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It looks like the 800nm bot has been mixed up with this bugbot.

The article referencing the bugbot (here) shows a picture with a mini gut walking bot prototype at least 2-3cm in length.

The Nanorobotics site (here) shows a drug delivery bot that they do claim will have to be 800nm wide (here). They are saying there that it must be that thin to be injectable.

It's 800 millimeters. See the picture from TFA:
http://www.post-gazette.com/images3/20050530smscis itti01_230.jpg

Excuse me, the main campus hit by this in PA was IUP, not Pitt. Pitt was also hit, but apparently not as much.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04296/399788.stm

To: Roger B. Dannenberg
CC: various department heads at CMU

I read your letter to the Post Gazette (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05123/497993.stm).

Now, let me get this straight. You are basically saying that because the Recording Industry rips off musicians and (to a lesser extent) songwriters it is OK for wealthy college students to do it, too?

Nice.

How many of your "musician friends who cannot get RIAA members to pay them the royalties they are due" think that because the RIAA stiffs them it's OK for everyone else to stiff them, too?

Do you think that College Professors should work for nothing? After all, you should delighted to teach a bunch of ungrateful spoiled children during the day and do your research on the temporal aspects of music performance for nothing at night. And you should be grateful for the opportunity to pay for your own research and living expenses by flipping Burgers at McDonalds while you are doing it. Right? This would solve the college tuition problem for a lot of people!

Herbie Robinson

Yes. As recently as 1995. Let me introduce you to Bob here and here

Also, they are now making
Tiger killer, aka 'WinTiger'
Linu^H^H^H^H^Cancer killer aka ' Herceptin '

And credit given where credit due, I picked up this story from a post on a mailing list from Paul Ferguson and his tech news.

What I found to be so interesting about this story is that unlike the other thefts, this one did not require the theft of a computer or social engineering skills. This one looks like the works of a group of hackers and now has the FBI's computer crime squad joined in the investigation.

Right. Colleges that produce lobster boy.

Trent Lott invented the paper clip.

Some googling on Mr. Bruce Castor in Philly brings up:

Some of his emails involving campaign for Attorney General

This is a revolution. Revolutions are by definition unconventional. It is this, not consideration of ego, pride or stubborness which gives me pause. Normal methods have not worked. Asher is a Madman, ! and that lunatic is in charge of the asylum. How can normal logic ever apply?

Allegations he may let off drunk drivers if you happen to be a rich political donor

FWIW, the paper this morning was pointing out how this discovery might leave a gaping hole in evolutionary theory. The crux of the problem is that "micro-evolution" as it were, is dependant on an organism's ability to mutate from generation to generation. If a mechanism exists that prevents or corrects mutations across generations, then the theorists may *again* have to go back to the drawing board.

The finding poses a puzzle for evolutionary theory because it corrects mutations, which evolution depends on as generators of novelty. Dr. Meyerowitz said he did not see this posing any problem for evolution because it seems to happen only rarely. "What keeps Darwinian evolution intact is that this only happens when there is something wrong," Dr. Surridge said.

I've read enough of your posts to guess you didn't mean to suggest this "gaping hole" in evolutionary theory implies that creationism is a better alternative, but do watch your rhetoric. This is a violation of Mendel's laws of inheritance, but Mendel was just a monk growing peas. Biology is mind-bogglingly complex. There are so many biological checks and balances, circular pathways, regulator proteins (and proteins that regulate the regulator proteins). If the article had a little more meat regarding the "hothead" gene in question, this would be more interesting. How much different was the mutated protein from the wildtype? If it was just a single base difference, there could have been ten different ways the mutation was repaired. If there were several amino acids difference in the final protein sequence, that would be much more exciting. Okay, after a bit of research I can answer my own question:

"Yet in the Pruitt-Lolle lab, a small but steady percentage of hothead offspring had normal flowers, like their grandparents'. Somehow, the mutation -- a single misspelled "letter" of genetic code in a gene made of 1,782 molecular letters -- was being repaired."

Incidentally, it is much easier than I once thought to create a functional protein from scratch, if you know what you're doing. This guy at Princeton, who gave a seminar at my workplace recently, created proteins made of four alpha helices just by varying the amino acids by polarity. And the most surprising part is that some of these de novo proteins have enzymatic activity! Some can bind to heme and then act as peroxidases. Some act as esterases. It was suggested that perhaps primordial proteins were highly non-specific, or multi-functional, and only later evolved specificity.

Go figure. When's the last time you saw a reporter prosecuted, jailed, or, heck, just plain ol' censured (much less, censored) for revealing classified information?

Oh, please. Just because you were not interested in such cases prior to the Apple vs bloggers trial, it doesn't mean such cases did not exist! Check this link. If you don't bother to click on it, here's a brief quote: "Three times this summer, judges have held journalists in contempt of court for refusing to name their anonymous sources (...) Since 1984, a total of 14 journalists have been jailed ? some for only a few hours ? for refusing to comply with court orders demanding that they reveal sources or other information, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press."

I'm looking on this case from across the pond. In Europe, we tend to have specialized law codes for, ummm, basically anything. We have the Press Code, Labor Code, Family Code etc., while you in the USA rather put anything into just civil law of the "someone versus someone" scheme. Anyway, European press codes both guarantee certain privileges to journalists and guarantee that journalists have to obey certain rules of professional ethics. In Europe it's simple: if you break your professional ethics - you're out of protection, buddy. In general, journalist ethics means that you can't break the law just for sake of getting a scoop - you can be protected by the code if you did it in genuine public interest. From European point of view, this ruling was not a surprise, actually the judge said just what we have wrtitten in our law regarding the freedom of press.

Anyone know of the status of the wifi connection in Oakland's now-under-construction Schenley Plaza?

Wrong animal. Bubba was the 23-pound lobster found in Pittsburgh, who died while being transported to a zoo for treatment. Truly an American icon.

Turkeys can fly. One crashed into a building in PPG Plaza in Pittsburgh back in 2000. Linky. Maybe they can't fly as much as freefall, but still...

...at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Also, the University of Pittsburgh has a movie of the monkey moving it's arm.

For more information, visit the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurobiology Motorlab

This effort joing some other projects targeting cheap PCs at users in developing countries. For example, the PCtvt was recently proposed by Raj Reddy at CMU (an academic rivalry?).

But both efforts are predated by the Simputer, a low cost device that was designed to be shared by Indian villagers. Each user stores their data on a Smart Card, which is plugged into a single Simputer as it is shared by various members of the community.

Lets check these 'facts':

So the Chinese Army did not send in tanks to stop students protesting?
- The US Govt has used the army against its own population. Check the protests in the 60's. The US regularly uses its army both overtly (iraq, grenada) and covertly (cambodia, iran, south america) against other countries.

So those executions I saw where they had the people kneel and put a bullet in their brain never happened?
- The US executes a truck-load of people. In fact, this is a problem highlighted by both Amnesty International and the US Supreme Court.

So there really is freedom of religion and speech in China?
- Freedom on religion and speech? No problem (as long as you are not a muslim). Yes, I will conceded that on this point, the US does provide significantly more freedoms.

And the Chinese did not lob missiles over an island full of people to keep them in line?
- The US government regularly lobs missiles into cities and towns (iraq, afghanistan). Dont be fooled into thinking these 'smart bombs' are really that smart - 17,000 iraqis can't be wrong (but they are dead).

- TV does propogate myths in both directions - dont believe everything your overlords tell you.

The case was with a California company, but the Feds decided to try the trial here in Pittsburgh. They thought a federal judge in Pittsburgh would be more conservative than a judge in California, but thought wrong.

Here's more information from our local papers:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pittsburgh Tribune Review

WTAE-TV

My bad; I thought the Slashdot story was about this article.

Yes.

Capgras' is a generalised diagnosis, rather than a set of specific damaged neural pathways.

Brains are very complex and vary to some degree.

An interesting article

Here's his problem - unlike the College Jeopardy champion, he didn't wager $1,337 in the final round.

Would any single game engine help you create your own Citizen Kane?
Not right now, but I'm sure this is a direction the video games creators are contemplating because it's an area of expected growth. It would certainly make the creation of cinematics much easier for dev teams if machinima was considered part of the engine.

The problem is that in games like Doom 3 for example, the creation of cinematics is scripted heavily and designed into the levels. Models take weeks to build correctly and integrate, and you have to have strong modelling skills to achieve that. There is no separation of set and action or actors, for the most part. I understand that Half Life 2 has changed this kind of static nature, but it's still very early.

The games would have to have quick modelling system built in, or methods for generating random characters and skins, and voices.

I'm sure that in the next twenty years, this is the direction of video games. It would be a smart approach, IMHO.

You also have to consider the comparison between video game sales and box office/rental sales. Video games are beating the movie industry to a pulp, so film as a medium of expression is likely on the way out, unless the business makes some changes and continues to grow and support new vision. Indy film will always be of a higher quality than blockbusters, IMHO.

Look at the reviews for Alexander. Ebert said the film was crap. That's a film they spent $150mil to create!

With games like Halo 2 grosing $100 mil on the first day, for a much smaller budget compared to Alexander, the bottom line is clear. The age of movies is waning.

Quality of film has declined heavily as far as dramatic content, with the exception of films like LotR. I'm seeing the film expression as being played out for the most part.

AOL alone deletes approximately 2 billion spam messages each day (reference here), and has won a lawsuit against a company that single-handedly sent a billion. Nine years is approximately 284 million seconds, so I suspect we are talking small fractions of a second per spam message.

First thing that came to my head was I wonder how they put to rest MS Bob, and I googled for it and thought this was kinda funny and relevant.
"During his short, unhappy life, Bob was ridiculed, ignored and finally abandoned.
...
Sure, he was only a computer program, but still: Let us now pause a moment to pay our respects to Microsoft Bob.
RIP: Bob, 1995-96"
source: Bob is dead; long live Bob

Looking at their photos and biographies, they appear to be different people. If you compare Samantha Bee's bio and Samantha Bennett's bio, then the differences become more obvious... Samantha Bennett was born in East Pennsylvania, lives in West Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh), and was educated at Yale University and Carnegie-Mellon University. Meanwhile, Samantha Bee was born in Toronto, Ontario, lives in Manhattan, and was educated at the University of Ottawa.

They do have the same sort of fun, cheeky, unforced sense of humour, though. The similarity of their styles is noticeable.

D.

It's a little over a year old, but this is still one of my favourite columns by an American looking at Canada. It's not just the weather that's cooler in Canada, by Samantha Bennett at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The best quote is probably

"The Canadians are so quiet that you may have forgotten they're up there, but they've been busy doing some surprising things. It's like discovering that the mice you are dimly aware of in your attic have been building an espresso machine."

(The draft? Charlie Rangel (D) proposes it -- and they're still flogging the notion that it's Bush planning for a draft.)

Charles Rangel, an African-American Democrat, introduced a bill in the house to reinstate the draft to prove a point: Rich white guys are sending the poorest among us off to war.

According to this study, conducted by navy recruitment officers, the two main factors for entry into a volunteer military are low family income and veterans in the family. If you figure that most veterans were either drafted or volunteered for the other primary reason, you're stuck with low income being the primary factor.

While the idea of reinstating the draft isn't being taken seriously (even Mr Rangel voted against it,) that doesn't mean there isn't a defacto draft taking place. There is a backdoor draft in place. We no longer have an all-volunteer army if you consider that people are serving terms in excess of what they volunteered for originally.

If the military is resorting to a backdoor draft to keep from bleeding to death, how long before a front door draft is needed? If we want to keep waging full-scale occupations of foreign countries, we'll need more troops, and a draft will occur. Both Bush and Kerry have vowed to take out terrorists where they are. If you think we won't need more troops, you're fooling yourself.

I can agree with you on one facet of your statement. Beating on Bush is disingenious for planning a draft because the Democrats cannot be taking the war seriously if they aren't also considering it.

Since Bush killed Superman before stemcells could get him to fly again, we must complete the research and resurrect the Man of Steel before this remake wipes out his memory forever. First step: destroy evil supergenius President VP Cheney in his secret HQ, before he can remotely control Bush into spreading kryptonite across the surface of Earth.

Happy now that Sproul's democracide in Pennsylvania, funded by the RNC, is being reported? They don't even pay their employees. That's show biz!

In July, the CIA pressured the govt of Cyprus to investigate Cyprus Indymedia in July. When the Cyprus govt finally admitted this publicly, it made front page news there.

In August, the US Secret Service harassed NY Indymedia's ISP Calyx during the Republican National Convention, making intimidating requests to the ISP, demanding home contact details of Indymedia server admins, etc.

Now it's the FBI's turn.

What does the US govt plan to do to Indymedia in November, I wonder?

Here's some background on what the Italian govt had in mind when they requested the "assistance" of the US Feds. A federal prosecutor in Italy, Marina Plazzi, has stated that she is investigating Indymedia because of possible "support of terrorism". Apparently this is about supposedly positive postings after an attack on Italian soldiers in the Iraqi city of Nassiriya last November. "We asked the FBI for help alongside the Italian Department of Justice", federal prosecutor Plazzi said. The Italian Minister of Justice, Roberto Castelli, has so far refused to speak out on the proceedings of the FBI.

The parliamentary representatives of the Italian government parties are clearly less reticent. On Sunday, Mario Landolfi, spokesman of the neo-fascist party "Alleanza Nazionale" (AN), announced the seizure of the computers served "the enforcement of the law".
Note that the AN are coalition partners in the current Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi, our Partner In The War On Terror(tm).

Last November, 17 AN delegates, including the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini, demanded the shut-down of Indymedia in a joint statement. Back then, Paolo Valentino, state secretary in the Italian Department of Justice and also a member of AN, had announced possible cooperation with the USA.

This week's seizure of Indymedia servers appears to be what he was hoping for.

• Why? What's illegal about posting the names and addresses of delegates to political conventions?

Is it? Your statement depends on the laws (american) that exist and is open to interpretation. Also it is not clear what exact information was released.

• an anonymous poster to nyc.indymedia.org published the names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses of 1,600 delegates to the Republican National Convention in New York City along with a message for anti-RNC groups to use the information "in whatever way they see fit.

this was reported by the 'post-gazette'. No mention was made of the address type (work or home). But in the context read above it can be interpreted as a potential *threat*. In the current climate and US elections coming up this reported incident will certainly trigger this kind of (heavy handed) response.

Also consider that the source of the information may also be the *interest*. Cynics among you may well think the info (if harmless) maybe a plant to shut indimedia down for a bit :)

It's personal information, but no private. See this excerpt from this article .

The posting did not include threats but involved political speech fully protected by the First Amendment, said ACLU Associate Legal Director Ann Beeson. "This type of investigation is really a form of intimidation and a message to activists that they will pay a price for speaking out," said Beeson. "The posting of publicly available information about people who are in the news should not trigger an investigation. Indeed, if the mere posting of the delegates' names is cause for alarm, then the Secret Service should be investigating the many Republican Web sites where the same kind of information is available."

Suspicious indeed....Possibly linked to RNC delegate identification? See this link from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04264/382137.stm

This in from Argentina Indymedia, which has a different view -

FBI took the hard drives of IMC servers in the UK
por Mat ((!)) Thursday October 07, 2004 at 06:10 PM
-
The US authorities issued a subpoena to Rackspace's office in the US ordering them to physically remove Indymedia hardware located in London. Rackspace is one of Indymedia's web hosting providers with offices in the US and London. Rackspace complied and turned over Indymedia's hard drives/servers in the UK. This affects some 20+ Indymedia sites worldwide.

Since the subpoena was issued to Rackspace and not to Indymedia, the reasons for this action are still unknown to Indymedia.

At the same time a second server was taken down at Rackspace which provided streaming radio to several radio stations, BLAG (linux distro), and a handful of miscellanous things.

The last few months have seen numerous attacks on independent media by the US Federal Government. In August the Secret Service used a subpoena in an attempt to disrupt the NYC IMC before the RNC by trying to get IP logs from an ISP in the US and the Netherlands, last month the FCC shut down comunity radio stations around the US, and now the FBI is shutting down IMCs around the world.

The list of affected local media collectives includes Ambazonia, Uruguay, Andorra, Poland, Western Massachusetts, Nice, Nantes, Lilles, Marseille (all France), Euskal Herria (Basque Country), Liege, East and West Vlaanderen, Antwerpen (all Belgium), Belgrade, Portugal, Prague, Galiza, Italy, Brazil, part of the Germany site, UK Radio, and the global Indymedia Radio site.

Micah Anderson of the global imc-tech collective said, "We suspect it has to do with an FBI request that we take down a post on the Nantes IMC that had a photo of some undercover Swiss police. They claimed there was threats and personal information, but there was nothing of the sort. The undercover police that were photographed on the page were photographing protesters. Rackspace is a US company, but have colocation in the UK where these servers are (err, were) located. So this is about Swiss police, on a French site, on a server in England, taken away by American federal police."

However, according to information from IMC Nantes the pictures in question were already removed a week ago.
Link to Argentina Indymedia
http://argentina.indymedia.org/news/2004/10/227693 .php

and one more to NYC Indymedia, which is still up

http://nyc.indymedia.org/

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a closely related story: Software disasters are often people problems. Well, duh: "Garbage in; garbage out."

What I find really interesting is that this story, or various versions of it, while hardly "new," starts popping up on news sites all at once? It sounds like some organization is running a PR campaign, but it isn't quite astroturfing.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has a closely related story: Software disasters are often people problems. Well, duh: "Garbage in; garbage out."

What I find really interesting is that this story, or various versions of it, while hardly "new," starts popping up on news sites all at once? It sounds like some organization is running a PR campaign, but it isn't quite astroturfing.

CMU may have quite a few good individual professors and research projects in CS, but the institution as a whole doesn't think twice about being a corporate-flak career school... from their advertising slogan "The Professional Choice" in the early '80s on (when CMU accepted a certain large donation from IBM and almost decided to make all its students buy PC's in 1982).

Thankfully, many CMU students are still practicing some degree of creative resistance, although a penguin statue allegedly placed on the roof of the student center overnight before the Gates speech was hurriedly removed since apparently CMU values its clean public image more than its students' creativity.

One other thing to note is that this is likely not much more than a matching grant for further increases in students' tuition, which pays for a much higher share of an education at CMU than at many peer schools.

Just on a side note: Elderly woman shoots burglar

and the recent job gains are in sectors such as burger flipping.

That doesn't sound so bad if you count burger-flipping as a manufacturing job...

The last president to not have a single net job created during his term was Herbert Hoover.

Turned the corner. Right.

Maybe computer programming could be classified as manufacturing jobs too, if they aren't already...

Here's a link to a story talking about Firefly when it first came out. Whedon talks about the book in it and why it inspired him.

Firefly

A year+ ago there was some talk of a robot that picked fruits or vegetables on plantations, while using the rotten fruits that fell on the ground for fuel. I can't find the link now :(

On a related note, here is an interesting bit about a solar powered robot. Note the date and note the mentions of NASA projects. Sounds familiar?

Looks like someone else found a way to make some money. Amazing, huh?

This Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article has a synopsis of the whole SwiftBoats for Truth internet phenomena.

Money quote ... "The biggest unreported story of this campaign is the extent to which the major media are in the tank for Kerry. But media bias -- which has reached comic proportions in the Swift Boat vet controversy -- may be doing Kerry more harm than good."

Your comment is very strange in light of the gross disparity between cash on-hand by the competing groups. SwiftVets for Truth had ~$250 Thousand while MoveOn & Co had $60 Million

Money quote ... If the "Republican attack machine" were behind the Swifties, it did a lousy job. The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had barely $250,000 on hand when they launched their first ad in three mid-sized markets in Ohio, Wisconsin and West Virginia. By contrast, the three largest independent committees have raised and spent nearly $60 million on ads attacking Bush.

ok, not that lazy...

here

Well, what I know about him personally isn't much, but what there is of it I don't like (e.g. the 'covering up' of the justice statue because of (heaven forfend) a breast).

The way he has carried out his job, however, I find abhorrent. Pushing the "PATRIOT Act", all by itself, would warrant my condemnation. But looking into how much torture U.S. interrogators could get away with, and refusing to own up to it, is beneath contempt.

Actually actually, if you're a minor, it's illegal even to take pictures of yourself.

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it deeply impressive that Cornell University addresses ethics with regard to science/engineering? In a world where so many geeks just build anything they're tasked with building, it's nice to know that there are some classic academics, educators, scientists and students up in Ithaca who give a damn about this world and their impact on it.

Because the government should not compete with the private sector.

So when I start my private army I can get the government to pay me and disband theirs?

The world's first 'gender challenged' robot? Seriously, that is just plain freaky. I'm sure your average 80 year old woman won't want that thing shuffling around in the dark.

"Excuse me Pearl, I have to go collect my pension, could you let me open the door please dear?"

"I'm sorry Gwyneth, I'm afraid I can't do that"

But that reminds me: isn't the U.S. the country that imprisons (and tortures ("heals", "treats")) children if they touch *each other*?

Actually, the U.S. has just charged a fifteen year old girl with possession of child pornography, and sexual abuse of children, for emailing naughty pictures of herself.

And they intend to try her as an adult.

Kafka couldn't have come up with better folks: "Little girl, you're too young to be able to consent to sex, so those pictures you took of yourself are pictures of a child, and you kept those pictures of yourself, so that's possession of kiddie porn.

"But young lady, you're old enough to know better, so we intend to try and convict you as an adult -- and force you to register as a sex offender -- as a kiddie pornographer, and child molester, no less -- for the rest of your life."

(P.S., I submitted this for Slashdot's "Your Rights Online" about a week ago, but it was rejected.)