robot wisdom is back after being offline for over a year!

First spotted by Andy Baio.

Reported everywhere: Microsoft is working on IE 7.

Translation: Microsoft is working on XP SP 3.

1. EastSouthWestNorth’s Life In China photos.
   
   
2. Marco Bonetti’s new free server-side aggregator: Gregarius. See a demo here.
   
   
3. POPjisyo’s automatic pop-up dictionary for Chinese, Japanese and Korean. This is your Katamari Damacy lyrics. This is your Katamari Damacy lyrics on POPjisyo. Any questions? Oh… right… one more thing. They have bookmarklets.

We watched the new version of The Stepford Wives. And it was bad. It was incredibly, stupefyingly, nerve-deadeningly, IMPRESSIVELY bad. It has officially displaced “Event Horizon” as my canonical WORST MOVIE EVER. Every scene was painful to watch, every line of dialogue like nails on a chalkboard. Who wrote this? These jokes wouldn’t make it on Everybody Loves Raymond! And how can Christopher Walken and Nicole Kidman (who should be enough to make any movie successful) be delivering these grade-school grade lines without becoming physically ill? This movie didn’t wrap around from bad back to good like so many movies do, it just went off in some new direction of infinite inexhasutible BADNESS.

Another cute feature: the entire movie doesn’t make any sense. It seems that part way through shooting they decided to replace the original concept (wives replaced by robots) with a new one (wives “enhanced” with remote-control microchips), but didn’t bother to go back and fix all the earlier scenes with robotic women. Maybe they thought we wouldn’t notice? Actually I think they reached a point where they just didn’t care any more. And then it seems that some studio executive decided they needed a twist ending, because all movies have twist endings now. So they decided to make Christopher Walken, supposedly the architect of Stepford, actually a robot! And say that they town was actually created by his wife as a paradise for WOMEN??!!? WHAT?

Looking for the bright side, Jenny said at least she can cross it off her to-watch list. I said that I see it this way: that which does not kill me only makes me stronger.

A chilling footnote: several movie sites report that the actors were called back just before the movie was released to reshoot several scenes after the movie was panned by test audiences. Does that mean that an EVEN WORSE version of this movie existed? IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE?

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Barbers, cosmetologists, and other personal appearance workers held about 754,000 jobs in 2002. Of these, barbers, hairdressers, hairstylists, and cosmetologists held 651,000 jobs; manicurists and pedicurists, 51,000; skin care specialists, 25,000; and shampooers, 25,000.

Most of these workers are employed in beauty salons or barber shops, but they are also found in nail salons, department stores, nursing and other residential care homes, and drug and cosmetics stores. Nearly every town has a barbershop or beauty salon, but employment in this occupation is concentrated in the most populous cities and States.

Almost half of all barbers, cosmetologists, and other personal appearance workers are self-employed. Many own their own salon, but a growing number lease booth space or a chair from the salon’s owner.

Remember Aaron’s filing cabinet? The lazyweb strikes again. Anonymously, even.

Iraq
Iran
North Korea
Denmark?!?!

Air Force pursuing antimatter weapons - Program was touted publicly, then came official gag order

The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source — antimatter, the eerie “mirror” of ordinary matter — in future weapons.

[…]

During the Cold War, the Air Force funded numerous scientific studies of the basic physics of antimatter. With the knowledge gained, some Air Force insiders are beginning to think seriously about potential military uses — for example, antimatter bombs small enough to hold in one’s hand, and antimatter engines for 24/7 surveillance aircraft.

More cataclysmic possible uses include a new generation of super weapons — either pure antimatter bombs or antimatter-triggered nuclear weapons; the former wouldn’t emit radioactive fallout. Another possibility is antimatter- powered “electromagnetic pulse” weapons that could fry an enemy’s electric power grid and communications networks, leaving him literally in the dark and unable to operate his society and armed forces.

Following an initial inquiry from The Chronicle this summer, the Air Force forbade its employees from publicly discussing the antimatter research program. Still, details on the program appear in numerous Air Force documents distributed over the Internet prior to the ban.

And here’s one of those documents: Propulsion and Power with Positrons.

(via)

Aaron Swartz is at Stanford now, and is posting his experiences day by day (and by night). They include gems like this:

Slightly tired of trying to meet new people like I’m told, I decide to sit alone at one table, in front of another empty table. I convince myself that I am not being anti-social but trying to attract the type of geniuses who are borderline autistic. The gambit doesn’t work, everyone walks past me to sit at the empty table. Maybe no one at Stanford is borderline autistic.

And this:

Yet, out of my desire to serve you, I decided to try to further investigate by attending a gathering known as a “party”.

[…]

Inside the party, the clear focus was on the dancing. Teenagers moving their bodies in bizarre and vaguely rhythmic positions in close proximity to one another. I’d seen the practice frequently enough on TV, so on one level I knew what to expect, but on another it was wholly bizarre. It was like watching brownian motion or a complex screensaver, it’s completely meaningless and random but it’s also complicated enough that you don’t look away.

By the way, somebody in the area should totally go over there and help him out with his filing cabinet.

I take the morning off to go shopping. I buy a filing cabinet and get it as far as the door to the dorm before I realize I have no way of getting it up the stairs to my room. I know I should ask someone to help, but my disorder, which I have recently diagnosed as a surfeit of empathy, prevents me from imposing. The file cabinet now sits quietly outside. Apparently no one can figure out how to steal it yet.

I actually would be surprised if somebody hasn’t shown up already.

Cry * and let slip the * of war!

Being virtually given away for just ¥10,500,000.

(are you getting tired of these yet?)

part of a continuing series

Katie has prepared, just for you, a transcript of John Kerry on the Daily Show last night. She also has some comments on the appearance which are interesting to me because I had the exact opposite impression! I thought Kerry came across as totally phony, he didn’t say anything substantive, and his attempts at humor were nails-on-the-chalkboard painful. I thought it was a huge missed opportunity for him.

Are you insane? Turn your speakers up, and find out! (via)

Very authentic flash version of Dark Tower! About the only thing it’s missing is the sound of the wheels inside the tower turning.

Posting this reminded me or the urban legend surrounding this game: Some random guy invented it, and sent the idea along with artwork and schematics to Milton Bradley who said “Thanks, but no thanks”. A while later the guy was horrified to find that MB had released his exact game! Various versions of this legend have the guy suing MB and either winning or losing. A few searches reveal that it really did happen! The original game was called “Triumph” and the two inventors, who had demonstrated it to MB, did sue MB for copying their idea (although it’s not clear how similar Dark Tower was to Triumph from the article) and won $737,058.10.

My brain just exploded. (via)

Having failed to find banned weapons in Iraq, the CIA is preparing a final report on its search that will speculate on what the deposed regime’s capabilities might have looked like years from now if left unchecked, according to congressional and intelligence officials.

[…]

A U.S. intelligence official denied that political pressure was playing a role in shaping Duelfer’s report. “That’s nonsense,” the official said.

Google suddenly is worth about 27 billion dollars — close to the size of General Motors, about a tenth the size of Microsoft. But does this mean their crazy auction failed? Their IPO price was $85, but the stock immediately rose to around $100. Did they leave lots of money on the table, consumed by middlemen?

Really! Atomic Batteries. I can’t wait! Recharge every few decades! (via)

Using radioactive isotopes as fuel, a tiny battery developed at Cornell University here could turn out to be an ideal power source for remote sensors or other small-scale systems. Cornell professor Amit Lal used microelectromechanical-systems (MEMS) technology to create a millimeter-size battery that can run for decades. The research team plans to scale the prototype to even smaller dimensions so that it could become a power source for MEMS.

[…]

The MEMS battery translates the stored energy in the radioactive isotope directly into the physical motion of a microscopic cantilever, enabling it to move MEMS components directly or to generate electricity for circuitry. Lal argues that atomic batteries are the best solution for “always on” sensors and other devices for long-term monitoring. His atomic battery was designed under a Darpa contract.

This item is a few days old, but today is the first time I came across a video demonstration, in the comments on the Slashdot story.

Did you ever wonder how Captain Jean-Luc Picard could walk and walk and walk inside that tiny Holodeck and never bump into the walls? The Star Trek writers, if pressed, muttered some explanation involving tractor beams and replicators. (Just like the Heisenberg Compensator: How does it work? “They work just fine, thank you.”) But the researchers at the VR Lab at the University of Tsukuba in Japan solved the problem, for real, with only 21st century technology. Stone knives and bear skins? No! Moving tiles! They skitter around on the floor, shadowing the movements of your feet. As you walk, they move into place just in time for your feet to land, and then slide across the floor, matching your pace. It’s a very early implementation, the speed is limited, but I think they’re on the right track.

The U. S. Army has published to the web a report on Operation Iraqi Freedom, “On Point”. It’s the report you’ve heard about that reveals how the famous toppling of the Saddam statue was staged, among other things. The surprising thing is that it starts with this disclaimer:

This document has security features enabled to prevent printing, downloading, cutting and pasting. Printable PDF files will be released at a later date, and links will be posted when they become available.

And it’s true! The document is “protected” by exactly the same amateur-grade mechanisms that a 14 year old would use to stop you from stealing his Pokemon secrets. Setting aside the extreme technial ineptitude in their attempt, and the fact that what they are trying to do is fundamentally not possible anyway, you have to wonder what their motivations are. What kind of convoluted thought process could possibly lead to even wanting to try to do something like this? I can’t fathom it.

Working around these laughably ineffective mechanisms is left as an exercise to the reader. Or you can just get the copy of the report from GlobalSecurity.org, they’ve mirrored the entire thing, minus the script-kiddy-esque context menu blocking and half-broken Javascript redirection tricks. (aside: I wonder what these bogus countermeasures do to the accessibility of this document? Are they not required to comply to some accessibility guidelines?)

(via)

After being told several times recently “we’re out” or “we don’t have that”, I’ve been informed by an anonymous, highly placed counter clerk at McDonald’s that she “thinks maybe” they are phasing out the only reasonable sauce for McNuggets: “Pure Honey™”! It still appears at the official sauce list, and I haven’t seen a press release yet, but I’m sure with a change as big as this, we’ll see something soon.

I see this as the worst change in fast food since Subway abandoned the U-cut.

No doubt as a response to persistent Internet petitions (the only way anything ever gets done), and as reported on news sites everywhere, Pudding Pops are indeed back! But:

• They are no longer coated with a thin layer of ice
• Banana flavor not aviailable

Move along, nothing to see here.

One of the final stages, the minting of her own money, is now done. Soon we’ll be living in the grim future of Hello Kitty.

(I think you can get the coins here.)

Truck hauling bees crashes in Montana - Dumps honey, sending bees on rampage

A tractor-trailer overturned on a curve on a highway, spilling its load of hundreds of bee hives and unleashing some nine million angry honey bees.

The bees buzzed furiously as driver Lane Miller, his arm scraped to the bone, struggled to flee his rig after it overturned Monday in Bear Trap Canyon west of Bozeman. The truck slid across the highway before coming to a stop between guardrails.

“I had to kick the windshield out of the front of the cab and the bees were on me from that moment,” said Miller, 41. “I’ve never felt so much fear in my life.”

Kitty Tiara - available in July! Priced to move at ¥3,000,000. Sadly, too late to be used as stefana at Toto’s wedding.

(previously: platinum and gold kitties)

0.1.4 doesn’t work on IE6! Just a small problem. Here’s a fixed version:

Feed on Feeds 0.1.5

OK, the bookings are all set: Jenny and I will be staying at a purple hotel in San Francisco from June 27th to July 2nd. I’ll be at some dorky conference, while Jenny will be having fun. I won’t have much free time, just half a day when we get there Sunday, and then each night. Any suggestions? What makes the “DON’T MISS” list?

Certain sites have characterized the below table as a “hoax”. I am curious whether or not the numbers are “real” for some definition of that word. I found this copy of the exact same table, posted on Usenet by Robert Calvert in 2002:

Average IQ by State

From the groups he posted it to (rec.org.mensa, sci.anthropology, alt.politics.british, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh) it’s quite possible that it was a troll, just trying to stir up controversy. Somebody else has contacted him in the past few days, but he still hasn’t said where he got the data from. He did hint that “If you’re exceptionally intelligent, I guarantee you that the
source for my data will absolutely blow you away. :-)”.

Right now my fake-or-real-ometer is starting to swing over to the “fake” direction.

In the latest entry in my ongoing “things that are correlated with extreme stupidity” department, I give you this data, compiled by The American Assembler: A simple list of states, sorted by their average IQ, and colored by who they voted for in 2000.

(via MeFi)

Viewtiful Joe 2 - now with Helping™? … … New Trek movie in the works. Rumors say: Prequel. Please, no Enterprise! … … Speaking of movies, is nothing sacred? … … The votes are in: I officially look worse than a skinny pig (see comments, it was a landslide) … … Are you reading Ask Joel? You should. … … Best site ever.

I just found out that The Confusion, the sequel to Quicksilver, is already out in the UK, and comes out in the US in about a week. It looks like it’s more of the same from Quicksilver: endless politicking around 17th century Europe, surprisingly boring piracy (piracy boring? that’s unpossible!), and page after page of the dull antics of the Royal Society. Yeah sure it’s really well researched, or whatever, but… bleah…. and those long, long letters! After how much I liked Cryptonomicon (and Snow Crash (and The Diamond Age (and Zodiac))), I was really surprised at just how bad Quicksilver was.

So I think I’m going to skip this one. I’m sure somebody on some web site I read will read it, and mention if it’s any good.

Is your brain defective? Watch this video. What is he saying? Now play it again, with your eyes closed.

(via languagehat)

Mitch and Roy are trapped by zombies. So they started a weblog.

TRAPPED BY UNDEAD, NEED HELP (This is not a joke. We are alone and constantly battling for our lives.)

It’s probably part of the marketing for some zombie movie, but who cares?

Well since everyone has pretended our problem does not exist, I too will disregard the ever growing troupe of flesh eating zombies outside. I’ll carry on with my life like everyone else. I just downloaded the trailer to The Day After Tomorrow, looks pretty sweet. I wish it reaches the multiplex in this town. Oh wait, I forgot I can’t step out of this camp because I’ll be ripped apart by the walking dead.

Cheerios.

(via MeFi)

It all started with this strange IM conversation:

sylloge: SweetRoxy215, I gotta ask you something: why the heck did you IM me? Where did you get my name from?
SweetRoxy215: i was iming a computer robot: ZolaOnAOL and i tried to ask her questions but she seems like she knows absolutely nothing so i typed “instant message question answerer” in the search bar and it came up with “Sylloge” so i tried iming and it worked

[…]

SweetRoxy215: do a lot of people bother you with questions?
sylloge: Nope. You are the first one.
SweetRoxy215: o…really…are you some type of genius
sylloge: Well, I’m pretty smart. But it is just a coincidence that my IM name came up first in that search. Just the way that Google works, I guess.
sylloge: I don’t normally answer questions like this.
SweetRoxy215: o okay

How wrong he was…

languagehat points the way to not just one, but two tlhIngan Hol (Klingon language) weblogs: bo logh, and jIqel’s Journal.

MALTZ! JOL YLCHU’!

UC Berkeley researchers developing robotic exoskeleton that can enhance human strength and endurance

The researchers point out that the human pilot does not need a joystick, button or special keyboard to “drive” the device. Rather, the machine is designed so that the pilot becomes an integral part of the exoskeleton, thus requiring no special training to use it. In the UC Berkeley experiments, the human pilot moved about a room wearing the 100-pound exoskeleton and a 70-pound backpack while feeling as if he were lugging a mere 5 pounds.

The project, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, began in earnest in 2000. Next week, from March 9 through 11, Kazerooni and his research team will showcase their project at the DARPA Technical Symposium in Anaheim, Calif.

For the current model, the user steps into a pair of modified Army boots that are then attached to the exoskeleton. A pair of metal legs frames the outside of a person�s legs to facilitate ease of movement. The wearer then dons the exoskeleton�s vest that is attached to the backpack frame and engine. If the machine runs out of fuel, the exoskeleton legs can be easily removed so that the device converts to a large backpack.

More than 40 sensors and hydraulic actuators form a local area network (LAN) for the exoskeleton and function much like a human nervous system. The sensors, including some that are embedded within the shoe pads, are constantly providing the central computer brain information so that it can adjust the load based upon what the human is doing. When it is turned on, the exoskeleton is constantly calculating what it needs to do to distribute the weight so little to no load is imposed on the wearer.