At GM, safety optional. In cost-cutting move, company will make buyers pay for anti-lock brakes, side air bags on most models. [USA Today : Front Page]

As if I needed another reason NOT to buy a GM car. (TAKE NOTE: Ryan is still upset at what they did to the Impala.)

10:37:30 AM    

Bots: The New Mobile Infantry. Who was that guy in camouflage running around with grad students and robots at Ground Zero in the days following the terrorist attacks? It was a former Army lieutenant colonel, using the new mechanical dogs of war. By Michael Behar of Wired magazine. [Wired News]

There is a wealth of information in here for anyone that is interested in the state of robot technology.

Counterpoints:

...An onboard sensor tracks the HMTM's heading and wheel rotation. If the network fails, the robot can play back its movements in reverse, retracing its steps until communication is reestablished. "This will save the robot if the communication link with the operator drops out or is jammed," says Larsen. "It could spell the difference between mission success and failure."

Or, a sufficiently advanced enemy can send out a jamming signal that pulses every five minutes or so, so the robot keeps doing the cha cha, making it easier to isolate and destroy.

...There are plenty of critics who doubt that software solutions like ATAC will match the decisionmaking power of the human brain anytime soon. "Autonomous robotic weapons won't demonstrate human intelligence until machines pass the Turing test," says Ray Kurzweil, author of The Age of Spiritual Machines.

Thrown in a modified version of the creature AI from Black and White, and you have your solution. Get a hundred of them out int he field and running, and "breed" the 80th percentile and ina few generations, you'll have a pretty smart 'bot tearing around. Given that it can be reproduced (just copy the code base) you'll have a ready supply of robot intelligences. Something like the semi autonomous tanks from Ghost In The Shell.

10:19:58 AM    

PVR For Linux [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters] [Cadsoft Link]

It must be Video news day here at HQ. Roll your own Tivo. How long until the MPAA outlaws it?

9:52:33 AM    

DVDR+W drives in shock 'no upgrade' situation. Er, we announced the impossible, apparently... [The Register]

I've been holding off on buying a DVD-R(W +RW ..--..--RW whatever) until the standards emerge. I think at one point there were five competing standards. Now that it is down to two, I may have to reconsider.

Also it's good to see that the hardware manufacturers may have to deliver on an upgrade/trade in path so that early adopters are not out of luck.

I want this tech so that I can record shows off of TV, cull the commercials and add chapter headings/episode names, and have my favorite shows archived. While some shows are coming out on DVD on a season by season basis, I'd like to have them archived as they go.
Here I go:
Given that there is PVR software that can monitor the Closed Captioning feed and alert you to the shows, why not have some voice recognition software that is archiving the dialogue into transcripts, which then is fed into a database/CMS so you can always find that line/episode that is plaguing you.

9:36:04 AM