Wiltshire to play host to MoD's Terminator
wars
If you thought the BBC television show Robot Wars was no more
than a chance for 90-pound weaklings to act out teenage power
fantasies, think again. During the summer of 2008, an army of
autonomous robots will march across the Wiltshire countryside to
compete in the
UK Ministry
of Defence Grand Challenge - a competition to find new
technology to support ground troops in urban areas.
"Technology plays a huge role in our forces. It often makes the
difference between success and failure - and sometimes life and
death," Lord Drayson, minister for defence procurement, told BBC
reporters.
Downtime hopes the MoD will employ something closer to the
Terminator than the bread-bin-with an-axe-strapped-to-it-style
robots that populated Robot Wars.
Satellite set to predict that it will probably
rain
Meteorologists surely have one of the easier jobs in the world.
Predicting it is going to rain tomorrow, and probably the next day,
is no job for a supercomputer.
But meteorologists clearly disagree as they are set to launch a
new improved satellite into the atmosphere.
Jason-2, carrying a new supercomputer to measure sea-levels
with greater accuracy, is due to be launched in 2008. It will
provide more accurate data on the oceans' depths by mapping
topography, which could help improve hurricane path projections and
reveal how climate change is affecting ocean currents.
Unfortunately, Jason-2 will probably arrive a little late to
save much of low-lying England.
Downtime puts its font in it and loses
typeface
Never get a typographer angry they are liable to tell you to
font-off in no uncertain terms.
Downtime knows this after receiving a letter from reader Robin
Crorie, who writes, "Shame on you! It might well be 50 years since
the creation of Helvetica in 1957
(
Downtime: 9 July), but it was not a font then, and neither is
it now.
"It never has been. Helvetica is, was, and always will be, a
typeface.
A font is
a typeface of a specific size and (sometimes) style eg, Helvetica
16 is a font, and so is Arial Narrow 12."
Downtime can only apologise, and admit that it was struggling to
think of a pun for typeface.
Curiosity was a functional process of the
cat
Scientists in
the Netherlands have built a robotic cat with a set of logical
rules for emotions. By introducing emotional variables to the
decision-making process, they hope to create more natural human and
computer interactions.
"We do not really believe that computers can have emotions, but
we see that emotions have a certain function in human practical
reasoning," said Mehdi Dastani, an artificial-intelligence
researcher at Utrecht University.
As if dealing with end-users were not bad enough, soon IT staff
will be faced with grumpy laptops and demotivated PDAs.
Security researcher drives a hard bargain
Earlier this month, a social networking site was propositioned
by a security researcher who had uncovered a vulnerability. He
offered to sell the company the code that could crash a user's
machine.
He asked for £2,500 for his findings, before upping his demand
to £5,000. When his offer was refused again, the researcher then
posted his code online (for free) to "prevent security issues
arising".
While undoubtedly a talented security researcher, Downtime
cannot help but feel he might need some work on his negotiating
skills.
If you have a funny IT-related story, we want to hear
from you.
cwdowntime@rbi.co.uk