As an oldish (40+) programmer who's only recently got into robotics (the simple stuff - arduino, sparkfun, xbee, khr3-hv), coding the control software to make a robot actually do stuff is way more challenging than the supposedly complex projects I work at on my day job. Programming a robot kit to walk or pull poses is simple enough, but coding 'any form of 'intelligent' decision making ends up with lines and lines of code and as many sensors you can sensibly add to the hardware.

I thought it would be pretty simple to build and code a robot cleaner - like a basic remote control car that just drives around the house with a duster underneath which heads back home when the batteries are running low and recharges. Clearly the challenge of climbing the stairs can move to the version 2 release, but if I stick it on the first floor, just stopping it falling down the stairs needs around five sensors and over 500 lines of code.

Two cameras for 3D spatial awareness? Try coding it to tell the difference between and apple and an orange. Built in GPS to get an absolute position reference? Even if you get a signal, 5 meter accuracy doesn't help much when you are driving it towards a lift shaft.

That's why I love this stuff.

it's exactly as the poster title suggests - and also based on flimsy news. The global economic crisis is still in full swing, and swinging cuts to the BBC are in full effect, but that doesn't affect the BBC's top programs in the same way that asking Hugh Laurie's agent to take a cut for the next series of house because money's tight would wash. That said - he's not exactly great - check the diminishing viewing figures from the first episode (ignoring the usual peaks), and get over the fact that Doctor Who was a great series that has been re-invented and now is the UK equivalent of watching the lottery on Saturday evening - good - but you wouldn't care if you missed it. It's not something I would tape for the kids to save for the future...

yes - but judging by most of the people in the office here it _really_ is the software (stupid) combined with a hardware interface that my grandmother could learn to use faster than the alternatives. Make a tube of toothpaste with a bigger nozzle, you'll sell more toothpaste...

What phone are you using by the way? Sounds lovely.

Love to know about this - there's no such thing as a 'secure frequency', if you know it, you can jam it. I'm assuming 'secure' here obviously means more than 'we've switched to a new one they can't guess' - hoping and there's some cool spread-spectrum, channel jumping geekness occurring, or even better some new tech way beyond the levels of current software-defined radio open source stuff that's ahead of the game. I love radio - whether it be it cell phones, wifi, ham's bouncing signals off the moon or distant medium-wave broadcast stations fading in and out after dark, but it still leaves me worrying that one man with an expensive PSP and a transceiver in backpack can launch a missile strike with such easily comprimised communications.

$90,000 ~= $90 within two years. The usual pr0n and torrent jibes aside, this is a really cool development. The spec of the routers you run on your local/company networks (and mine are already stretched), are the same spec as the routers you will be running on the front-end of your incoming net feeds in a year or two. Props to Cisco and their investment and resulting product. Obviously Logitech will release a version based on open-source code in the near future which we can tweak to our own requirements, but heck - this is the Internet..

surely forceps would be more functional...

Have a two tier system - beta and release. Clearly the release version would come out a lot later (if at all) and have limited functionality, but heck - you could sue if it freezes mid level.

and then when 'the whole situation's lost control' another search engine springs up that doesn't censor content based on knee-jerk reactions and potential bad press. 'Fair on Google' doesn't come into it.

How exactly do you actually do that?

I agree that that 'the "shuttered glasses" tech' won't last - I'm old enough to remember the enchantment of getting the first issue of a 3D comic for free with Sugar Puffs back in the 70's (albeit you had to save up some tokens). You got the cardboard glasses with colored perspex and a magazine full of red and blue offset adventures of the Honey Monster - great stuff to experience and show your mates, but a one time experience then the novelty wore off very quickly. I lost the glasses under a pile of other comics pretty quickly too and the novelty factor wasn't strong enough to make me that bothered to look for them. Sugar Puffs didn't release a second installment, so I guess I wasn't the only one. The shuttered approach is the next step, but the glasses are a big barrier to general adoption. They are also nightmare for epileptics and migraine sufferers who trigger with photo-electric flashing - a small minority I know, but they are clearly not ideal. Give me a small flatbed system, with a full-colour holographic representation of the movie me an my mates can sit around and watch. Better still, give me a large one I can project into the middle of the room and sit inside. No glasses though - please.

The PRS is the '_Performing_ Rights Society'. As the article says - 'Consumers spent less on recorded music, down 6% since 2007, but concert ticket sales have grown by some 13% as the industry as whole slowly evolves and adapts to digital distribution.'. They collect royalties for performances, not physical sales of CDs, or royalties from downloads, which are collected in the main by the MCPS (Mechanical Copyright Protection Service). The music industry in terms of the main labels remains slow to adapt, and the ridiculously high percentages charged by download services like iTunes (50% for smaller labels/bands in the UK, plus another 10% to go through a broker if they refuse to deal direct) means that bands are forced to play live as the only sensible source of income.

No doubt user experience of UI will be quantified by software more clearly over the next few years - in the same way that shops are now analysing footfall and even eye contact with product. I think you're looking for the wrong solution though - nothing beats testing the system with the public. Your Mum, your Grandma, your mates, your girlfriend - even (though I hesitate here) focus groups. You'd be amazed how little your amazing technical back-end systems mean next to nothing to a typical user. Even if you've created the most awesome, useful system, people will get confused if the login box is too small or the logo is a bit too harsh color-wise. Stick it live, wave the big Web 2.0 beta flag, and be amazed at the feedback. And stop listening to the people who think they understand what a UI should be.