An anonymous reader writes to mention an Economist article wondering how safe should robots be? From the article: "In 1981 Kenji Urada, a 37-year-old Japanese factory worker, climbed over a safety fence at a Kawasaki plant to carry out some maintenance work on a robot. In his haste, he failed to switch the robot off properly. Unable to sense him, the robot's powerful hydraulic arm kept on working and accidentally pushed the engineer into a grinding machine. His death made Urada the first recorded victim to die at the hands of a robot. This gruesome industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behavior was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction writer." The article goes on to explore the ethics behind robot soldiers, the liability issues of cleaning droids, and the moral problems posed by sexbots.

Legal Ethics writes "According to an article on Groklaw, Microsoft is misrepresenting what the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) tool is to pressure people into installing it. It comes with no uninstall, it fails to disclose many pieces of information it provides to Microsoft, and it misrepresents itself as a 'critical update' when it does not address any security vulnerability, although it remains to be seen if it can create one. ZDNet has a series of screenshots so that you can see exactly how badly it misrepresents itself. Oh, and it also checks for updates, so Microsoft can presumably execute arbitrary code on any machine with it installed, merely by making that code part of a WGA update."

Pneuma ROCKS writes "Google has just released the Google Browser Sync extension for Firefox. This extension allows you to save your bookmarks, history and passwords on Google servers, effectively giving you a 'roaming profile,' which you can sync on any computer running Firefox (and the extension, of course)."

Guinnessy writes "Jason Tomczak, who is mentioned as the lead to the iPod Nano 'Scratch' Class Action law suit filed against Apple computers has published an open letter to the mac community. In it he claims that he never asked to be represented by David P. Meyer & Associates or Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, the lawyers in the case. He spoke to them once by phone about his scratched iPod case and asked that his name not be used. In fact, the two firms agree there is no signed document proving that Tomczak asked for representation. However, because Tomczak wants nothing to do with the case, David P. Meyer & Associates or Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro are currently suing him to try and stop him from pulling out. They also say Tomczak is legally liable for their fees if they lose the court case against Apple. Needless to say Tomczak isn't happy with the arrangement, and is likely to still lose thousands of dollars under the best scenario."

skayell writes "The RIAA is suing XM Satellite radio contending that the ability to store songs in memory makes it similar to an iPod, but with no income involved for the RIAA." From the article: "XM said it will vigorously defend this lawsuit on behalf of consumers and also called the lawsuit a bargaining tactic. [...] The labels are currently in talks with XM and its rival Sirius Satellite Radio, to renegotiate digital royalty contracts for broadcasts."

An anonymous reader writes to mention a Yahoo! suit involving allegations of spyware and typosquatting-based ads. From the article: "The suit claims that Yahoo displayed these advertisers' online ads via spyware and adware products and on so-called 'typosquatter' Web sites that capitalize on misspellings of popular trademarks or company names. Potentially more explosive is the plaintiff's claim that Yahoo regularly uses its relationship with adware and typosquatting sites to gin up extra revenue around earnings time, alleging that the company is conspiring to boost revenue by partnering with some of the Internet's seamier characters."

Gamasutra has reactions from game developers to the announcement of the Revolution's new commercial name, 'Wii'. From the article: "It doesn't change my personal opinions of the console in the slightest. It changes my opinion of the Nintendo marketing department considerably. Did they even bother to research this? Why do they do these things? What was wrong with 'Revolution'? It's bad enough that the Japanese have a drink called "Sweat," but at least they don't try to export it to the English-speaking world with that name. Am I supposed to be happy about having to go down to the game store to purchase the 'Nintendo Wee'? For God's sake, where was Miyamoto? I can't believe he would have let this get by. - Ernest Adams"

Mark Brown writes "Tom's Hardware is live-testing DDR2 memory products in order to determine whether memory manufacturers submit cherry-picked products for reviews. 'GeIL DDR2-667 that was claimed to be purchased performed worse than the review samples they got: 471 MHz for the review samples vs. 421 MHz for the retail memory.'"

Nuclear Elephant writes "With Verizon's release of the Motorola E815, an improved and EVDO-capable version of the former v710, many v710 enthusiasts have started hacking at it to see what it can do. Surprisingly, many of the hacks which previously did not work on the v710 (such as those from the failed OBEX Hacking Contest) now suddenly do work on the E815, and other hacks which did work on the v710 still work. Among new hacks include the ability to activate OBEX (Object Exchange) for transferring pictures and music to/from the handset via Bluetooth, activating the disabled DUN (Dialup Networking) profile which was previously available on its predecessor, and modding the web browser to allow using any homepage and proxy. One cool existing hack involves the ability to use an alternative PIX messaging gateway to send multimedia, made possible by the reverse engineering of the MMS protocol used. A complete list of modifications can be found here. An unofficial challenge to enable OPP (Object Push Profile) is underway with a prize of $500. Unlike the v710, the Motorola E815 was Bluetooth qualified for both OPP and OBEX."