Weedy Sea Dragons: Two Videos

"Ghostly 'dance of a sea dragon' "
Earth News, BBC (October 29, 2009)

"One of the most elegant courtship rituals in the animal kingdom has been captured on film by a BBC crew.

"The dance of the weedy sea dragon takes place every year in the shallow seas off the coast of Australia.

"During the ghostly dance, two beautifully odd-looking fish mirror each other's every movement...."

The article's text and two gives a bit of extra information about weedy and leafy sea dragons, and where the footage was taken.

The main attraction of this page is the video: 3:57 of narration and music over some quite good nature photography. I'd have preferred that more clues as to the size of the fish appear - but this is a good piece of nature documentary.

And Now, for Something Not Completely Different

"Weedy Sea Dragon"

thelning, YouTube (December 23, 2008)
video, 2:40

"The weird and wonderful weedy sea dragon. Filmed at Jervis bay, NSW, Australia 1986. You can see at the end of the video how well camouflaged the weedy sea dragon is, which makes it difficult to find them."

The YouTube video has no sound, and isn't as elegantly edited as the the BBC video. On the other hand, about halfway through you see a weedy sea dragon with a diver - which shows the size of these odd-looking creatures.

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A tip of the hat to therightblue, on Twitter, for the heads-up on the BBC article.

CEO In Trouble: For Attacking the Firm He Founded

"Former CEO charged with cyberattack on firm"
SFGate, San Francisco Chronicle (October 30, 2009)

"Khalid Shaikh, former CEO of YouSendIt, has been indicted by a grand jury on four counts of mail fraud after allegedly launching four denial-of-service (DOS) attacks against the company's servers, the U.S. Department of Justice said.

"Shaikh allegedly used the ApacheBench software program to launch the DOS attacks against YouSendIt's servers between December 2008 and June, the DOJ said in a press release...."

That's a little more in the news articles, and the FBI press release. If any of the fairly reliable sources online mentioned motive, I missed it. There's plenty of ideas about why Mr. Shaikh DOSed the company he founded - many, in my opinion, of the "round up the usual suspects" variety.

Me? I think Khalid Shaikh had a motive: that this wasn't something that he 'just happened to do.' But what that motive was, I haven't a clue. And, happily, I don't have anything to do with the situation.

I hope YouSendIt comes out of this okay: which they should, with the publicity they're getting. (Hey! There's a conspiracy theory: This was a publicity gimmick - and no, I don't really think so.) The PC World sketch of their service, oversize email attachments, indicates that they were serving a specialized - and moderately uncommon - service.

In the news:

• "Ex- CEO Charged in Denial of Service Attack"
  PC World (October 31, 2009)
  • A little more background on YouSendIt

Background:

• "Former CEO of YouSendIt Charged with Denial of Service of Attack"
  Department of Justice Press Release, Federal Bureau of Investigation San Francisco (October 29, 2009)

Dual-Arm Power Amplification Robot - This Power Loader is Real

"Alien film inspires robot"
Courier Mail via news.com.au (October 30, 2009)

"engineers have taken us one step closer to the robot revolution by developing a machine inspired by the movie Aliens. ["Aliens" (1986)]

"The Dual-Arm Power Amplification Robot gives users superhuman strength and resembles the hydraulic exoskeleton ... in the climactic scene of the sci-fi classic.

"The robot is being developed for disaster relief situations and can lift more than 100kg.

"However it weighs 230kg – heavy enough to crush the average human without support...."

The DAPA "robot" isn't so much a robot as a waldo - a machine where every movement is controlled by a human being.

"...The robot, dubbed the "Power Loader" after its Hollywood counterpart, uses 18 electromagnetic motors with direct force feedback that allow the human operator to control its behaviour.

" 'Most robot researchers think that robots should move as automatically as possible with very little human instruction,' Mr Shirogauchi said.

" 'What we are developing is a robot which moves only when an instruction is given from a human and moves exactly according to that instruction.'..."

"Power Loader"

pinktentacle3, YouTube (September 30, 2009)
video, 2:09

DAPA looks like it could be very useful in emergencies: and be as useful as Jaws of Life and other hydraulic rescue tools. And, as the technology improves, something like DAPA could take the place of skid loaders.

At this point, having a human being in direct control of this sort of machine makes sense. On the other hand, particularly considering what happened on Flight 188, it may be time to re-think the idea that humans are the best, most reliable, operators for machinery. (October 23, 2009)

Related posts:

• "Northwest Flight 188: Distracted by a Laptop?!"
  (October 26, 2009)
• "Northwest Flight 188 Overshoots MSP - Time to Reconsider Humans on Flight Crews?"
  (October 23, 2009)

More:

• Dual-Arm Power amplification Robot
  panasonic.co.jp
• "Japanese Building Robot from 'Aliens' Movie"
  FOXNews (October 30, 2009)