Sex robots for pleasure in the future

Robots of the future would be used for sexual purposes, believes a

Sexual pleasure (Getty Images)

leading scientist.

US robotics scientist Professor Rodney Brooks, former head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, said he had no reason to doubt that the technology would have ‘sexual drivers’.

"Every technology that we've had, there has been a sexual driver of it," the Couriermail quoted Brooks, a founder and former chief technical officer of lucrative US company iRobot, as saying.

"I mean, that's certainly true of photographs in the 19th century; and home video players were really driven by sex; and of course the web has been a major source of sex. Yeah, there will be (sexbots) but it is not specific to robots per se," he added.

The expert said the development of sexbots may take some time.

He explained: "There are two versions of it, I suppose. We accept that, yes, there will be robotic sex toys, remote presence sex where someone is controlling a robot and stuff. But there's also been some more outrageous stuff (predicted) – where people marry robots.

"Who knows what will happen in 300 years – you just can't predict – but it's not a burning issue guys. I mean, really."

But artificial intelligence researcher David Levy, who completed his PhD on the subject of human-robot relationships, told LiveScience: "At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, but once you have a story like ''I had sex with a robot and it was great!'' appear in a magazine like Cosmo, I'd expect many people to jump on the bandwagon.”

IREX DR800SG: The Flip Side of Digital Reading

Robert S. Anthony, PC World

Sep 24, 2009 1:39 am

Things got a little more crowded in the ebook reader market Wednesday as IREX Technologies, a pioneer in e-paper technology, rolled out its first consumer reader for the U.S., the stylus-driven IREX DR800SG.
The beige unit features an 8.1-inch e-paper display, a Qualcomm 3G wireless adapter which links to the Verizon Wireless network, and a different business and connectivity model than Amazon’s Kindle. The DR 800SG will be available for $399 from Best Buy starting in late October, said Hans Brons, CEO and founder of IREX Technologies.
The IREX DR800SG allows users to import new content both wirelessly and via a cable link with a PC. Users can view purchased content on other devices or import their own content from their PCs.
“We believe in openness," Kevin Hamilton, CEO for IREX in North America, proclaimed at the New York launch event. Noting the device has a Linux-based operating system, he added, “Our device is really a reading tool for people who love to read.”
The unit supports a number of open and DRM-based ebook formats, including the ePub format, and Hamilton noted that the company had partnered with Barnes & Noble to make it easy for users to purchase content with the DR800SG.
Instead of a finger-driven touchscreen, the DR800SG uses a magnetic resonance stylus, in part to maintain the brightness of the display, said Brons. He said the additional transparent touch layer needed to enable finger navigation would have decreased screen brightness by 15 to 20 percent. He noted that Sony’s Reader uses just such a touch layer, with the expected detrimental effect on brightness.
The slim unit has an intentionally plain design, with only a menu button, a long “flip” bar and a power and activity indicator light on the left side of the 10-ounce unit. The flip bar is pushed from side to side to page through ebooks or menus. Clicking is performed with the stylus or by pushing down on the flip bar.
“We tried to create an almost frameless design,” says Brons The color of the display and the hardware was meant to be “as neutral as possible.”
He added that while the device is ready for electronic ink based note taking, the application that enables the function wasn’t quite ready but would be added later as a free update. A color model is in the works for early 2011.
The edge of the unit is blank except for a power switch and a mini-USB socket. Installed in the battery compartment on the back is a 2GB SD Card, which can hold up to 1,500 e-books and can be replaced with a larger-capacity card.
Due to the sheer lack of buttons, the unit, which swivels in its book-like hard-cover case as if it was a leaf of paper, proved easy to operate. While the large icons for items like the eBook Mall, online newspapers and other items were easy to read and click, some of the smaller indicators, like the 3G connection confirmation icon and the battery icon, get lost somewhat at the bottom of the display.
Pages can be bookmarked by tapping the stylus on the upper right corner of the display. From there you can go to a list of bookmarks for easy navigation. Changing fonts or rotating the page was a matter of making a selection from a menu. Readability was good and, of course, got better with more ambient light.
Hamilton said that $9.99 had become a “de facto price” for ebooks but noted that users don’t pay extra for air time when downloading purchased content. He noted, however, that there may be airtime charges for future vertical business applications if they consume a significant amount of wireless bandwidth.
According to IREX, the unit should run for days on a single charge. Like other e-paper digital readers, the display consumes no power unity unless it’s refreshing a page, downloading content or performing other activity.
Hamilton says the advantage of having the IREX DR800SG available in brick-and-mortar stores like Best Buy will give it a key selling advantage over Amazon’s Kindle, which is available online.

India launches satellite for ocean study

NEW DELHI, India (CNN) -- India on Wednesday launched a second satellite to study oceans.

The cube-shaped Oceansat-2 will monitor the interaction between oceans and the atmosphere, as part of climate studies, according to the country's main space agency.

The satellite, launched from India's southeast coast, carried six nanosatellites from European universities as auxiliary payloads, said the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). It also is equipped with two solar panels projecting from its sides, for generating power and charging batteries.

India says it has the world's largest constellation of remote-sensing satellites -- 16, including Oceansat-2. They produce images for uses such as agriculture, rural development, water resources, forestry and disaster management.

Wednesday's launch came less than a month after India terminated its unmanned moon mission about 14 months ahead of its programmed life of two years.

The mission -- Chandrayaan-1, which means mooncraft in Sanskrit -- had to be abandoned after it lost contact with the ground.

In 312 days, it completed more than 3,400 orbits around the moon before vanishing from radar, according to the space agency.

Chandrayaan-1 aimed to take high-resolution, three-dimensional images of the lunar surface, especially the permanently shadowed polar regions.

The craft carried payloads from the United States, the European Union and Bulgaria.

Earlier this year, the Indian government increased the federal budget for space research to about $1 billion from $700 million

Saksoft launches Veri-sens

Sept 23 :
Saksoft, a global software services company focusing on the BFSI segment, announced the launch of Veri-sens, a Ready-to-use, end-to-end Business Intelligence solution designed exclusively for the Banking and Financial Services Industry.

The product is packaged into three modules providing ready to go portfolio performance reports and dashboards for Credit Cards, Retail Assets like personal loans, auto loans and mortgages and Retail Liabilities, and also the High Net worth Individual (HNWI) segment.

The company plans to expand its service offerings into the Business Intelligence space through similar specialised products and solutions for Mutual Funds, Small and Medium Enterprises and Insurance sector, said a Saksoft release.
Saksoft's Veri-sens framework is technology independent and can significantly reduce IT cost by leveraging upon existing infrastructure, proprietary tools, open source tools and the power of cloud computing.

Aditya Krishna, Founder & Managing Director, Saksoft Group said 'Saksoft has maintained its performance over the last few quarters and has significantly increased profit margins by 333% in 2008-09 fiscal. Saksoft is a specialist solutions provider in Information Management and offers a comprehensive suite of ready-to use reports and dashboards.

'Our product Veri-sens stands apart from other BI solutions available in the market because of its specialized domain-specific business intelligence framework which can be deployed across multiple business units and product lines. Veri-sens works with any Transaction processing solution and complements the operational reports available from these systems by meeting the analytical reporting requirements of senior and middle management. Over the next three years, Veri-sens will contribute to 10-12% of the company revenues.

'Our future product roadmap for Veri-sens is to look at technology advancements and addition of new products and business areas to the Veri-sens product family.'

Veri-sens offers pre-built data models, industry standard computational engines and more than 150 pre-built reports and dashboards which help businesses identify, manage and overcome key strategic challenges across multiple functional areas.
'We wanted to extend our core service offerings to customers in India. High costs, high complexity and long gestation period are some of the concerns in the industry, while deploying a new Datawarehouse and Business Intelligence solution. With Veri-sens, we have shrunk the deployment time by at least 50%. In fact Veri-sens can be useful to audit an existing data warehouse or build a warehouse from scratch with a very powerful ETL logic. Veri-sens has an established data model and Key Performance Indicators built by domain experts that can be readily used by the business users', said N K Subramaniyam, Executive Director, Operations and Technology, Saksoft Ltd. 'This business intelligence solution will allow customers to make more informed business decisions, reduce credit risk and respond faster to opportunities and threats.'

According to Gartner, by 2012 organisations will allocate at least 40 per cent of the total IT budgets for business intelligence. With Veri-sens, Saksoft continues to deliver powerful, affordable and easy-to-use solutions with a comprehensive suite of ready dashboards and reports that can immediately address a company's most critical business needs. Veri-sens BI solutions can be used across various levels of the organization from front-line customer service representatives to business analysts and senior executives.

Business intelligence has become one of the top most technology priorities. IDC predicts that by 2013, companies will increase their spending at the rate of almost 10% in this sector. Investments are likely to expand in the areas of production reporting, spreadsheets and ad hoc queries, in the range of about 45- 50 % as compared to the last fiscal.

--IBNS

Yahoo to kick off new branding campaign

By Alexei Oreskovic

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc said it would kick off a $100 million branding campaign next week as the No. 2 U.S. Web company seeks to revive growth and redefine itself under Chief Executive Carol Bartz.

The global campaign, "It's You," comes a few months after Yahoo said it would outsource its search technology to Microsoft Corp.

The deal with Microsoft remains on track to close in early 2010, Bartz said during a news briefing in New York on Tuesday to introduce the marketing campaign.

Bartz declined to comment on recent reports that Yahoo is seeking to sell certain businesses such as Zimbra, a provider of business email and calendar services that Yahoo had acquired for about $350 million in 2007.

Yahoo is also seeking as much as $500 million for its small business Web hosting group, sources told Reuters on Monday.

"Most of our assets are very core to the company. Those that aren't, where it makes sense we will sell and where it makes sense we will shut down," Bartz said.

Yahoo's collection of websites were the second most visited Internet properties in the United States in August, behind Google Inc, according to comScore. Yahoo also faces growing competition from a new crop of social networking websites such as Facebook, which recently announced it reached 300 million users.

"The company needs to reinvigorate their brand. Maybe this is kind of a first step in that," said Kaufman Brothers analyst Aaron Kessler.

Yahoo executives on Tuesday promised more product launches such as the redesigned version of its Internet homepage that incorporates third-party websites like Facebook.

The multimedia campaign will be launched in the United States next week, in the United Kingdom and India in October, and other countries next year.

Yahoo shares fell 14 cents at $16.90 in late-afternoon trading on Nasdaq.

Wed Sep 23, 2009 12:48pm IST