Scientific American, Jan 2007

On Wed, 13 Dec 2006 20:32:03 -0500, "Kevin Gomez"


   Great, I've been waiting for this since reading about it in
Robotics Age magazine. :-)


   I noticed the website http://sciam.com  still has the December issue
cover.
   So how do YOU know about this issue? Do you operate SA's printing
press?

   Here's an article I never expected to see in SA or on its website:
"Had a car crash? It's all in the stars, study says"
http://sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID ”5A1B4276B1524763D2ACC19DC8C475

   A couple pertinent paragraphs:

" According to a study by InsuranceHotline.com, a Web site that quotes
drivers on insurance rates, astrological signs are a significant
factor in predicting car accidents.

The study, which looked at 100,000 North American drivers' records
from the past six years, puts Libras (born September 23-October 22)
followed by Aquarians (January 20-February 18) as the worst offenders
for tickets and accidents"

   The article gives no numbers other than the total number of driver
records, so it's unknown whether the worst sign's accint records are
0.1 percent greater than the best, or 10 percent greater, or what.

   SA certainly went downhill in recent decades, perhaps picking up
some editorial clues from Omni, but this looks like a new low. It's
not even so bad that they took a story from Reuters (hey, it's a cheap
way of padding content), but I wonder if a real editor actually read
the story and approved putting it on the website. Probably Reuters had
it tagged "science" and that's why it was put up on SA.

Woops, </off-topic, non-robotics rant>

">   So how do YOU know about this issue? Do you operate SA's printing

I subscribe.  (rant noted nevertheless).

Likely a tie in to the recently released Microsoft Robotics Studio:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics/

There seems to be less and less news in the mainstream media...just advertising
that looks like news:-(

Article about the article in the Economist.

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2006/12/the_age_of_the_.html

--
Randy M. Dumse
www.newmicros.com
Caution: Objects in mirror are more confused than they appear.

As a suspected...it's a soft sell for Microsoft's Robotics Studio. Here is an
excerpt from the above mentioned
article:

These technologies are a key part of Microsoft Robotics Studio...

Shame on Scientific American...maybe this article has "paid advertisement" on
the top of each page (yeah
right).

On Thu, 14 Dec 2006 18:51:03 GMT, Fuzzy Logic


   I just now see that story on Slashdot:

Microsoft Formally Releases Robotics Software
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid /12/14/1749220



that looks like news:-(

   ... along with an article from yesterday:

FTC To Investigate 'Viral Marketing' Practices
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid /12/13/205250

On Wed, 13 Dec 2006 20:32:03 -0500, "Kevin Gomez"


   Following from the slashdot article, here's the Microsoft webpage
on their robotics software:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics/

   And from there, here's a pic of the cover and the first two
paragraphs of the article:

http://www.sciamdigital.com/index.cfm?fa=Products.ViewIssuePreview&ARTICLEID_CHARc449950-2B35-221B-6B873224A4114DEF
or shortcut:
http://tinyurl.com/ybnryp