The most effective way to find and destroy a land mine is to step on it.

This has bad results, of course, if you're a human. But not so much if you're a robot and have as many legs as a centipede sticking out from your body. That's why Mark Tilden, a robotics physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, built something like that. At the Yuma Test Grounds in Arizona, the autonomous robot, 5 feet long and modeled on a stick-insect, strutted out for a live-fire test and worked beautifully, he says. Every time it found a mine, blew it up and lost a limb, it picked itself up and readjusted to move forward on its remaining legs, continuing to clear a path through the minefield.

Finally it was down to one leg. Still, it pulled itself forward. Tilden was ecstatic. The machine was working splendidly.

The human in command of the exercise, however -- an Army colonel -- blew a fuse.

The colonel ordered the test stopped.

Why? asked Tilden. What's wrong?

The colonel just could not stand the pathos of watching the burned, scarred and crippled machine drag itself forward on its last leg.

This test, he charged, was inhumane.

A sad, sad robot song to sing.

Bots on The Ground - washingtonpost.com

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Walt Disney Co.'s two big TV networks, ABC and ESPN, have struck a deal with cable operator Cox Communications Inc. to offer hit shows and football games on demand, but with the unusual condition that Cox disables the fast-forward feature that allows viewers to skip ads, according to a media report Tuesday.
...

"Advertising is critical to the financial health of our business and this agreement marks the first time one of our cable-operator partners is acknowledging that," The Journal said it was told by Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney-ABC Television Group.
The agreement could also provide broadcast networks a way to give viewers an alternative to the convenience offered by digital video recorders , without allowing them to avoid the ads, according to the report. With DVRs now in almost 20% of U.S. households, the number of people watching television when it is broadcast has dipped noticeably so far this season, The Journal said.. End of Story

Maybe its time for them to look for better models. Commercials is one of the main reasons I don't watch TV. I might consider subscribing to a few shows, so long as there were no advertising and little to no DRM. I'd also be curious to see a non-commercial news service which is not c-span.

Video-on-demand deal bars ad skipping: WSJ - MarketWatch

The human and chimpanzee genomes vary by just 1.2 percent, yet there is a considerable difference in the mental and linguistic capabilities between the two species. A new study showed that a certain form of neuropsin, a protein that plays a role in learning and memory, is expressed only in the central nervous systems of humans and that it originated less than 5 million years ago. The study, which also demonstrated the molecular mechanism that creates this novel protein, will be published online in Human Mutation, the official journal of the Human Genome Variation Society.

Gene mutation linked to cognition is found only in humans

A number of MemeStreamers will remember becoming acquainted with Johnny Strange several years ago in NYC while HOPE was going on. A gang of us dropped in on him in the studio, hung out for a few, and (of course) caused a bunch of trouble. We wound up getting trapped in an elevator, kicked off the roof of a building by the Secret Service, and completely fucking plastered at the Molly Wee. It was a fun night.

Anyway, some of you are already in tune with The Strange, and some of you are not. All of you need to cruise over to Johnny's MySpace page and download his latest tracks. Otherwise, rock n' roll will die, and it will be all your fault.

Do you want the death of rock on your conscience? I didn't fucking think so... So, go and buy some tracks from an independent artist that doesn't suck, or shut the hell up and stop complaining about the current state of music.

Eventually we will get an Internet radio kinda thing going on that makes it possible to taste bands' music beyond little clips, without having to initially buy whole tracks. It will be recommendation driven, so you can depend on the hip to clue you into stuff. You'll wind up paying for it somehow too, so indie artists can actually make some money. Bands have all kinds of expenses. Stuff like guitar strings, whiskey, condoms, and pot.

In the meantime, while all this is getting worked out, buy some tracks from independent artists occasionally. Seriously.

Johnny Strange | Download these tracks, or rock n' roll gets it...

Having heard that Vista's CD/DVD burn utility by default uses a nonstandard format, possibly as a result of yet another one of Microsoft's lock-in schemes, I decided to check things out for myself. That would also give me a nice chance to see what Vista was all about.

The plan was simple:
1. Locate a Vista box,

2. Bring empty CD's plus some arbitrary files on a USB stick, and

3. Burn CD's in several ways while making screenshots.

As it turned out, the planning was the simplest part by far. The rest is best described as a tale of frustration.

From the article, it seems that Vista really goes out of its way to try and make the user use a non-standard CD/DVD image format - when it works at all.

Burning Issues With Vista

U.S. Special Forces may soon have a strange and powerful new weapon in their arsenal: a pair of high-tech binoculars 10 times more powerful than anything available today, augmented by an alerting system that literally taps the wearer's prefrontal cortex to warn of furtive threats detected by the soldier's subconscious.

Pentagon to Merge Next-Gen Binoculars With Soldiers' Brains -

Jenny started her research by crafting a pong controller made from a bra. Touching the left breast made the pong paddle go left and the right breast made the paddle go right. I then found out about a phenomenon called gamer widowhood where men essentially abandoned their wives to play video games night and day. I wanted to create a type of video game play that would center around a couple's intimacy and where two people would touch each other in order to play the game

Intimate Game Controllers

The iRack looks unstable.

glumbert.com - The Apple iRack

A PSA about your internet privacy. Anyone got Sarah's myspace link?

YouTube - Everyone Knows Your Name

The paper cited sources who say Microsoft, having already made an offer to acquire Yahoo! several months ago, is now urgently courting the web firm to re-enter formal negotiations.

Yahoo!, which is valued at around $50 billion, is reported to have aggressively rejected the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant's initial attempts to discuss a takeover.

For its part, Microsoft is said to be more determined than ever to strike a deal after Google last month snatched DoubleClick for $3.1 billion from under its nose.

"They're getting tired of being left at the altar," one banking source, who has recently had talks with Microsoft , told the Post. "They now seem more willing to extend themselves via a transaction to get into the game."

I hope this doesn't happen. Yahoo has some useful services which MS would inevitably fuck up.

AppleInsider | Microsoft eyes Yahoo! in proposed takeover