGrill to cook hamburgers? No need! I've got an overclocked Athlon!

You know...

[Peterus7]

Your steriotypical geek is incredibly scrawny and has no fat on him.

George Foreman grills promise to 'knock the fat out.' .... right.... Let's make already scrawny geeklings look even more like ethiopians... Hehe...

While I respect thinkgeek.com and enjoy the idea of a USB grill, I just had to point that out. %)

Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!!!!

[supun]

You could prepare dinner in seconds!!!

But can you...

[MongooseCN]

...fry apples in it? Or is Apple going to fry someones ass over this?

Patch 1.1

[glsunder]

George Foreman USB iGrill
Patch, version 1.1
--fixes conditions which can cause a burger overflow.
--previous version allowed P4 heatinge element to enter powersaving mode. This has been corrected.

Thinkgeek

[ewithrow]

Thinkgeek has a whole slew of 4/01 products on their main page.

Thinkgeek main page [thinkgeek.com]

My favorite is probably the atom collection ;)

I'm having a party

[dr_dank]

Do you think I could cook enough food for eveyone if I made a beowulf cluster of these?

CT must wait all year for this day...

[John Harrison]

yet so little planning seems to have gone into it.... Come on, for your favorite holiday can't you do better?

Re:CT must wait all year for this day...

[dr_dank]

C'mon, three dupes on the front page. What more could you want?!?!

Seriously though, I thought it was much funnier last year with the bizarro-world threads where first posters and trolls got modded to insightful.

Does it seperate the fat

[haedesch]

Because I want to seperate it for whatever I want to do with it

(If you don't get it, you have to watch more futurama)

*ducks*

[syle]

I'm waiting for the firewire version.

USB Grill?

[xXunderdogXx]

Why buy a USB Grill when I can already fry hamburgers on my P4!

The funniest part..

[xchino]

..of this April Fool's prank is that it's a damn good idea, and I'm pissed that it doesn't exist.

Ideal for water-cooled systems

[drdink]

I hate to contribute to this painfully unfunny April Fools joke, but...
This would be a great addition to a water-cooled and/or vapor cooled system. You could store the meat in the case, and then just open the side panel and pop the meat into the grill and click the "Cook" tray icon. Amazing!

Oh sure, laugh now...

[AndroidCat]

but just wait until someone puts theirs on the net and gets their burger slashdotted!

Just one question

[InfinityWpi]

Has anybody made the seemingly-obligatory 'Cult of the Dead Cow' joke in relationship to this thing yet?

Once again I have become obsolete...

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew this would happen! Right after I buy my iGrill with a parallel port connection, they go out and release this cool USB model.

This is driving me crazy, from now on I'll have to get all new kitchen appliances to be compatible with the latest interface connector.

Re:Once again I have become obsolete...

[AndroidCat]

Why use cables? Get the WiFri version.

I got one from pre-order

[decaf_dude]

It's a great deal: inside you get a no-fan AMD Athlon XP 2200 and a no-fan nVidia GeForce 4600.
Manufacturer claims iGrill radiates up to 4 times more heat than an industry-grade iron casting oven.

All that for under $100!

awww shucks...

[Chester K]

Is it wrong that I actually want one of these?

GeekPoints

[CaptainFlyingToaster]

I think they should actually DEDUCT GeekPoints if you put this in your cart.

Trolling Mistake

[blair1q]

The mistake here was mentioning another holiday. Gave it away immediately.

That, and you don't use USB for cooking. You use Firewire.

I like April Fools, but...

[evilpenguin]

Yeah, but do you remember those ads (was it General Electric) where all these applicances were being sent "to university" to become smart? I never did understand why anyone would want an internet-enabled 'fridge or microwave. Okay, so you fridge can tell you your milk is out of date. If it it can't take it and throw it away for me, just what the hell is the point?

So, funny as this story is, there are people seriously trying to give brains to applicances that are just fine as they are.

Why is everyone so pissed?

[Phoenix]

1. First of all there is a tradition of fooling people on the first day of april...that's kinda why we call it April Fools Day in the first place.

2. If /. didn't come up with a gag of some kind, most of us here would think of something and prank someone. It's part of the tradition mentioned above.

3. We all know that /. always and I mean *ALWAYS* pulls something like this every year. Sometimes it's the "Find the fake story", others it's the "Find the real story" game. If we all know that they do this then

Although this is an April Fools...

[ShieldWolf]

This similarly wacked out product [impress.co.jp] IS NOT:

Who brushes their teeth by their computer!?!?

April Fools - whee!

[RyuSoma]

Internet-accessible cooking is all fun & games until someone starves to death as a result of Denial of Supper attack..

Classic:

[His name cannot be s]

In SOVIET RUSSIA, April fools are on YOU!

Jesus fucking christ. It's 10:46PST, and I'm so sick of Dumbass April Fools jokes!

Admittedly, I was falling for the Gentoo/RPM one, but the rest were damn obvious.

What, no "Action Shots" for this one?

[Kiaser Zohsay]

Guess they used up all their Photoshop skillz cranking out the main page image.

IN SOVIET RUSSIA GEORGE FOREMAN GRILLS YOU

I almost fell for that one

[kinnell]

Until I saw the picture. Nice one! Almost as funny as the iToilet [electric-chicken.co.uk]

This would not be complete...

[Billy the Mountain]

without a Wi-Fi FirstAlert Fire Alarm. So you know when to turn off the grill.

BTM

Activation

[Anonymous Coward]

The only problem is that you have to call Microsoft and have them approve each meal before you can cook it. And the FBI is trying to get a
bill passed to let them tap into it and record everything that you eat.

--- Brian

Abort, Retry, or Burn?

that's nothing

[Dr. Awktagon]

Translucent plastic? USB?

That's SO year 2000.

These days, it's matte white and WiFi.

Personally, my vote goes for the GE Monogram NetRange .. the world's first combination microwave oven and 802.11 access point. Since microwave ovens and 802.11 operates in the same unlicensed band, it makes perfect sense! Just take the original GE Monogram microwave oven, add a data modulator, remove the door, and you have a convenient, high-power* access point the whole family can use**!

* 800W transmitter may exceed FCC limits.

** Electromagnetic interference is unpredictable. Unit may cause death.

Ah, I wish I had time to photoshop up a fake ad for this....

Powered by....

[DeadBugs]

Powered by AMD

Set to 1Ghz for Hamburger or 2Ghz for a steak.

stupid

[glwtta]

stupid

ok, back to work

And rounding out the USB food items ...

[avoisin]

http://www.dct-net.co.jp/special/usb_hot.html [dct-net.co.jp]

I SO need one of these. If only I knew someone in Japan.

Barbeque Cracking

[winmonster]

I just 0wnz0r3d your hamburger patty.

Breaking News!!

[digifuzz]

Breaking News!!

The George Foreman iGrill now provides an 'evil bit' that can set to infuse the food with "the essense of evil" as it cooks, while still draining unhealthy grease and oils.

Super villains worldwide are lining up at their local geek-shops waiting to get their villainous hands on one. Healthy people around the world are doomed!

As an additional added bonus, upon purchasing the now infamous iGrill, you will receive a coupon that will ensure that you dont pay alot for your next muffler.

More at 11:00.

More USB hardware

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Here [theinquirer.net]. Includes USB blanket, USB toothbrush and USB coffee warmer. And that stuff isn't dated April 1.

BillyG?

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Someone PLEASE tell me why I'd want to buy a clone of BillyG. [theregister.co.uk] Please. I just can't figure it out.

Cooking with 2.5 W

[gotan]

Using the USB current to directly charge high voltage capacitors, the iGrill does not require any additional power supply, making it perfect for dorm or office cooking.

According to the USB specifications USB only needs to provide 2.5W per device (5V x 500mA), they couldn't resist laying extra emphasis on powering that grill only via USB power supply.

USB powered?

[Bitmanhome]

Unfotunately, it's also powered off USB, so it takes about 40 hours to cook a burger. You'd be better off putting the food directly on your CPU [handyscripts.co.uk].

I hate April 1st

[rtphokie]

Am I the only one who isn't sick of this already.

Not an early adopter

[og_sh0x]

No thanks, I'll wait for the Bluetooth version.

Which OS

[abcxyz]

But it only works with a (Big) Mac....

Get a little SIP action...

[symbolic]

And you'll soon be able to have the grill and the refrigerator working together to prepare the entire meal. If you're one egg short, it could even send an imessage to the grocer to order more. But unfortunately, that will only work when we teach the frig how to answer the door when the delivery person shows up.

Linux is for dweebs

[essdodson]

Too bad you really can't buy a Linux is for dweebs shirt off thinkgeek. I've got several friends with upcoming birthdays, I'm sure they'd love to have that to go along with their other Linux attire.

Re:Other ThinkGeek April Fools Items...

[Lxy]

Shrinter? I believe they exist already. They're called "Lexmarks".

Re:Advertising in stories?

[Dman33]

Uh, no way. I'm sorry, I am at a loss for words... I am actually embarassed for you when you realize that this is the most obvious joke...

To your defense, you may live in a different region of the world where April 1 has no prank-related significance... hint: please use that excuse.

Now, I shall run with my rebuttal of this post and say that even if this were a true story, I think it is okay for /. to post it, advertising aside, because of the mere fact that it is something that appeals to the nerd aud

Re:I hate april fools....

[punkass]

The "looflirpa" directory in the link might be a clue...

not totally implausible

[GunFodder]

Someone keeps putting pictures of improbable USB devices seen in Japanese stores on HardOCP. Stuff like electric blankets. I found the idea of a USB Foreman Grill plausible until they claimed it was powered from the 100 millivolt USB connection :)