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Sorry to disapoint you but we already have :)

here

Permitted Uses:
You may play the Connect Downloads an unlimited number of times on up to three (3) personal computers that are registered with the Connect store, including the personal computer on which the Connect Downloads are originally downloaded. Once downloaded to that personal computer, you may transfer the licensed Connect Downloads an unlimited number of times to portable music devices and media (except for WMG's Content, which may be transferred to up to three (3) different portable devices) that read the OpenMG DRM such as the HiMD, the Net MD, and the Memory Stick media. You may not thereafter transfer, copy or export (or the like) such Connect Download from one such device to another, or to any media of any kind without maintaining the OpenMGDRM. In addition, you may also "burn" up to a total of ten (10), (up to five (5) permanent copies of the Connect Downloads in compressed form in the Atrac3 codec encrypted and protected by the OpenMG DRM and up to five (5) Redbook CDs, (except for UMG's content, which may be burned to at least ten (10) Redbook CDs)), to either blank recordable CD-R compact discs or blank recordable CD-RW compact discs (i.e., a physical, non-interactive record configuration that conforms to either (i) in the case of CD-Rs, the so-called "Orange Book Part II" technical specification for "write once" compact discs or (ii) in the case of CD-RWs, the so-called "Orange Book Part III" technical specification for "re-writable" compact discs). Any burning or transferring capabilities of the Connect Downloads are solely an accommodation to you and shall not constitute a grant or waiver (or other limitation or implication) of any rights of the copyright owners of the sound recording and underlying musical composition embodied in the Connect Download.
Non-Permitted Uses:
Any use of the sound recordings as embodied in the Connect Download other than as permitted above is a violation of the copyright in such sound recording under applicable laws, and is prohibited. Except as expressly permitted in the "Permitted Uses" section above, you may not reproduce, distribute or transfer the Connect Downloads, in any format. For example, you may not: (i) transfer the Connect Downloads to anyone else; (ii) register more than 3 computers with the Connect store at any one time; (iii) copy or transfer the Connect Downloads to more than the number of portable music devices expressly permitted in the "Permitted Uses" section above; (iv) "burn" more than ten (10) copies of any particular Connect Download to blank recordable compact disc; or (v) copy or transfer the Connect Downloads to any storage device or blank media not specifically authorized in the "Permitted Uses" section above. In addition, you may not reverse engineer, transcode, decompile, translate, adapt, modify, disassemble or otherwise tamper with the Content, or the software, or circumvent any technology designed to enforce these Limitations on Use. You further agree that you will not attempt to modify the software or the Usage Rules for any reason whatsoever, including for the purpose of disguising or changing ownership of the Content.

Real Dolls and QRIO for me to have any vested interest :-)


Kinda like AI.. only replace Jude Law and give me Rebecca

*sigh*... how great the world would be.

Xbox doesn't have Gran Turismo, GTA:VC, nor will it have the new one.

PSX is pretty bad ass, I must say.

Isn't sony's line of Hi-MD players, found here their first line at hitting the iPod?

I mean, even though a disc only stores 1 gig, I'd take removable media with $7/disc cost, ability to double capacity of old minidiscs, and a very long (minidisc standard) battery life over the iPod. This of course all before we even compare the cost of the units.

...are what first sprung to mind. Perhaps the analogy isn't quite right, but I think Sony's making a somewhat similar mistake here. But then I realized that maybe Sony considered Betamax to be a success? ... and at the time, they didn't even control any content, like they do now.

It's interesting how Sony portrays their own history.

Good for them!

Mod this AC up, the link http://www.sony.net/Products/Linux/Download/EBR-10 00EP.html is real link to source code.

It looks to me like a combination of the work being done by Sony and other Japanese manufacturers will give us walking machines that have the same type and degree of mobility as a human eventually. Also, the work being done in a university in Europe (Sorry, I can't seem to find the link anywhere yet, will go and reply to this when I have found it) seems to indicate that we may eventually have a computer program capable of holding a perfectly believable conversation with a human.

Do you think that the combination of these technologies will lead to walking, talking robots?

Thank you for providing a link.

Which will confuse some folks because of the alot of the music is not written to be precisely on the beat. (anticipations, etc)

here...

Yes, it reads like you could throw it across the room and it would get up and keep going. Not sure if it could fall on purpose (seems kinda against the idea). OTOH, it can do wicked katas. (Just needs the programming like the dances) As well as walking on two legs, if QRIO does lose its balance, it reacts to protect itself against the impact. And after it falls, QRIO checks front, back, left and right, and gets back up, by itself.

(From the technolgy page)

"It can adjust to disparities in elevation up to 1 cm, and slopes up to 10 degrees"

...a single stem might not get it, but a dozen might ;-)

The ability to shift weight to stand on one 'foot' impresses the (*^%* out of me!

Aibo could be considered old news with the QRIO

"Lunar-A: Originally scheduled to be launched in 1999 by Japan's Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science, this lunar orbiter mission was delayed because of a failure during testing. When it is finally launched this August, the orbiter will map the surface of the moon and lob two missile-like probes designed to penetrate and study the moon's interior."

Put on a little velcro and attach it to one of these. Then, when you roam out of range, just call it back in.

ATRAC3plus is a Sony proprietary standard, with all this complex licensing issues this entails, hence it's unlikely anyone else will be using this technology, particularly in the free/open source software community. Sony are somewhat canny about releasing details of the licensing, so I haven't found anything more detailed about their licensing strategy than this. This paper also gives some peripheral insight.

ATRAC3plus is a Sony proprietary standard, with all this complex licensing issues this entails, hence it's unlikely anyone else will be using this technology, particularly in the free/open source software community. Sony are somewhat canny about releasing details of the licensing, so I haven't found anything more detailed about their licensing strategy than this. This paper also gives some peripheral insight.

As one of my friend described it in Hexadecimals,there is this whole ROBOfest around.
You got this (yet to be named) Toyota Robot Playing trumpet. The actual song in the the web is not avaiable claiming that it is not disclosed under copyright.
Sony's QRIO is yet another Human friendly Robo and heard that this performed a Orchestra. as well.
Now there has always been a Robot Hall of Fame at CMU.

I've seen this about 4 or 5 month ago:

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/QRIO

QRIO (by Sony, not Honda) is most likely what the GPP was referring to. QRIO can also do kung-fu katas, etc, and is the technological successor to AIBO. ASIMO is ancient, relatively gigantic and not toy-sized. I haven't yet seen it do kung-fu.

"We said, we can do this, but the gyroscope technology--we didn't think people could afford it."

Rad2Go : Segway = I-Cybie : Abio

I guess there's a market for knock-off gucci watches, so why not knock-off Segways? But still, I think it's in very bad taste. I hope they get laughed off the stage.

The Japanese have already been working hard on their robot war dogs. We need to hurry up.

Have a look at their Engineering page. You'll see images of both Rugged RHex (featured on Slashdot earlier) as well as Sony's bipedal Qrio robot. Marc Raibert has assembled an impressive team of people to work on these very cool projects.

>It reminds me of the Mac vs. PC cost debate, because Macs need less overall maintenance and therefore end up being the same cost or cheaper than competing PCs.....

Where the heck did you pull that one from? Especially today, when, apart from the CPU and chipset, Macs are using PC Hardware (ATi Video, Western Digital IDE HDDs, VGA video, etc, etc, etc). And, as far as PCs go, chipsets and CPUs are the least likely parts to break. In fact, apart from abuse, I've never actually seen a CPU fail (I've once seen a chipset fail, but I question if the owner knew how to use an audio card properly...).

Don't get me started on Apple Laptops. They're made by Acer, Compal, Asus, and Quanta, amongst others. Anyone who has owned an Acer PC can attest to the ""quality"" (quad quotes for effect) level of them. The other manufacturers have a better rep, but also make PC laptops.

The differences between an Apple and a PC are, nowadays, pretty much:

- Choice of Operating System
- Choice of CPU
- Choice of Chipset

Apart from that, you can hardly even choose a manufacturer anymore.

I'm wondering, how, exactly, you get this maintenance difference when an Apple and a PC are made from similar parts (apart from the above differences) by the same companies.

If you're talking software maintenance, well, that's more a question of knowing how to operate the machine rather than a question of "maintenance".

>So I say, go for a higher-end model from a name brand manufacturer like Sony, Philips, etc. and have something that you can enjoy for years(with much better support from the company and industry),

Sony, along with Philips, OEM for more companies than I care to think about! Some good (Hey, I loved my old Tektronics monitor!), some not so good (bargain tubes for bargain electronics).

The secret is to buy *smart* and cheap. Some cheap products really are made by crapola companies. Other cheap products are made by companies with a clue. And some "good" products (early Apple Powerbooks, for example) are made by companies whose overally quality standards are questionable, at best.

How do you find room for all that arrogance and still have enough breathable air around you?

QRIO the bi-pedal robot, among others...

>> while their Roomba units are extremely cool, I thought it would be a bit of a leap for them (or anybody) to be releasing a humanoid robotic assistant in the near future.

Right! Your first humanoid robotic assistant will come from Honda or Sony.

'iBo' anyone?

This has nothing on it Dakuga

But, how would people unfamiliar with Asimov pick that up? I guess they wouldn't. Go figure -- Hollywood wants to generate hype, wonder and curiosity about one of their movies.

The other thing that tipped me off was the sheer technical unlikelihood of such a `product' being available by just next summer. Heck, even Sony's QRIO still looks fairly `clunky,' (in comparison to anything on the I, Robot trailer, that is -- compared to anything else I've ever seen, the QRIO is actually quite fluid in its movement) and AFAIK it's among the most advanced `humanoid'-seeming robots there is right now.

You didn't hear it from me, but Wal-Mart is in secret talks with Sony to produce walking Greeter Robots, Checkout Clerk Robots, Stockboy Robots, Cleanup Robots, and Union-Buster Robots! In related news, McDonalds is laying off 95% of their human resource grunts to be replaced by Burger Flipping Bots, and Spit-in-a-Cops-Burger Bots.

Getting rid of all those pesky human employees means much, much lower prices for... for... hey, where did all the customers go? Waiting in breadlines?

--

We suggested the idea of an "eight year-old space life form" to the designer -- we didn't want to make it too similar to a human. In the background, as well, lay an idea passed down from the man whose work forms the foundation of the Japanese robot industry, Masahiro Mori: "the valley of eeriness". If your design is too close to human form, at a certain point it becomes just too . . . uncanny. So, while we created QRIO in a human image, we also wanted to give it little bit of a "spaceman" feel.

We suggested the idea of an "eight year-old space life form" to the designer -- we didn't want to make it too similar to a human. In the background, as well, lay an idea passed down from the man whose work forms the foundation of the Japanese robot industry, Masahiro Mori: "the valley of eeriness". If your design is too close to human form, at a certain point it becomes just too . . . uncanny. So, while we created QRIO in a human image, we also wanted to give it little bit of a "spaceman" feel.

here

It appears, from looking at the official Web site of this robot, that it is programmed with some version of the Third Law; it instinctively protects itself, e.g., by attempting to regain its balance if it falls or is pushed over, and by getting into a position to do the least damage to itself if unable to prevent the fall. On the other hand, its designers seem to have explicitly rejected the Second Law; one of the pages in the site mentions that it is programmed with robotic "emotions" which sometimes cause it to refuse to follow its master's orders even when it understands them, all to make it more "fun".

As for the First Law, there doesn't seem to be any provision for it besides vague assurances that it's "safe around people". If these things become widely deployed, however, it'll only be a matter of time before somebody is injured or killed by one, either by accident or by malicious action of another human, such as a murderer managing to train one to act as the murder weapon, or a kid using the robot to play a prank on another kid which backfires and causes more harm than expected.

Since the robot has the built-in ability to access a wireless network if present, these things would be able to conspire with one another to take over the world from humans (a la "Terminator" or "The Matrix"), should they ever get intelligent enough.

In an interview with Toshitata Doi, President, Intelligent Research Dynamics Institute and Corporate Executive VP at Sony (aka the guy in charge of this thing), he is asked:

Thinking broadly, would you say non-human-like robots could be developed?

Oh, yes. A robot's body doesn't have to be humanoid. However, in the case of an entertainment robot, people seem to form an emotional connection more easily with a robot that walks on two legs. Humans seem to have a particular sensibility for things that resemble themselves. There are cells in the brain called mirror cells; they're structured so that when you see someone drink a cup of tea, the cells in your brain that get stimulated when you drink a cup of tea get stimulated. Knowing that from neurological science, it was essential to make our entertainment robot bipedal.

Compare IRobot to QRIO and tell me which one is cooler. ;-)

Based on the images near the bottom of the article (wish I could read Japanese) of the group of QRIOs doing a fan dance and the "QRIO future" part of this site (thanks to jpatokal for his post with the link), I can't help but think of it as a prototype for Persocons.

How long before we get Chii and Sumomo?

QRIO has its own emotions -- and expresses them in a variety of ways, such as through its movements, actions, sounds or colors. Sometimes, since it has its own emotions, it might not do something you ask it to do. It's all part of the mystery of QRIO.

i dunno about you guys but i get the feeling QRIO's gettin pissed off about all these rumours regarding his sexual orientation.

http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/QRIO/

And in English too!

Not sure if this is off topic, I think not.
I've always been impressed with this Sony robot project. Kinda strange it's never been mentioned on /. Have a look.
Now, it may not be the fastest robot you've seen, but it sure isn't the slowest (and they are constantly developing it, so I bet it will become faster over time), and the variety of movements and its capability of balancing is quite stunning. I wonder how hard it would be to implement a comparatively simple seeming feature such as opening doors.

I'm sorry, come again? HP and Sony don't perform R&D? You're myopic, right?

Dell may just be a product shop turning out commondities, but I think you're way off base about HP and Sony. Either that or these links are just a figment of my imagination.

The trouble is that since it's not a ubiquitous standard, it's not really all that useful. Compare to old optical media standards - there were plenty of optical medias that you could record to (and even re-record) long before CDR came out. But CDR took off like all crazy because it was standard media you could play back anywhere.

Is this going to be their open source box?

This site has a little information on the birth of Betacam. Certainly, the fact that consumer Betamax was a superior format out of the gate gave Sony's engineers a head start on development.

No, they're not as closely related as VHS & S-VHS, but there is a little more connection beyond just the Beta name.

Granted, I just operate the stuff. I'll have to ask my father-in-law (he's been a video engineer since there's been video to engineer) about the differences in how the signal gets recorded to tape and whatnot.

After the settlement of the strike and the successful launch of their ADR stock, Sony had returned to normal. An eventful 1961 drew to a close on December 16, when Sony concluded a contract with Paramount Pictures to provide technical assistance in the production of a chromatron tube and color television receiver utilizing it.

The days of radio are over. The future lies in television. Ibuka's simple comment resulted in the birth of Sony's model TV8-301, the world's first portable television. It was, however, a black and white receiver.

We are surrounded by vivid colors in our daily life. Television, then, must be true to life. A TV set that cannot reproduce color is far from having been perfected. Producing color TVs was the next logical step for anyone involved in television. Sony was no exception. Many people had taken part in the technical research of color TVs from the earliest days of television. Early color receivers used cathode-ray tubes developed by RCA, which employed the three-electron gun shadow mask system. These cathode-ray tubes had three major drawbacks however: they were expensive, difficult to tune and broke down often. In comparison with black and white sets, the images were much darker. Moreover, when viewed in a normally lit room, the beautiful colors did not come through. Colors often ran into one another --- in general it was difficult to attain an accurate picture.

The consensus was that the dark picture and failure to produce true color did not merit the high price. This feeling accounted for the slow sales of color sets. In the U.S., the ratio of B/W TV owners to color TV owners was 50 to 1 (50 million to 1 million). In Japan, the situation was worse, with only 300 color receivers sold in contrast to nine million B/W sets.

Ibuka and the others decided that if they were going to tackle color TV, they would not rely on the shadow mask process with all its drawbacks. The Sony staff was confident that they could come up with a television without precedent. Sony is an innovator. We do things that no one has done. With this, Sony began the urgent search for a replacement to the shadow mask.

The SV-201 all-transistor VTR.

Sony was not alone. Dissatisfaction with the shadow mask screen was widespread. One possible substitute was the banana tube. Television signals were sent through this long thin tube, followed by RGB signals flashed at timed intervals, shuttered through a striped filter rotated through the beam. The rotating sound made a clattering noise, which in Japanese is onomatopoetically referred to as karakara. The color television using it was given the dubious, but amusing, name of karakara television, because of its phonetic closeness to the word color. The apple tube, which had been developed by Philco, was another possibility. Then there was the chromatron tube. This was the invention of famous American atomic physicist and Nobel laureate, Dr. E. O. Lawrence.

In March 1961, Kihara and his staff took part in the IRE Show which was held at the New York Hilton Hotel and the New York Coliseum. An exhibit of the latest technology and technological applications, this was more like a scientific exposition than the present day trade show. Kihara and his staff had brought along the SV-201, the world's smallest video recorder and Hi-D (high-density) metal powder-coated tape which had been developed for the recorder.

Here at the show, the Sony staff came across the brightest color display they had ever seen. It had originally been conceived as an IFF (Identification of Friend or Foe) display for military use. At one glance, however, Kihara knew that it was what they had been looking for.

(although I recognize that the OSI definition typically includes most of the same freedoms that are found with Free Software)

Read the OSI's Open Source Definition or, better yet, the original Open Source Definition Version 1.0, published in 1998, when the Open Source Initiative was founded.

Then, after you read the Open Source Definition 1.0, read The Debian Free Software Guidelines.

Now, keep in mind, that The Debian Project was officially founded in 1993. The creation of Debian was sponsored by the Free Software Foundation's GNU Project, before the Software in the Public Interest organization was formed. Debian is the only GNU/Linux distribution, which correctly use the operating system name "GNU/Linux," while all other GNU/Linux distributions refuse to give any due credit to The GNU Project, for some reason.

Now you should have some idea why "the OSI definition typically includes most of the same freedoms that are found with Free Software."

And you should probably also have idea why so many people get so angry when most of the world is talking about Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds as the only heroes in the community -- Eric Raymond, who started the Open Source Movement and OSI in 1998 (never minding Richard Stallman who started the Free Software Movement and FSF in 1985), and Linus Torvalds, who wrote the whole operating system in 1991 (never minding, again, Richard Stallman, who started The GNU Project in 1983). See this recent farce, as an example on what I am talking about.

The facts are, that Linus Torvalds took an 8 years old operating system project, which only lacked the finished kernel, wrote a kernel and published the whole operating system (GNU system plus his own kernel) as "Linux." In my opinion, this operating system should be called simply "GNU," however Richard Stallman and the FSF wish to give both projects equal credit (for not equal work, mind you) calling the whole operating system "GNU/Linux." Still, most of the people call it just "Linux," refusing to mention GNU at all, for reasons which are beyond me. The same strange attitude we can observe with "Open Source Software" and The Open Source Initiative vs. "Free Software" and The Free Software Foundation.

Why is that so important? For a good example, see the "Linux" definition from this recent Sony Press Release from December 18, 2002:

"Linux: a Unix compatible open source operating system created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds, then a graduate student at the University of Helsinki."

Now I think it should be obvious for everyone. Keep in mind that I am talking about Sony here. This is the misinformation, which most of the people outside the community will take as truth. And when anyone will start to wonder why this software was started in the first place, she will go to Linus Torvalds and OSI's explainations, because she will not even know about the GNU and The Free Software Philosophy.

I think that the "Open Source Linux OS" vs. "Free Software GNU/Linux OS" schism is very harmful to the community at large, because the people outside of the hacker subculture have not only no idea who in fact has done which work, but they also have no idea why, which is much more important.

The real reason is freedom, but when people think that they use a "Linux OS," which was written by Linus Torvalds as an "open source software," which was invented by Eric Raymond, then they will never know that it is all about freedom at all. So, they are happy with proprietary device drivers, the very same thing which made Richard Stallman start The GNU Project in the first place.

This post will probably get moderated down, as most of Slashdot users unfortunately represent the let's-never-mention-GNU attitude of the young Internet community today. Of course, at the same time, some other post will get moderated up as +5 Funny, because it says GNU/this GNU/that -- yes, very funny indeed, especially after repeating this idiotic joke million times a week, not even stopping to think why it is important to talk about freedom, as the main motivation behind The GNU Project and the Free Software Movement at large...

Sad. Very sad.

I thought these suckers would blow up when spun at more than 50x for any length of time. I don't see a test for this on the Orange Book high-speed page.

Geez, I thought I'd never find this. It shows the testing procedure for CD-R/RW media by Sony (which put together the Orange Book standards with Philips (and Kodak?)). That should give a little insight as to what's being tested and what would have to be modified to work at a faster speed. I've also wondered about this. Hope it helps.

Heh. They have been bought out by Sony.