Visitors to CEATEC 2003 (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies) met Morph3, a human-like robot about 30-centimetres tall developed by researchers at the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan. It can perform back flips and karate moves thanks to 138 pressure sensors, 30 different onboard motors and 14 computer processors.

Martial arts robots hit Asian tech fair

] At this level of performance, the PC would qualify as one
] of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world.

U:Looked up details on this because abaddon was calling bullshit on their numbers. Its 64 simple processors in an array, with 128k of (near) registers, all on one chip. Basically instead of using gate-space for branch prediction logic they are using it for ALUs. Its a good idea for specific applications which stand to benefit from this sort of optimization as opposed to what they do in your general purpose machines. Its not really the same as having a supercomputer in that these little processor elements are not as powerful as the P4s in your Beowolf Cluster by a very long shot. Thats not to say it isn't useful for problems in that space.

I'm still waiting to see someone provide an FPGA as a co-processor which can be used for optimized gate logic implementations of your problem that get swapped in and out like a virtual memory system. It will come someday.

Wired News: Turn That PC Into a Supercomputer

] While still teaching at Berkeley, Stonebraker founded
] Ingres Corp. to commercialize the relational database
] technology. (The company was acquired in 1990 by ASK
] Computer Systems.) Shortly after launching Ingres Corp.,
] Stonebraker and his students pushed databases ahead yet
] again with POSTGRES, a relational database that could
] understand "objects," groups of simpler pieces of data.

29 years of relational databases...

] Sure enough, within a few days three readers who had
] received the message on Oct. 1 reported that they had
] gotten a second e-mail from Network Solutions
] acknowledging it was a mistake. "We have determined that
] some of these e-mails were inadvertently sent to former
] customers of Network Solutions," the message read.
] "Please disregard that e-mail and accept our apologies
] for any inconvenience this may have caused."

I memed this at the beginning of the month. It was an error, apparently.

Verisign's latest renewal emails were a mistake. ( RE: Verisign back in the fraud?! )

] Washington - Dr Miguel Nicolelis knew he had nailed it
] when the monkey stopped using her arm to play the
] computer game.
]
] "Her arm muscles went completely quiet, she kept the arm
] at her side and she controlled the robot arm using only
] her brain and visual feedback."

Would you have your real arm removed if in its place you could get one that can lift a ton?

Cyborg enhancements soon...

] One group in Poland is currently advertising "invisible
] bulletproof hosting" in online forums for spammers. For
] $1,500 per month, the group says it can protect a site
] from network sleuthing tools used by spam opponents, such
] as traceroute and whois.

Wired News: Cloaking Device Made for Spammers

] You also have an incredibly overzealous vocal minority
] that thinks it still owns the Internet, and the
] anarchists that think everything should be free. And then
] you have everybody else that uses the Internet every day
] and doesn't know what ICANN is. I think this is a broken
] model that we have talked to ICANN and the Department of
] Commerce about.

Verisign is opposed to Internet Governance.

CRN Interview: Stratton Sclavos, VeriSign

Look the bastards in the eyes.

Photos from ICANN Verisign Meeting

] Stephen Crocker, one of the Internet's original
] architects and the ICANN committee's chairman, asked
] VeriSign why the wild card was introduced without giving
] network operators any warning. "I know for a fact that
] VeriSign has no problem finding its way to those
] (technical discussion) forums," Crocker said, referring
] to the company's ongoing participation in them.
]
] "I don't want to go beyond the agenda," replied Chuck
] Gomes, VeriSign's vice president for its registry
] service. Citing concerns of proprietary information and
] competitive advantage, he added that he didn't think he
] could guarantee any advance notice of similar changes in
] the future.

VeriSign fends off critics at ICANN confab | CNET News.com

] The giant recorder of Web addresses sure sparked a fire
] when it redirected site-not-found messages to its own
] search engine. It's a bum rap.

Businessweek doesn't get it. This guy oversimplifies the objections to the service, explains away his oversimiplification, and then claims that sitefinder should be allowed. This is what is known as a straw man arguement. Read the IAB's comments on the servie. Read verisign's technical response. Even Verisign hasn't managed to provide a coherent explanation of how services other then HTTP and SMTP are supposed to handle this change. If you think the internet is made up of SMTP, HTTP, Ping, and Traceroute then you don't understand the internet, and therefore you don't know what you're talking about.

BW Online | October 7, 2003 | Verisign Didn't Deserve This Spanking