dog

Donald takes a break from his at-desk Occupy Wall Street protest to rant about the cellular monopoly and the disruptive potential of Republic Wireless.

And while we are fine with robot slugs that can rescue us from toxic rubble, we have to draw the line at robotic seeing-eye dogs. I mean, c'mon, there's no replacing man's best friend. Also, hipster 35mm film fetishists get a new way to spend $99, and Eric goes all Geek News on the latest Zelda game.

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The Uncharted series, which has quickly become the staple franchise of the PlayStation 3, has won over hard-core and casual gamers alike with its lighthearted action gameplay, witty characters, and amazing sense of adventure.

The third title in the series promises to up the ante even higher, so it's back to the jungle we go with our look at Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception.

Jeff:Nathan Drake has got to have the best and worst luck in the history of video game characters. But that's why Uncharted games are such a thrill to play. Each sequential title in the franchise puts Drake in a bigger mess than before, tasking players to find new ways to save his life over and over again.

Maybe more so than any other game out there, Uncharted 3 plays much more like a Hollywood blockbuster than it does a conventional video game. It's the first title you'd want to show off to nongamers, with the hope they would then realize all the fun they're missing out on.

Veterans and newcomers to the Uncharted series will get sucked right in, as the early hours of gameplay are much more varied than what's been presented in the past. Naughty Dog has also again raised the bar on dictating compelling narrative, as Uncharted 3 makes the characters even more relatable and likable than ever before. Plus, I'm not sure there's a better musical score in all of games. … Read more

This week, Donald and Eric consider the future of space, the dark side of romance, and the proper way to dispose of AT-AT excrement. Also, the Keyboard Cat toy plays us out, and in Geek News, Eric confesses his deep hatred of Orcs.

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The poo problem has vexed pet owners since the first wolf started hanging around early human encampments. Wouldn't it be sweet if that pile of pup waste just disappeared? A new invention promises to turn Fluffy's excrement into ashes.

The AshPoopie is the brainchild of scientist Oded Shoseyov from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is aiming to reduce the huge number of plastic bags full of poop that end up in the trash all over the world.

A built-in pooper scooper on the bottom picks up the offending material. It combines it with the contents of a replaceable cartridge and what looks like a set of rotating paddles. At this point, some patented incinerating magic happens and out comes sterile, odorless ash. It's a poop blaster!

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Meet AlphaDog--it's BigDog on steroids.

This is our first glimpse of the brother of Boston Dynamics' robotic beast of burden, BigDog.

The vid below shows a lab prototype of the quadruped war robot, aka the Legged Squad Support System, or LS3, funded by DARPA and the Marine Corps.

The donkey-sized machine is designed to carry up to 400 pounds of gear and follow troops over rough terrain on missions of 20 miles and up to 24 hours.

That's more than BigDog's payload of 340 pounds and 12 miles; as a general rule, horses can comfortably carry up to 240 pounds. AlphaDog will have some degree of autonomy like animals, using computer vision to follow a leader or automatically trotting to GPS way points. … Read more

Robots will play a greater role in fighting wars in the future, and BigDog wants a piece of that action.

BigDog is both the silliest and scariest military robot out there. The recent video below from creator Boston Dynamics provides a retrospective on the DARPA-funded quadruped, which is designed as a load-carrying mule for soldiers.

The vid shows six years of BigDog evolution from 2004 through 2010. The 240-pound, all-terrain cyber-canine can tackle slopes up to 35 degrees, rubble, snow, mud, and water, and can carry a 340-pound load. That's handy since the average soldier load has increased dramatically in recent years.

You can't hear it in the video, but it sounds like a go-kart because it runs on a one-cylinder Leopard go-kart engine.

Its sensors include stereo vision, GPS, a gyroscope, and LIDAR--you can kick it and it'll keep on trucking. The machine once set a record for traveling 12.8 miles without stopping or refueling. It can run at speeds up to 4 mph.

No doubt BigDog is impressive, even awesome in its relentlessness, but also ridiculous. Boston Dynamics once had fun "weaponizing" the brute, perhaps inspired by that jocular BigDog Beta video by a pair of spandex-clad parodists.

One serious follow-up to BigDog is the Legged Squad Support System (LS3), also designed to lighten the load for dismounted troops.

"That machine will carry 400 pounds of payload on 20-mile missions in rough terrain, where wheeled vehicles can't go," says Marc Raibert of Boston Dynamics. "We have a lab prototype that we will show soon, and expect the first field prototype ready in summer 2012."

And since Boston Dynamics is working on other animal robots for the military that could conceivably run as fast as 70 mph, it's hard not to wonder whether BigDog could have the last laugh and the joke will be on us. … Read more

Dog-walking services have graduated from flyers on poles to full-fledged serious businesses. The final coming-of-age moment is the arrival of Pet Check Technology, a suite that brings QR codes, mobile apps, and GPS to the dog-walking experience.

For dog-walking entrepreneurs, Pet Check includes online tools for scheduling clients, billing, and tracking dog-walking employees. That's all well and good, but it's a lot more fun when you look at it from the customer's standpoint.

Customers can look to see exactly when Fido was taken out on a jaunt, where he went, and what time he got back. That can help with scheduling when you need to be home from work. Completed walk reports are stored for future reference.… Read more

The internet's abuzz with Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility. Plus, the Droid Bionic gets upstaged by its successor and Ice Cream Sandwich leaks on this week's episode of Android Atlas Weekly.

News

Google to buy Motorola Mobility for $12.5B ]http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-20092362-94/google-to-buy-motorola-mobility-for-$12.5b/?tag=mncol;txt

Google: S&P Cuts Rating To Sell From Buy; Sees Risks In Deal http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2011/08/16/google-s-sees-risks-in-deal/

Will … Read more

An older version of a controversial Android app called "Dog Wars" has been modified to include a Trojan horse that takes actions without the device owner knowing it, according to security firm Symantec.

The app sends a text message to everyone in the contact list that says, "I take pleasure in hurting small animals, just thought you should know that," and signs United States-based devices up for a text alert service operated by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Irfan Asrar wrote in a post on the Symantec blog.

"We have no reason to believe that PETA had anything to do with this app, and that it is most likely the work of someone attempting to associate the app with PETA," he writes.

A PETA representative provided this statement when asked for comment: "We don't know who created this version of the app, but we think it is ingenious. When someone creates a game that glorifies animal abuse, you can bet that people will come up with clever, smart ways to take action against it." … Read more