Robosoldier

'Robot soldiers' bound for Iraq

Eighteen of the 1m-high robots, equipped with cameras and operated by remote control, are going to Iraq this spring, the Associated Press reports.

The machine is based on a robot already used by the military to disable bombs.

Officials say the robot warrior is fast, accurate and will track and attack the enemy with relatively little risk to the lives of US soldiers.

Unlike its human counterparts, the armed robot does not require food, clothing, training, motivation or a pension.

When not needed in war, it can be mothballed in a warehouse.

However, the robot will rely on its human operator, remotely studying footage from its cameras, for the order to open fire.

According to Bob Quinn, a manager with Foster-Miller, the US-based company which worked with the military to develop the robot, the only difference for a soldier is that "his weapon is not at his shoulder, it's up to half a mile away".

Read the full article...

.. I still think it will end in tears.

Hmmm

This Has to Be Homer Simpson...
PRAGUE (Reuters) - A Czech man is being taken to court after he hid in a restaurant washroom until the employees had left and then hooked up beer kegs directly to his mouth.

Cleaning staff found him drunk and lying on the floor of the bar at the restaurant in the city of Brno, about 200km (120 miles) east of Prague, the CTK news agency reported on Thursday.

"He had broken the door of the cooling mechanism ... and detached the hoses leading from the keg, squashed them in his mouth and literally filled himself up with beer," CTK quoted a police official as saying.

The man will be charged with damaging property because he caused 8,000 crown ($340) damage to the beer cooling box.

Sounds more like the old Barney to me.

Half Life 2

Finally! I've finished it.

OK, so I didn't play it solidly since getting it otherwise I would have finished it earlier.

Hmmm.... what game should I get next? I guess I could try finish off Tony Hawk's Underground 2 that's still got a few levels that I haven't completed.

Back!

Up and running again in just under six hours.

Planned down time

Ok, the time has come to sort out the nest of wires behind the server rack in the lounge... well, we call it the server rack but it's just a wooden rack which keeps our servers off the ground...

Anyway. Ten months of swapping cables and adding things have got the cabling in a right mess and it's making troubleshooting the odd problem a nightmare. If we don't sort it out I won't be able to add any new machines to it.

Ideally the work should be done between the hours of 01:00 and 05:00 on a Wednesday because that's when I have the least traffic but my housemates have said that if I do it then I will be doing it on my own. Damn inconsiderate of them if you ask me. So it's going to happen tomorrow morning... It's probably best done then anyways as it will involve power tools (if I can help it) and I've been threatened with severe beatings by my neighbors if I attempt use power tools in the early hours of the morning again.

Forget Robosapiens, I want one of these

Robot makers say World Cup will be theirs by 2050

JULIAN RYALL
IN TOKYO

THE footballers of tomorrow will have the midfield guile of Zinedine Zidane, the finishing ability of Andriy Shevchenko and the staying power of Roy Keane.

A Japanese consortium of robotics experts has thrown down the gauntlet to future players of the beautiful game by claiming their engineered humans will play mankind off the park within 45 years.

"By 2050, our aim is to beat the winners of football’s World Cup and we are very confident that we will be able to do that," said Shu Ishiguro, who heads Robot Laboratory in Osaka. "When we have accomplished that, we will have a society in which humans and artificial intelligence are completely in harmony."

Read full article...

I'm not sure if I can wait till 2050....

I want one

A robot in every home?
By Jo Twist
BBC News technology reporter, in Las Vegas

A prototype next-generation "leisure robot" went on show at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week.

Robosapien V2 is the successor to what was one of the top-selling toys last Christmas.

The taller, smarter humanoid bot will have two new companions which it will detect and play with - Roboraptor and Robotpet.

The prototype, with a vocabulary of more than 1,000 words, won a prestigious prize for innovation at CES.

Read the full article...

I think I'll wait a few more years though...

Smoker's Corner

The view from the smoker's corner at my place of work. Damn the miserable weather... It's a pity I won't be there in the spring.

Cool

A Google search that returns companies live webcams.

The art of Negotiation

How Nintendo boss silenced Steve Ballmer

Balls in the other court

By Nick Farrell: Thursday 06 January 2005, 09:10
NOW HE IS safely retired, the 77-year old former Nintendo boss Hiroshi Yamaushi is regaling Wired magazine about how he reverted to abuse to silence the mighty Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Apparently Microsoft was making a bid to buy Nintendo for absolutely huge amounts of money. Vole was confident that Nintendo would take it. The Game Cube wasn't doing particularly well at the time and there was a lot of money involved. Ballmer himself showed up at the negotiations to have a quiet word.

However Yamaushi didn't like the deal, which he saw as a loss on a level similar to World War Two. He said he ranted a bit about Japanese values and identity but it went no-where. So in the end he said in Japanese "suck my yellow balls Mr Ballmer".

New year, new job

2005.

Damn it's hard getting back into the work routine after nearly a month off. The extra two hour commute doesn't help either. I'm enjoying the work though.

I was looking forward to sleeping late this morning all week, only to woken up at 7:45 by a phone call from my mother (who forgot about the two hour time difference.) I'll try sleep in tomorrow.

Well... I can at least use this time to catch up on my mail... my inbox has been a bit neglected over the last week.