Slashdot Mirror

I saw a prototype of this about a year ago on the discovery channel, or maybe it was their website. None the less, this thing was huge, dwarfing an SUV and it had fluid movements - similar to the impressive way the honda robot moves - except that it looked like it could use a SUV as a soccer ball. This thing looked incredibly scarey when it turned and walked towards the camera. Terminator 3 comes to mind when remembering it. Oh! I found it. HERE IS THE LINK and check out the video too!!!

These robots reminded me of W.I.S.O.R., a robot built by Honeybee Robotics to repair the ancient steam pipes under New York's streets.

Very interesting to anyone reading this would be a docudrama about the creation of W.I.S.O.R. This is a cross between Pi, 2001, and Junkyard Wars.

Of peripheral, yet substantial interest is Honeybee's RoboTender, a robotic bartender.

You could always go to the Leaning Tower of Piza, as you'd be foreverafter be able to belittle other people's whack-ass engineering ideas with "Bah! That'll just end up just as broken as the Leaning Tower of Piza, and have you even seen it??"

If you want to really be amazed by the Leaning Tower of Pisa, read about the measures they've taken to prevent it from totally falling over.

"If DRM could be implemented without restricting access to memory in my own computer I probably wouldn't mind it so much. The problem is that DRM cannot be implemented without this restriction."

Wrong! DRM could be implemented in hardware in the soundcard. So the music never gets decripted by the CPU.

Or even the music could be decripted by digital speakers so the only way you'ld have to make a copy is with a microphone. That only until a system like Macrovision is made for sound.

I recommend reading this essay

This kinda freaks me out though..

Except for the guy that thinks the core is a giant nuclear reactor. Most geophysicists tend to ignore him, but they're not really sure he's wrong. See a writeup in Discover here.

The field is more complicated than that. Saari has made a career out of pushing the Borda count. There are useful applications for it, but I pretty firmly believe public elections are not

It's a pity that Condorcet is ignored here, because he was da man. Condorcet's method kicks butt when compared to Borda and Approval (Approval is simpler to implement, though).

There's a whole bunch of links to articles like this one in the Voting System category in Netscape Open Directory.

Rob

I found a story about this in a Discover magazine, in a friend's bathroom (of all places) a couple of weeks ago. A very interesting read.

I remember thinking about how I always say in the winter time up here: it's sure not global *warming* us up any here.

All I know is, if the winters here get worse than they already are, I will be heading for the equator.

"the next cooling trend could drop average temperatures 5 degrees Fahrenheit over much of the United States and 10 degrees in the Northeast, northern Europe, and northern Asia"

5 degrees fahrenheit is 15 degrees celcius to us canooks.. and an average temperature drop of 15 degrees celcius will definately have me packing my bags. An Average January temperature of -25 degrees is bad, but you learn to deal with it. (plug the car in!) -40 are particularily bad days (maybe I won't go to work today) but -40 as a new average is a serious concern (to me at least).

I know, I know, the folks up in Tuktayuktuk are saying, "what a candy ass"

this image springs to mind

The Public Anemone was presented at SIGGRAPH '02 in San Antonio, about a month ago - that's where the pictures in the article were taken. The exhibit was in the Emerging Technologies area. I visited the exhibit almost daily (reactive robotics is an area of interest), and spent some time observing both the exhibit and people's reactions.

The Media Lab students explained that it was an experiment in social interaction - but how people react with something that doesn't have a face, or a voice. In a way, it's easier to create a creature that doesn't have to synthesize speech, etc. At the same time, it's much more difficult to elicit a reaction from people when they can't interact the same way that they do with other humans.

The Public Anemone had two main forms of reaction that I could make out - shrinking back from people who reached out toward it, and tracking faces. (With the assistance of dual stereo cameras in the back wall.) The exhibit was more like a terrarium than an aquarium (as the BBC article mentions), but the creature had a silicone skin which allowed it to play in the small pond and waterfall without shorting. During the day cycle, the anemone interacts with guests. During the night mode, the anemone goes to sleep and guests can interact with other fiber-optic anemones (that also shrink away) and drum on gemstones embedded in the surface of the exhibit. The exhibit certainly looked cool, with fiber optics, a soundtrack, and changing colored stones (using ColorKinetics lights), but the interaction left something to be desired. Almost all the people I observed in the exhibit did the typical museum "Oh, that's nice, let's look at it for a few minutes." Almost no-one tried to interact unless prompted to by the media lab representative that was standing there, describing what was going on. Nobody that I saw tried to play with the face tracking abilities of the robot.

Cynthia Brazeal(the person in the second pic) is more commonly known for her work on Cog & Kismet. (Pic)

IMHO, The coolest project in this area is Doc Beardsley, by the Entertainment Technology program at Carnegie Mellon. Here's an article at Discover Magazine. Interaction with Doc emphasizes fun over artificial intelligence.

I have more pics of the Anemone from Siggraph. If anyone wants to post them somewhere where they can stand the slashdotting, send email to mistermund@yahoo.com

It was an article "Evolving A Conscious Machine" by Gary Taubes in Discover from June 1998. I have the citation offline, but you can find the whole article by searching the online archive for june 1998 and the word "genetic"

Shortcomings in defining the scope of the problem seem to be one of the larger problems in applied GAs. Makes for some amusing results in the realm of virtual simulations.

This method is neither new or novel, it's called Quantum Encruption. You can read a quick primer Here. By using polarized photos, you can trasmit bits that will be impossible to intercept without being detected. Research labs have been working on relaible, long-distance implementation for years.

Interesting article and photo about a prototype of a building that actually generates its own wind power. link

Interesting enough, the current issue of Discover magazine has an article about Chocolate, and how it's in danger of becoming extinct.

You can read a sample of the article at: Discover

Some tech recently invented by Larry Fullerton could make this feasible. It uses pulses instead of continuous sine waves, and uses 1/1000 the power of sine transcievers. Fullerton's company Time Domain is working on building commercial products. Apparently it can support "almost unlimited" bandwidth. Now if only it was available.....

Discover Magazine also has a blurb about this research in the R&D section of their June 2002 issue. Or, read it online instead.

Discover Magazine also has a blurb about this research in the R&D section of their June 2002 issue. Or, read it online instead.

There is an online version of that story.

You're pretty much right. There's an article in the June issue of Discover (which the website does not yet acknowledge the existence of, oh well) about corneal repairs, and one man in particular, blind since age 3, who had his corneas repaired. And yes, although his eyes now should allow him to see fine, he can't interpret what he sees. (One interesting side effect: he's immune to certain optical illusions, because he never learned to interpret images in the way that gives rise to the illusion!) Studies have been done with animals, too, in which animals are blindfolded at birth and their eyes only uncovered after they've reached adulthood - and although their eyes are physically fine, they're unable to actually use their vision. "Seeing" seems to be mostly post-processing by the brain.

Eventually, however, you would run out of power. Say you have a 100W P/S (I know, incredibly low by modern desktop standards but... we are talking about systems that are designed to have low power requirements).
Each nodes does require a finite amount of power, and having a P/S that outputs a finite amount of power, you are limited to a finite number of nodes...
Now all we have to do is build a toilet out of these things and hook it up to of one of these (detailed here), and we really could have infinite processor power...

Of course it's possible!!

http://www.discover.com/may_02/feattech.html

The link supplied in the slashdot write-up requires Javascript. Javascript is bad. 'K?

Non-javascript link.

Unless we used self-replicating robots to manufacture and maintain it. I remember an article I read on that possibility a few years ago, intended for use in Earth's deserts, not on the moon, but it should translate. Just give me a second to find it... ah, here it is, "Robot, Build Thyself", Oct '95, Discover Magazine. This way, you would only have to deliver one (or at least, just a few) robots to the moon, and wait.

Some time ago /. mentioned this story about inventor Larry Fullerton, who spent 25 years developing radio burst technology in his backyard lab. His company, Time Domain, is listed in the Entrepreneurs box of the SciAm article. It's nice to see 2 things happening: 1) the technology has not disappeared, and 2) one of the original pioneers is actually getting a piece of it.

PQ: How long will it be before scientists might be able to study the atmospheres of Earth-like planets around other stars?

Charbonneau: That's much more difficult. We are close to being able to find Earth-like planets. But it may be decades before we are able to study their atmospheres.

Chris Beckenbach

PQ: How long will it be before scientists might be able to study the atmospheres of Earth-like planets around other stars?

Charbonneau: That's much more difficult. We are close to being able to find Earth-like planets. But it may be decades before we are able to study their atmospheres.

Chris Beckenbach

The most recent edition of Discover has an article on quantum encryption using single photons.

Basically they shoot a laser through a heavy filter, emitting only one photon. The Sender and Receiver exchange pads including what group of spins(Horizontal/Vertical, or the diag's) on each photon contains information. An Evesdropper has a 50% chance of guessing which one, and retransmiting that. The article state that on average 25% of the photons would be incorrect if your conversation was being intercepted due to wrong guesses by the snooper.
Pretty Neat - but they say it'll be at least 10 years for something that consumers can plug into a wall...

Nature.com - Feb 15, 2001

Discover.com - May 2001

The only reason I bring this up is my story was rejected a year ago... *Whine* Wish I still had my original URL for that story... Nothing about magnetic properties tho...

Check out #6 on this link -- I think I originally bookmarked this after it was linked from slashdot. Scary stuff!

My favorite line from the Discover article is "To the ancient Greeks, the oracle at Delphi was the voice of Apollo. To Jelle de Boer, the oracle was more likely an ordinary woman high on hydrocarbons."

My favorite line from the Discover article is "To the ancient Greeks, the oracle at Delphi was the voice of Apollo. To Jelle de Boer, the oracle was more likely an ordinary woman high on hydrocarbons."

Where did everything come from? Don't say, "the Big Bang." To say that everything came from the Big Bang is like saying babies come from maternity wards--true in a narrow sense, but it hardly goes back far enough. Where did the stuff that went "bang" come from? What was it? Why did it bang?

Where did everything come from? Don't say, "the Big Bang." To say that everything came from the Big Bang is like saying babies come from maternity wards--true in a narrow sense, but it hardly goes back far enough. Where did the stuff that went "bang" come from? What was it? Why did it bang?

I saw a demonstration of this technology a few years ago at Epcot center, during the Discover Magazine Awards for Technological Innovation. The demonstrator held this paddle-like device with an array of metallic discs on it, and as he turned it slowly across the crowd, you'd not hear a thing until it was pointed at you. Very cool :)

I saw a demonstration of this technology a few years ago at Epcot center, during the Discover Magazine Awards for Technological Innovation. The demonstrator held this paddle-like device with an array of metallic discs on it, and as he turned it slowly across the crowd, you'd not hear a thing until it was pointed at you. Very cool :)

Dr. Petrenko won a 2000 Discover award from the magazine by the same name for this very thing. It's listed under 'Aerospace.'

Last time I looked it up, plutonium was chemically toxic, and an alpha emitter. That means that if aerosolized and inhaled, it's bad juju for your lungs, and if ingested, it's bad juju for your intestinal tract, but you can hold a lump of it in your hand and it "feels warm, like a live rabbit".

> Seriously guys, which would you want to live near, a coal fired plant that is mismanaged and pumps out a lot of nitrous oxide, or a nuclear power plant that is mismanaged and leaks radioactive material.

Considering what's also in coal - a bit of thorium and uranium, rubidium-87, and piles of potassium-40 - goes straight into the atmosphere... considering the radon that gets released during the mining process of coal... yeah.

If you burn 10000 tons of coal daily to generate 1000MW, you're probably generating 50-100 pounds of radioactive waste a day. If we assume 1% of it gets released into the atmosphere (with scrubbers) or 10% (without), you're throwing pounds of it straight into the air. The rest doesn't go into the air, it goes into an ash pile with the rest of the non-radioactive waste, to be recycled into whatever they do with coal ash.

Granted, none of this is significant to human health, but the point remains that a coal plant, even when properly managed, emits radioactive material -- thousands of times more than the typical nuke plant, and even if the nuke plant is improperly managed.

If you want to count gross negligence and poor design (Chernobyl) against nukes, you must also count the hundreds who die every year mining coal, and the desctruction of towns like Centralia, PA, which has been burning for 40 years.

(If you think the Centralia coal mine fire is bad, there's a coal fire in China that burns 200 million tons of coal a year and emits more CO2 per year than every automobile in the United States.)

Coal cleaner than nuclear? Bullshit.

Sigh...


With conventional sinewave technology, the bandwidth of the signal relative to the carrier frequency is very small at most a few percent using spread spectrum. However, it is possible to transmit and receive electromagnetic impulses which have a relative bandwidth approaching 100%. This "nonsinusoidal" radiation is currently being used for anti-stealth and ground-probing radar, under the more common heading of ultra-wideband or impulse radar.

You are confusing technologies.

Please refer to this website for more infomation, or even this article

The Wrong Trousers?

Is anybody else dying to borrow this thing for a day, and track down some of the people who picked on you during high school?

Give *me* an atomic wedgie, will you?!

Maybe it's just me...
:-)

Actually Discover has an article pointing out 20 Ways the World Could End - long before Sun expanding to get us all. Just telling me sun is a whimpy boy doesn't really relief me at all. :)

(btw, I think 17 is about the present world. :)

Actually Discover has an article pointing out 20 Ways the World Could End - long before Sun expanding to get us all. Just telling me sun is a whimpy boy doesn't really relief me at all. :)

(btw, I think 17 is about the present world. :)

The question I have about your comment however is: if your retina is detaching, wouldn't this technology be just as ineffective as your existing retina?

This seems to be a pretty invasive procedure and might even make your problem worse as the retina is 'elevated' to insert the arrays.

This could probably speed or complicate your problem based on the type of retinal detachment you have. (more information on retinal detachment here: http://www.vrmny.com/retinal_detachment.htm

I read an interesting about this earlier this week in Discover Magazine, an article by Neil Savage, which just happens to be also available online.

> Big fucking atoms...

They're Bigons!

(What, you don't get it?)

Ugh, if you ask me Canadians are even more nauseatingly patriotic than us Americans. We've been doing nuclear astrophysics experiments for decades already and with cooler looking instruments too! ha! take that Canada!

There is nothing wrong with a good audit over NASA's budget. That budget is what a Butt Head Astronomer would describe as billions and billions and billions and billions of dollars. The Mars Climate Orbiter was just one obvious sign of NASA waste. Getting someone in the accounting field might just be able to help NASA maximize the funds it has and achieving more with the same.

Since the head of NASA is not going to greet the great beyond, he really need not be a scientist. Just someone who is effective running a massive organization funded by taxpayer dollars. As Dennis Tito has shown, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to make it into space. In fact, being good with money and budgets was what lead him to the stars.

The Shooting Gallery

Check out this essay by Jaron Lanier

Ewww.... that looks like Earse.cx. Did that illustrator get his idea from some goat site?

But then I scrolled down to the bottom and noticed the irony: a publication of The Walt Disney Company, known in political circles as the biggest corporate sponsor of the Slippery Slope Towards Perpetual Copyright Establishment Act (commonly called the Bono Act), just endorsed Napster.