I really hope you're either trolling or joking ... here's the thing about science fiction movies: they're fiction. That would be like saying "Let's not send probes to Mars! Haven't we learned anything from War of the Worlds!?"

I'm exaggerating only slightly, there should be one less zero there. Sensors for robotics cost an absurd amount of money. Velodyne lidars, for instance, cost $30,000 each. Infrared range cameras cost between 5 and 10 thousand dollars. Typical high speed stereoscopic navigational cameras typically cost about $3,000 each. 45 degree laser range finders typically cost a few thousand dollars as well. The computer we put on board the robot for the grand challenge cost $11,000, and so on and so on.

You're simultaneously overestimating and underestimating the state of computer vision. It's really kind of cute. It's actually very easy to make a 3D model of the world from sensor data now using a variety of simple, fast methods. The difficult part is perceiving what this data IS!

As a researcher in AI and robotics, I can assure you that we're a very, very long way off from having artificial intelligence which is even close to functioning autonomously in a human environment. I'd put the level of understanding and sophistication of current AI algorithms at about the level of a fly, or perhaps a cockroach if we wish to flatter ourselves. I think the closest we are to commonplace autonomous robotics is having autonomous cars, but even that has significant hurdles to overcome before it becomes commonplace (the typical $1,500,000 price of the sensors, for instance).

Agreed on a) and b) but not on c). That sounds like the ridiculous rhetoric of the Venus Project or Marshall Brain (also known as Marxism). You're not one of those wackos, are you? I should hope not.

the .NET languages (C#, F#, etc.) are some of the cleanest, most usable languages I've programmed in, and they're all integrated into one virtual machine -- which is incredibly useful. The problem with .NET languages is, as the article suggests, they hide a lot of functionality from the programmer. If I have an odd problem I want to solve in .NET, I either have to jump through hoops to implement a solution myself, or use standard .NET features in a way in which they weren't designed. That said, the features .NET languages do have are often so extensive that most problems can be solved with a couple of lines of code.

So yes, I have .NET on my resume, but I also have C, C++, Python, Ocaml, Perl, ObjectiveC and Actionscript. Is it a crime that I actually LIKE the .NET languages?

I'm very glad I managed to make it through Carnegie Mellon's CS program (graduating in a month!) before this change. All of my introductory courses were taught in Java, though apparently the freshman last year switched to Smalltalk and python, without any focus on object-oriented programming. I'm not sure if it was a good or bad thing to be taught object-oriented programming first. I've been told that I write C++ and Python with a "Java accent," but in my opinion, this just makes my code infinitely more readable and modular than it would be otherwise. At the same time, I've had employers complain that I've abstracted too much of my code with OO to improve readability at the cost of a large amount of performance overhead. However, OO is just such a useful paradigm that can be applied to so many useful things, that I think its a shame that our department is no longer going to focus on it.

Ironic, because that's exactly the kind of bullshit rhetoric the far-right in Europe uses!

Very, very much agreed. I can't believe the sentiment I'm seeing in the majority of comments here. Mod parent up!

I've always had one window maximized and all other windows minimized. When I want to focus a program, I minimize the current maximized window, and maximize the program I want to focus on. I have never used alt-tab unless a program was unresponsive.

The PR2 is nearly there. It can already recharge itself, avoid obstacles, fold laundry, etc. Right now the only thing preventing the PR2 from being sold for the tasks you describe is price, and prohibitively high maintenance costs.

I'm surprised they picked the PR2 from Willow Garage and compared with the Anybot. Willow Garage also makes the Texai robot, which has almost identical capabilities as the Anybot, and fulfills the same kind of role. PR2 and HRP are not designed for offices, but are research robots which are loaned out to universities and other institutions. Neither is designed to be a commercial robot, while Texai and Anybot are commercial products.

Disclaimer: I work for Willow Garage

This is why black lists and branding shouldn't be used as punishments. I can imagine there are several innocent people convicted of some kind of sexual crime now on a hiring black-list, putting signs in front of their houses, being tracked by GPS, etc.

If we're going to brand citizens convicted of sexual crimes, why not also brand all other criminals. After all, you wouldn't want to do business with someone convicted of thievery, right?

The modern Scarlett Letter. What a sick, sad joke.

Yep. And for Jupiter-like planet we'd need to be watching it for hundreds, if not thousands of years if we were to use this method.

Then we would never detect it via this method.

It depends on how well they are aligned. Even if they're perfectly aligned, we're liable to see the first one before the second or third one as it passes in front of the star. If they are even slightly out of phase, they will eventually be in an orbit in which we see all three distinctly. In any case, the radius and shape of the occlusion in front of the star is determined by the shape of the light intensity vs. time graph. Circular disks have a very specific light occlusion shape, while abberant occlusions have different shapes.

Two ways:

1. The graph of light intensity vs. time has a particular shape for perfectly spherical objects such as planets passing in front of a star.

2. Those doppler shifts would not be affected by a sun-spot, and measurements of this kind aren't always verified by doppler shift methods.