You don't even need it to be a robot - just remote control.

Check out "Malcolm":

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091464/

This is wonderful news. If Amazon holds the patent of inserting ads into e-books, then that means no one else will be allowed to.

Doesn't it?

What is often forgotten is that NASA has already made a start on this. The Apollo 12 mission was targetted to land right next to the Surveyor 3 lander. The astronauts removed bits of the probe and brought them back to Earth for analysis. The picture of this is one of my favourite pictures from the Apollo program. NASA didn't worry too much about preserving history back then. They were too busy making it.

The sad (and worrying) thing is how these filters fail to work the way they are advertised. An example. I work in an Australian Government office, which has filtering set up on web access and emails. Various sorts of material - illegal, offensive etc. - is proscribed, and automatic filters are in place to prevent it entering the system. The rule of thumb we are told is, if you think your Grandmother would pass it, it passes. If you think she would be offended, don't download/read/send/whatever.

My first brush with this came when I tried to email myself a copy of a text analysis program I had written in a previous job (I had a copy at home). It got stopped, due to "potentially offensive content". After several rounds of emails back & forth, including an approval from my boss, I finally managed to get it released (the means of doing so was by no means easy or transparent). What was the sticking point? Well, the program included some samples of text I had tested it on. What was the oh-so-potentially-offensive text? One of the plays of William Shakespeare...

I confirmed this by sending a copy of the full play (Shakespeare's "All's well that Ends Well") - sorry, it got stopped as "potentially offensive". I leave it as an exercise to the reader to work out just why. (OK, I'll tell if anybody asks).

Since then I have experimented from time to time. The latest "offensive" text I found was the text of the novel "Anne of Green Gables" (yes, the classic story for girls). At least, I think it was classified as offensive, and I think I know why - but all I know for certain is that I sent three different copies of the text, and all three have disappeared without trace, without even a notice of "potentially offensive content". Some things, it seems, are too potentially offensive for government employees even to know about.

I don't think my Grandmother would approve.

... but my son learned to count through a video game. When he was four or so he used to sit on my lap and watch me play an on Mac game called "Scruffy" (or was it Scruffy versus the Martians?), which featured a little dog who jumped about, avoided worms and Martians, and dropped bombs behind him. At the start of every level "Welcome to level nn" was displayed in big letters on the screen, and my son quickly learned to recognise the numerals.

Fortunately for me and my (lack of) game playing skills, he learned to count higher than ten of his own accord.

One of the things I have to do is estimate the affect the recession will have on certain economic trends I've been tracking. Not at all easy ... though I guess it makes for one sort of job security.

To be sure. Hamas needs time to amass more weapons, so they declare a "unilateral cease-fire" while they rearm.

If Hamas are peaceful, why are they firing rockets? If they are peaceful, why does their charter call for the destruction of Israel?

To be sure. It wouldn't be fighting if they didn't fight back.

The problem is that Hamas (and Fatah, and most of the rest of the Moslem Middle East) hate the Jews, and are determined to kill them all. So far as I can see, the main difference between Fatah and Hamas is that Fatah says "we want peace" in English and "kill the Jews" in Arabic, while Hamas says "kill the Jews" in both English and Arabic. The Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel, and they have never ceased to strike at them whenever they can. The Israelis are prepared to live & let live, but if they are attacked they won't tolerate it forever, and will strike back.

As current events are showing us, they are rather more efficient at it.

The only way I can imagine that peace (sudden or otherwise) would break out would be if the Israelis were successful in rooting out Hamas (unlikely, but possible), and if the rest of the world were to allow them to do so without interfering (rather less likely).

Personally, I'm tempted by this, not because it's a portable games machine (though that might be handy if I have to amuse the kiddies), but because it is a compact player of high resolution video, and a very long playing music player. The ability to browse the web, read e-books and do my email is further temptation.

In my case, though, I've just had to shell out for root canal work, and my wife is making some very sensible comments about the state of our collective finances...