Aibo owners tend to be fiercely loyal, too. The robots have even been hacked by tinkerers seeking to add their own modifications. But none of that prevented Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE – news). from announcing last week that it was scrapping the four-legged robot pet as part of the company’s bid to reverse flagging fortunes and cut costs.

Like so many things Sony has made over the years, the Aibo is a niche product. And since Sony is pulling the plug on robot production as part of a major restructuring, so goes the Aibo.

That isn’t just disappointing Aibo fans, who bought 150,000 of the toy poodle-sized machines since they were first introduced in 1999 and now worry they won’t be able to get spare parts.

It may also have robbed Sony of some of mystique.

Typical of now-dispirited Aibo owners, Paul Wallingford isn’t placated by Sony’s promise to provide maintenance for Aibos for seven years after production ends in March.

“I think you do develop an attachment to them,” Wallingford, the owner of a Los Angeles-based Internet business, said by telephone. He owns four Aibos and lately has been keeping them turned off often so they’re less likely to develop problems.

The Aibo, which costs about $2,000, delivers an amusing illusion of spontaneity and personality. It comes in black, white, brown and gray and is programmed to move about on its own.

Hundreds of thousands of machines are believed to be infected, mostly in India, Peru, Turkey and Italy, said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for Finnish security company F-Secure Corp.

The worm, known as “CME-24,” “BlackWorm,” “Mywife.E” or a number of other monikers, even tries to disable anti-virus software that is out of date, he said.

Thus, users should make sure their software is turned on and has the latest definitions, generally available for free from the software vendor’s Web site. F-Secure also has created a free removal tool.

“If you are infected, and you find out about it today, you still have time to get rid of the virus,” Hypponen said.

As worms go, the spread of BlackWorm is relatively low. But worms these days are generally designed to help spammers and hackers carry out attacks, not to destroy files as this one does. So the impact this time may be more severe.

Microsoft Corp. issued an advisory Tuesday warning customers about the worm, which affects most versions of its Windows operating system.

Users should be safe if they have the latest anti-virus software or if their computers are set with limited privileges, a common setting in larger organizations. They are vulnerable if they, like many small business and home users, leave their computers set with full administrative rights.

And users should check the date on the computer. The worm hits the third of every month, so if the computer’s local calendar settings are off, Hypponen said, files may be destroyed sooner or later, even if the computer is never turned on Friday.

For he is a connoisseur of roadkill flesh, and among the dishes served in
his kitchen are casseroles made from squashed badger, hedgehog, otter, rat,
rabbit or pheasant.

And his recipes may soon gain a wider following, because he hopes to publish
a roadkill cookery book.

Mr Boyt, 66, who used to work in the fire protection business, has tucked
into a labrador – “just like a nice piece of lamb” – two lurchers (hunting
dogs), cats and a great horseshoe bat, not to mention squirrels, foxes,
mice, deer and pigeon. He even brought a dead porcupine back from holiday in
Canada. He has a weasel in the freezer but thinks it is too smelly to eat,
and he has just picked up a barn owl he is keen to taste.

But his favourite snack is badger sandwich. He is partial to the badger
head, which he says includes four distinctive tastes: the jaw muscles,
salivary glands, tongue and brains.

Verizon today announced VZ Navigator, a new service that will provide directions and locations of nearby services to subscribers using aGPS enabled phones. When a user launches Navigator, the network and GPS satellites will determine his location. That data can then be used to locate nearby businesses such as restaurants or banks, and can also be used to provide turn by turn directions to a destination. The service is initially available on the newly launched Motorola V325; Verizon has not promised the application for additional handsets. Navigator will cost $10 for a month of unlimited use, or $3 for 24 hours. Sprint has already launched a similar service for most of their new handsets.

If somebody leaves a voice mail message for you and it sounds like impending work, respond during lunch hour. That way, you’re hardworking and conscientious even though you’re being a devious weasel. If you diligently employ the method of screening incoming calls and then returning calls when nobody is there, this will greatly increase the odds that they will give up or look for a solution that doesn’t involve you.

The sweetest voice mail message you can ever hear is “Ignore my last message. I took care of it.” If your voice mailbox has a limit on the number of messages it can hold, make sure you reach that limit frequently. One way to do that is to never erase any incoming messages. If that takes too long, send yourself a few messages.

Your callers will hear a recorded message that says, “Sorry, this mailbox is full”–a sure sign that you are a hardworking employee in high demand.

The earthquake occurred in the Banda Sea about 120 miles south of Ambon city, the USGS said. It occurred at a depth of 212 miles.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said no destructive tsunami threat existed.

Amran, an official at Indonesia’s meteorological agency in the capital, Jakarta, said there were no immediate reports of damages or injuries. Like many Indonesians, he goes by only one name.

The Internet news portal Detik.com reported from Ambon that people fled their houses in panic when the earthquake, which lasted about two minutes, struck.

Ambon is about 1,600 miles east of Jakarta.

http://news.com.com/Scientists+use+Net+game+to+forecast+epidemics/2100-11395_3-6031234.html

An Internet game akin to “Where’s Waldo?” for tracing the movement of dollar bills has helped scientists develop a statistical model for predicting the spread of an epidemic in this country.

Researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self Organization have used the Web game “Where’s George?,” which monitors the geographic circulation of dollar bills by their serial numbers, to forecast how a virus would spread from human to human.

The physicists based their research on the idea that like viruses, money is transported by people from place to place.

“Since we can’t track people with tracking devices, like we do animals, we needed to get data that provided us with millions of movements of individuals,” said Lars Hufnagel, a post-doctoral fellow at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at UCSB.

“We use these dollar bills as radar devices for humans,” he said. Hufnagel co-wrote an article on the research in this week’s Nature journal.

Threat of a human “superflu” has lorded over people’s minds around the world since the spread of bird flu in Asia and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) overseas. Modern transportation and travel make it much easier for a disease in one region of the world to spread to another quickly. In contrast, centuries-ago pandemics moved slower across geographical regions because people typically traveled only a few kilometers daily.

It’s difficult to forecast how an epidemic might spread today, given that there’s no quantitative analysis on how people move around in a country, or from country to country. Hufnagel’s research, conducted with two other scientists, aims to create a statistical model for how people move about despite the mode of transportation, but tracking dollar bills is not conclusive.
In other news:

* Surveying the mobile TV landscape
* Photos: Computational couture
* No booze or jokes for China’s Googlers

Hufnagel said that the group’s findings were surprising because the bills moved along a simple mathematical model, called universal scaling laws. In this case, scaling laws describe movement from local areas to regional to long-distance lengths, but they have been applied to biology and physical systems.

Using data from half a million bills tracked on the site, the scientists developed a scaling law theory that describes the observed movements of travelers over distances from just a few kilometers to a few thousand. For example, most money travels locally, but there is a small likelihood it will move across the country.

In modeling epidemics, Hufnagel said, the scale becomes specific to the disease. A more severe epidemic might travel differently than a less severe one, for example.

“It was more than fair,” said Gonzalez’s attorney, Michael Stephens.

Had Gonzalez used a toll pass, her trips would have cost about $1,800, according to tollway authorities. Instead, they said, she drove through the booths nearly 3,000 times without paying between June 2003 and November 2005. The $25 administrative fees for each violation added up.
Attorney Marcelle Jones said the tollway authority was “satisfied” with the arrangement. If Gonzalez meets the terms, prosecutors could dismiss the citations, with approval from the North Texas Tollway Authority, Jones said.

“You don’t want to build too much into the TV,” said Stephen Baker, an analyst with the NPD Group. “Consumers tend not to want too much built into their televisions, and the technology for a television doesn’t move quite as fast as the technology for the external devices that are going to help you manage all your entertainment.”

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The global market for high-definition televisions (HDTV) and their ancillary products — personal video recorders, DVD players, game consoles and set-top boxes — will eclipse US$25 billion this year, according to a report released Wednesday by ABI Research , of Oyster Bay, N.Y.

As the HDTV market grows, commoditization will threaten margins and attract new players into the fray, noted Vamsi Sistla, the author of the report titled “The Future of the High Definition Television Market.”

But Stuart Brody, a psychologist at the University of Paisley in Scotland, said it has to be full sexual intercourse to get the best results.

He studied nearly 50 men and women who recorded their sexual activities for two weeks and analyzed its impact on their blood pressure levels when under acute stress, such as when giving a speech.

Brody discovered that the volunteers who had sexual intercourse were the least stressed and had blood pressure levels that returned to normal more quickly than people who engaged in other types of sex.

But people who had abstained from sex had the highest blood pressure response to stress.

Even after taking into account stress due to work or other factors, the range of responses to stress were best explained by sexual behavior.

“The effects are not attributable simply to the short-term relief afforded by orgasm but rather, endure for at least a week,” Brody told New Scientist magazine said on Wednesday.

He believes that the release of the so-called “pair bonding” hormone oxytocin might explain the calming effect.