If you use PHP you need to be aware that a major security vulnerability has been discovered. Essentially, this vulnerability would allow a malicious user to run arbitrary code on the server with the permissions of the web server. This vulnerability is present in every version of PHP except the newest one, 4.1.2.
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Doug
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Doug
Another good, if a little light article in the mainstream press on robotics, again looking at efforts to make intelligent, autonomous machines rather than machines that are merely tele-operated. I particularly like the emphasis on modularity, eliminating moving parts, and being able to morph shapes. All clearly on the list of desirable features.
What interests me even more in the wave of mainstream press coverage of robotics in recent days. I wonder if this is the beginning of a trend?
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Doug
Thank Ghu, a voice of sanity. I suspect this’ll be linked to from all over, but it deserves to be.
Via blivet
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Doug
Phil Wolff has a moving post concerning the murder of Daniel Pearl. I’m grateful for his sense of perspective.
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Doug
Keep in mind that Turkey is almost certainly the most liberal and secularized of all the Muslim nations. At least in Turkey they had a law concerning pre-marital sex for women that they could repeal. In places like Saudi Arabia, they just drag their daughters out into the streets and kill them if they suspect they’ve been “soiled.”
What scares me is that if he thought he could get away with it, I suspect John Ashcroft would try and pass a similar law here in the U.S.
In my vision of a perfect world, religious fundamentalism is recognized for the mental illness it is, and people are institutionalized and treated for it.
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Doug
Man, if you guys keep feeding the troll he’ll never go away!
Come on, there hasn’t been a significant technology trend or idea in the last several years that Dvorak hasn’t pissed on from a great height. This is his schtick. Hell, he even admitted there’s an amount of attention getting behavior in this article.
None of us write to please Dvorak. I suspect, even before this article, that none of us gave much consideration to his opinions. What he says isn’t going to change a damn thing. If he and his ilk are as irrelevant as some bloggers claim, then why are those same bloggers spending so damn much time commenting, raging, and writing about what he has to say?
The only point that’s being proven is that what he says and how he says it is important. If it isn’t, why the reaction?
Remember, the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. If Journalism really is dying, a non-response would prove that far more effectively.
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Doug
Sometimes, I wish I didn’t live in Indiana. And then other times, I really wish I didn’t live in Indiana.
It’s appalling enough that this idiot bit the head off the sparrow. Worse, you have to really wonder about the obviously simian wrestling team members who thought it was so funny that they spread it around to their friends and families. You have to really question the intelligence of the school board who felt that sufficient action was a mere two-week suspension. But you just about have to puke when you read about the parents who said they felt said suspension was too stiff a punishment!
This school system is only about a forty minute drive from where I live.
Another article I read today discussed how the per capita income of workers in the state of Indiana has dropped from 17th in the nation in 1965 to 33rd in the nation last year, the largest decrease of any state in the Union. I would say “do the math,” but it’s pretty evident from our fair state’s inability to handle time changes that math may be a bit of a stretch.
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Doug
In this case, Al has the gift of understatement.
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Doug
Salon is running a pair of articles today that do a reasonable job of addressing the “cutting edge” of robotics technology. The first article, Do androids dream of First Amendment rights?, discusses an MIT project to build a remotely operated vehicle that could be used to cover news in dangerous places, like Afghanistan. The second, Flesh, robots and God presents some relatively conservative speculation about the future of robotics and how the development of intelligent robotics might impact humanity.
Media coverage of robotics seems to be picking up; as someone involved in the field it’s always interesting to see what’s being talked about in the press. The public has some interesting perceptions about robotics. Day-today life down in the trenches of industrial robotics is usually very different than what’s portrayed in these articles.
Being associated with industrial robotics, a machine that has to be more-or-less continuously operated by a human doesn’t really qualify as a robot. To us, you have to be able to set it up, program it, and let it run by itself, often for as long as a decade, for it to count as a “robot.” We regularly encounter systems that, except for regular maintenance, have been running for years, performing the same operation over and over again. In my part of the industry, reliability and repeatability are the important concepts.
What surprises most people is that, unlike the machines discussed in these articles, these machines are usually not very intelligent. The computers that run our robots are certainly not as sophisticated as even a decade-old desktop PC. We’re beginning to see PC-based robot controllers hit the factory floor, but the driving factor in doing this has less to do with operation of the robot and more to do with remote programming and connectivity to the enterprise IT infrastructure.
The comment Rodney Brooks makes about “our time as being like 1978 for home computers” is very much the case, and he’s probably being generous. Commercial robots are a lot like the old mainframe computers. They use a lot of proprietary technology, are typically very specialized in their design, are limited in their capabilities compared to the new devices being developed, and require a “priesthood” of specialists to set up and run.
The type of robotics described in these Salon articles represent the “holy Grail” of robotics in many respects. The commercial side of our industry is very conservative, and little work is being done to implement these sorts of technologies in commercial products. We all hope to see things like this some day, but we aren’t sure anyone wants to buy them.
One thing these articles illustrate is the huge gap between theory and implementation on the academic side of our industry. It seems like every interview with a robotics guru ends up talking about trying to determine what life really is, if artificial intelligence will eventually supplant human intelligence, and nanotechnology. What actually ends up being built are, from the point of view of an industrial roboticist, elaborate puppets. This gap is so huge that the theoreticians and the engineers in the trenches hardly even speak to each other, or see themselves as part of the same field!
Personally, I think we down in the trenches are in for one hell of a surprise in the next few years. We’re used to a methodical, evolutionary approach to our beloved robots, with technology advances coming in small, manageable bites. I suspect we’re on the cusp of a real revolution in this technology, similar to what happened with the desktop PC. It’ll be interesting to see if the major commercial robot manufacturers can weather the coming storm.
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Doug
Home again with a sick kid. I did manage to get through the Monday morning staff meeting before the school called, so some direction is set for the day.
Whatever this stuff is that’s going around, it’s no fun. Rhi was down with it for four days last week; now Ian has it. Daddy isn’t feeling too great either, but I’m working off the “if I ignore it maybe it’ll go away” plan. Time will tell. Half the office has been down with it at one point or another the past couple of weeks.
Fortunately, my Merry Band of Brothers is more than capable of getting along without me.
