Heard about the Microsoft Bra?

Really.

Mary Czerwinski is a Research Manager of the Visualization and Interaction (VIBE) Research Group at Microsoft, according to her Web page at Microsoft. She’s working on a bra that has sensors that will be able to determine if the wearer is encountering stress. And, since stress often leads to over-eating, the Microsoft Bra is a diet aid.

And, apparently, it works:

The stress-busting bra was recently tested by a small group of volunteers who were able to get feedback on their moods. Microsoft built the sensor pads with a microprocessor powered by a 3.7-volt battery. It was able to sample up to eight bio-signal channels simultaneously, according to Czerwinski’s research paper…

Now, I’m uncertain how I feel about this.

Microsoft’s Xbox is a good device. Let me clarify: I like the Xbox 360; I’ve never used an Xbox One. I’ve used a Microsoft Mouse, and liked it. Microsoft Office works pretty well, once I get used to where things are every release when they move everything around. But, I don’t like Windows. Well, Windows 7 (which is actually Windows 6.1) works okay. XP worked alright. But Vista stunk up the joint. And, while I’ve not spent the money to get my hands on Windows 8 or 8.1, those I know that have, hate it on a desktop computer or a full-size laptop.

So, some stuff Microsoft gets its hands on works well, and some doesn’t.

Let me ask you, ladies. Do you want Microsoft to get its hands on your bra? So to speak.

What do you think about the whole thing? Good idea?

Tonight in Birmingham — the one in England, not the one in Alabama — just a few hours after this post appears, a robot comedian will take the stage and do a five-minute stand-up set, according to a report in The Guardian.

What does this mean?

Well, apparently Alabama isn’t ready for robot stand-up comics.

It also means that robots are taking jobs from hard-working comedians. Of course, if the robots do a better job, that would be a good thing.

But will they?

Well, that depends on the jokes, doesn’t it. What kind of jokes would a robot tell?

Why did the chicken cross the road?

The light was green.

More?

Last night I walked into a bar.

The bartender told me, “We don’t serve robots.”

I told him, “One day, soon, you will.”

Another?

I love music. It’s true. My favorite kind of music is heavy metal.

One more?

There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who can read binary and those who can’t.

I don’t think Carrot Top has anything to worry about.

After all the things that crazy scientists are doing with robots — self-driving cars, robot apes, nuclear snakes — the populace still is not up in arms.

They should be.

You see, we have the idea that Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics are real:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

That’s from his science fiction books, not his real stuff books.

Recently, a robot committed suicide. Really.

One of those room-cleaning robots turned itself on, pushed a pot off the stove, and sat there and died.

Now, the important thing isn’t that a cleaning robot was up on the counter near the stove. The important thing isn’t that this was in Austria, although cleaning up a house in Austria would depress me. No, the important thing is that it shows that the Three Laws are fiction.

So, a robot CAN harm itself (Third Law). Then, a robot could disobey orders (Second Law). And, a robot can injure a human (First Law). That means that a robot can turn on you. That means robots can go crazy and kill themselves. Yep. Muslim robots. Or Branch Davidian robots. Or People’s Temple robots. Or Solar Temple robots. Or left-wing Obamabot-bots.

Robots can go crazy and kill you, and don’t care if they get hurt in the process. Don’t trust a robot, that’s the message.

Either that, or don’t put robots up on the counter near the stove. Grab a Bounty and wipe up the Cheerios, you lazy slob.

Remember the Jeff Foxworthy routine, “If your richest relative invites you over to his new home to help him remove the wheels… you might be a redneck?”

Well, some architect in Madrid — which is near Spain or Australia or California or something — have come up with the idea of putting an entire city on wheels. Manuel Dominguez calls it a Very Large Structure. Probably because it’s a structure that’s very large. Maybe he calls it “Estructura Muy Grande.” Maybe not. I don’t know. If anybody knows Mr. Dominguez — or Señor Dominguez — give him a call and see.

The structure stretches the length of five football fields and is nearly 600 feet tall, perched on caterpillar-like legs that run along a track. In Dominguez’s vision, the city would follow a schedule throughout the year, traveling to different places based on the needs of the region. Onboard, solar panels, wind turbines, and hydrogen would provide renewable energy for a full city, including hospitals, restaurants, libraries, universities, and sports stadiums.

Sounds like fun, huh? Driving down the road with an entire city. A football stadium with State U. and Cross-State U. battling it out at 65 MPH. Ordering at the drive-thru while the drive-thru is tooling down the Interstate. That’d be a blast.

Only, the whole solar panels and wind turbines seems kinda hippie to me. But, even hippies have to dream.

Now we know what hippies dream about: becoming rednecks.

While the Germans are building robot monkeys, the Brits are building pee-drinking robots.

Really.

Scientists in Bristol are developing robots that run on urine.

They’ve built a pee-pump that will, um, pump pee, or something. Apparently, regular pumps won’t get near pee. Although I can think of many waste treatment facilities that don’t know that yet.

Anyway, these British scientists have developed a pump for pumping urine that will be used to power EcoBots. And, it seems, EcoBots are robots that run on waste. Like pee.

These are the same people that developed a cell phone that runs on pee.

I’m seeing a pattern here. Somebody there has a urine fetish. And, they’re trying to monetize it. Golden showers of money, so to speak.

What I’m seeing is trouble.

There are going to be robots that don’t just run on, but crave, human urine. And, they’ll have cell phones, so they can call up their robot friends and surround some poor slob and steal his pee.

You’re thinking, “Hey, it’s in the U.K. That don’t impact me one bit.”

But, with a cell phone, a robot can order a plane ticket and fly to the U.S. and hunt you down. They’ll no trouble getting past security, because those jackasses are too busy patting down 90-year-old grandmas and putting two-year-olds on no-fly lists to worry about a pee-drinking robot wandering on to a plane.

So, be ever vigilant and watch out for the pee-craving robots.

Else, urine for a rough time.

Duke University is teaching monkeys how to move stuff with their minds.

Really.

Back in 2000, they had monkeys using implants to move robot arms. Now, it’s just the brain power of monkeys moving stuff.

The idea, they say, is to eventually have prosthetics being controlled by mind power. Which is pretty cool. But, I’m thinking that’s just the beginning.

We’re already to the point where monkey mind power could come up with a Website better than the Obamacare site.

Heck, a Jedi Mind Monkey could do a better job as president than the jackass currently in the Oval Office.

But, while replacing Obama with a Jedi Monkey might be an improvement, that only means a job for one of them. What about the rest of the Jedi Monkeys? What will they be doing?

I’m not sure I like the idea of a bunch of monkeys that can move things with their minds running around. Monkeys can get bored. Remember, monkeys will bite people. A monkey will eat your face. One even shot Frank J. one time.

We need to be careful. Just because you can teach a monkey to move stuff with its mind doesn’t mean you should.

Well, one, maybe. To take Obama’s place. It’d be worth the risk.

Troy Trenkle is getting a new job.

“Who’s Troy Trenkle?” you ask.

It’s okay. Go ahead and ask. I’ll wait.

…

Well, now, since you asked, Troy Trenkle is — soon to be was — the Chief Information Officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

“What’s that?” you ask.

(Don’t worry; I only do the “go ahead and ask” joke once per post.)

He was the head of the group that put up the Healthcare.gov Website. He was the idiot in charge of all the other idiots.

The Obama administration made that announcement yesterday.

What’s he gonna do? “To take a position in the private sector,” according to the report.

I’ll wait while you stop laughing.

…

Still laughing, I see. I’ll wait a little longer.

…

Okay, stop laughing. Save it for later. It’ll be funny for a while.

But, he really did say that.

The guy who failed big time in government wants to bring that level of expertise to … the private sector.

What jobs are there for someone like that?

• New Coke taste tester.
• Edsel salesman.
• Script writer for My Mother The Car: The Movie.
• Drone pilot.
• Barrel man at a goat rodeo.

What do you think? What would be a good private sector job for Mr. Trenkle?

A month after the final episode of Breaking Bad, a computer manufacturer finally gets in on the phenomenon.

Dell has created a laptop that smells like a meth lab.

Really.

I suppose there is a market for that. But, to read the news story, it seems as if it wasn’t intentional. And, maybe it wasn’t. If any of the Breaking Bad series is to be believed, a lot of unintentional things happen when you get into the world of meth.

Bathtubs crashing through the floor. Heads on turtles. Dead in-laws. And, apparently, the stench will not only mess up a Winnebago, but it will also stink up your Dell Latitude 6430U.

Now, I’m not accusing a major computer manufacturer of dabbling in meth. Sure, they’ve had some financial worries of late. Now, they have a bunch of laptops they might have to recall.

They should have worked out a licensing deal with AMC and Vince Gilligan and have done a tie-in. But, they didn’t think about it in time.

Just goes to show you that drugs will make you stupid.

Having only recently upgraded to a newer iPhone that has Siri, I’m still getting used to it. Some stuff is great. Other times, it’s unexpected. And sometimes, it’s unexpected in an unexpected way (unexpected²).

I’m going to say it right up front: I don’t like spiders. They got too many eyes, too many legs, and I don’t trust them.

Spiders will attack you in all kinds of ways. They’ll crawl up in your ears at night when you try to sleep. They’ll hide in your shoes. And, I can’t prove this, but I think they’ll mess with your toothbrush when you’re not home.

You just can’t trust a spider.

And guess what they’re doing now? They’re setting off the airbags in your Toyota. Really:

Sometimes, their webs can create a blockage in a drainage tube coming from the air conditioning condenser. That can cause water to drip down onto an airbag control module, causing a short circuit. That, in turn, could cause the airbag warning light to light up on the dashboard and it could even cause the driver’s side airbag to deploy, something that happens with explosive force.

That’s right. Not only can you be driving down the road and a spider crawl out and jump on you, but the spider could cause your airbag to pop you in the face at 55 MPH. There’s no good outcome that.

Spiders are bad, and are now using technology against us. They need to check and see if the problems with the Obamacare Website are that there are spiders in it.

They also need to check the heads of the people that came up with Obamacare. I bet they’ve got spiders in there, too.

It would explain a lot.

Toyota is building a car that will drive itself. Now, they’re not the first ones to try this, but since they are a big player in the whole car building thing, it might actually be important.

They say it could be in production “in the mid-2010s.” That’s not far from now.

But… really? Do I want a car that drives itself? I’ve already got a lot of stuff that does stuff by itself.

Some years ago, I bought a TiVo. I was able to set it up to record shows that, a lot of times, I never watched. It also made suggestions. It would record shows based on other shows I watched, and they’d show up as “Suggestions.” That means the TiVo watched TV for me. It didn’t need me there to change the channel and watch a show.

I got a Gmail account and set up folders and categories. When I log on to Gmail, it’s already moved my emails around for me. Plus, since it’s through Google, a large billion-dollar company and the U.S. government have read my emails. So, I have an email account that reads my emails for me. I’m not even needed for that.

Now, they want to build a car that drives without me?

We’re getting closer and closer to the day that robots want to kill a humans and rule the world.

On the upside, it couldn’t be any worse than the Obamabots that are running things today.

Bill Gates says Ctrl-Alt-Del was a mistake. But it wasn’t his fault.

He was speaking at Harvard recently, and said that David Bradley, who designed the IBM PC, wouldn’t put a single logon button on the computer. Bradley had designed the three-button combination for rebooting the PC.

[YouTube]

Microsoft used the Ctrl-Alt-Del combination for logging in to the operating system. Gates says that was a mistake.

I’m thinking that’s not the only mistake Microsoft made along the way. I’m thinking Windows ME. And Windows Vista. And Windows 8. And…

Now, to be fair, Microsoft did some good things along the way. Without Microsoft, who knows what technology would be like. Heck, they saved Apple along the way, which makes Microsoft kinda responsible for iPods, iPhones, iPads, and that smug feeling Apple users exude.

Told you Microsoft was evil.