Beer-Fetching Robot

Nadia

Nadia is a camera designed by Andrew Kupresanin that, instead of a viewfinder, features an artificial-intelligence judger of aesthetic. Originally found on Today and Tomorrow.

Nadia from Andrew Kupresanin on Vimeo.

U.S. Navy Laser Weapon Shoots Down Drones in Test

In a grainy, black-and-white video that looks like a home movie of a UFO attack a sleek aircraft streaks through the sky one minute, only to burst into flames the next and plummet into the sea. The silent video, which Raytheon Co. debuts Monday at the U.K.'s Farnborough International Air Show 2010, however, is not science fiction. The defense contractor says it depicts part of a test conducted in May during which the U.S. Navy used a solid-state laser to shoot down unmanned aerial vehicles over the Pacific Ocean.

Scientific American

70,000 Blogs Shut Down by U.S. Law Enforcement

Blogetery, a Wordpress platform, has seen its entire community shut down by its host, BurstNET. Subsequent statements by BurstNET indicated that the service was suspended at the request of an unidentified law enforcement agency.

"(Blogetery) was terminated by request of law enforcement officials, due to material hosted on the server. We are limited as to the details we can provide to you, but note that this was a critical matter and the only available option to us was to immediately deactivate the server."

The gist of the conversation on the discussion board initially indicated that copyright infringement might have been the motivation. Torrent services, like Bittorrent, are the frequent target of legal actions as they are an efficient way to share large amounts of information, such as television shows or movies. This does not appear to be the case, however. The owner stated that the service dealt with copyright issues without prior problems.

ReadWriteWeb

Stephen Colbert Speaks With EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn

Electronic Frontier Foundation - Cindy Cohn

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes 2010 Election Fox News

EFF

Cat amputee fitted with 'bionic' feet

If cats have nine lives, they may have just acquired a 10th -- thanks to a groundbreaking surgery that saved the life of a feline double amputee.

A British cat, Oscar, has made a full recovery after being fitted with a pair of prosthetic feet in November. The cat's hind paws were severed by a combine harvester.

The three-hour procedure, performed at an animal hospital in Surrey, England, by neuro-orthopaedic veterinary surgeon Dr. Noel Fitzpatrick, could serve as a model for human amputees.

CNN

Prince declares internet 'over'.

"The Internet's completely over. I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can't get it. All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."

Prince

Attenborough Design Group

The Attenborough Design Group is a fictional organisation, created by James Chambers and Tom Judd. It investigates the use of animal behaviours to defend emerging technologies. These products include the Gesundheit Radio, which sneezes periodically to expel potentially damaging dust, Floppy Legs, a portable floppy disk drive which stands up if it detects liquid nearby, and the AntiTouch Lamp, which sways away from you if you get too close to its sensitive halogen bulb.













Today and Tomorrow

AT-AT day afternoon

AT-AT day afternoon from Patrick Boivin on Vimeo.

Can digital I-Doser sounds mimic the effect of drugs?

For decades, parents, doctors and school administrators have worried about the dangers of drugs. In the digital age, they've got a new arena for concern: Sound waves that, some say, affect the brain like a drug -- and cost only 99 cents on iTunes and Amazon.com .

Many scientific experts say they're unfamiliar with ``digital drugs'' -- sometimes sold under the brand name I-Dosers -- and doubt whether sound patterns could have the same effect as chemical drugs. But some parents -- and at least one Oklahoma school system -- worry that downloading these sounds could be a teen's first step toward physical drugs.

As proof, they point to YouTube, where hundreds of videos -- some of teen ``users'' getting ``high'' -- have been posted. On the I-Doser Facebook page, users recommend tracks with comments such as, ``Last night I did `peyote' and `alter-x' and they really worked.'' The I-Doser free software is the second most downloaded program in the science category on CNET.com , with 6,500 downloads in a single recent week.

Miami Herald