One of the first experiments at Bologna was the attempt to transmute metal into gold, which ultimately failed. Fortunately the experiment produced a number of pink fleshy tubes joined together at the ends and smelling faintly of pig. Unfortunately, the university mascot ran off with the links and the students were never able to repeat their experiment for others, so Bologna remains to this day more famous for it's university than it's meaty creations, or it's ability to repeat experiments.

Wasn't that a famous disaster? I could never remember, maybe I should look it up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASoCJTYgYB0 Let's hope they ironed out a few of the problems, otherwise we will have a lot of broken humans.

This has pretty much been done already, the only real difference - one is climbing a pole, this one seems to be able to do a tree. http://singularityhub.com/2010/04/19/dennis-hong-presents-his-8-award-winning-robots-video/

And halfway across the Atlantic, the crew asks the passengers if there is another AI on board because this one has decided to go on strike and Ryan Air where too stingy to pay for communication links or a backup??

What, like putting oft-used examples at the top of the man page or in the cruft? That's too creative man, next people will be asking for an exit button in vi, I mean emacs, oops, no I mean nano.

Where is Caractacus Potts when you need him?

For years we have used the Sun for setting the time, now we have to rely on Oracle? Does that mean the makers of Stonehenge are going to get sued for non-compliance in their virtual machine implementation?

No, like slashdot moderation, but shinier because of the teflon coating.

That was not the House of Cards on Wall Street perchance?

Claiming a loss on movies might put a dent in their outrageous damage claims: When the MPAA successfully sue someone for damages, they may have to award the defendant.