The Risk Factor

A report in the London Times says that the high cost of satellite launches are making communication companies "flinch" at investing in new satellites. New, larger satellites are required to handle the increasing volume of mobile traffic especially in Asia and India.

The report says that the new generation of communication satellites (which cost $650 million and up) weigh up to 8 tons, and only the Ariane 5 rocket is currently commercially available to carry the satellites up into high orbit. With a virtual stranglehold on the market, Ariane is demanding $120 million per launch.

There is concern that the high launch and development costs will begin to slow down the introduction of new or upgraded communication services. Satellite makers like at least two launch suppliers, and until there is a competitor to Ariane, they are reluctant to move ahead.

As explained in the report by Jean-Marie Robert, the head of telecom satellites at Thales Alenia Space, “The way this industry works is that we build the satellite and the buyer then chooses the launcher they want based on price and reliability. But we need at least two launchers to have a competitive industry and to avoid expensive launches."

The high costs involved may also force space insurance rates to rise, further increasing the reluctance of communication companies to send up new satellites. Insurance costs have been rising, and the recent loss of the $150 million AMC -14 satellite which was to deliver television services to the US won't help.

Supermarket chain Hannaford, which got hacked last December up until March of this year, has announced that it has increased the security of its credit cards. According to the Boston Globe, Hannaford "has started encrypting card numbers from the moment they are swiped at checkout counters. And it has tapped IBM to monitor security for its computer network around the clock.”

Hannaford’s CIO Bill Homa said that while the company had been compliant with the credit card industry’s Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI), “the standards were written mainly to secure data stored on retailers' internal computers and didn't anticipate that hackers might be able to intercept credit card numbers as they were transmitted to card processors for authorization.”

Homa said one problem his company faced was that it was “at the mercy” of software vendors to provide updated security improvements. Hannaford, he said, wanted to put new security measures in sooner, but was forced to wait on its vendors.

Hannaford still does know if it was an intruder or an insider who was responsible for the breach. The investigation is continuing.

The Washington Post said that LendingTree, an online mortgage broker with more than 20 million customers announced this week a privacy breach that exposed personal data such as income and job information on an undisclosed number of users to five Southern California home loan lenders. LendingTree generates leads for lenders who pay for information about prospective borrowers.

According to the Post, LendingTree “notified customers by letter last week that 'several former employees may have helped a handful of mortgage lenders gain access to LendingTree's customer information by sharing confidential passwords with the lenders.' ”

“Based on our investigation, we understand that these mortgage lenders used the password to access LendingTree's customer loan request forms, normally available only to LendingTree-approved lenders, to market loans to those customers.”

LendingTree’s loan request forms contained data such as name, address, e-mail address, telephone number and Social Security number. The loan forms were from October 2006 through early 2008, the letter said.

LendingTree said it did not believe any identity theft or fraudulent financial activity resulted but suggested that customers who were notified obtain a free credit report.

The US House approved by a vote of 414-to-1 the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act prohibiting discrimination by health insurers and employers based on a person's DNA. President Bush said he would sign it.

According to the New York Times, "the legislation prohibits health insurance companies from using genetic information to deny benefits or raise premiums for individual policies. (It is already illegal to exclude individuals from a group plan because of their genetic profile.) Employers who use genetic information to make decisions about hiring, firing or compensation could be fined as much as $300,000 for each violation."

The Times story also has some words of warning, as well: "The health insurance measure would not go into effect until a year after it becomes law, and the employment measure would take effect only after 18 months. Even then, there may be reason to be cautious. The bill may be hard to enforce, some experts say, and it does not address discrimination by long-term care insurers or life insurers."

It also notes another interesting implication, however: "For health insurers, the bill may avert the need to compete in a complex game of calibrating policies to an ever-changing set of genetic risk probabilities. But as genetic tests provide ever more information at lower costs, the entire notion of insuring against unknown risk that has long defined the industry may be upended."

It will be interesting to see how electronic health records, DNA information recorded within them, and the data mining of millions of health records come into play over the next two decades in regards to the future of medical insurance.

In a move it said was a "simple matter of transparency and democracy," the Italian Revenue Agency on Wednesday posted without warning the details of the total revenue, income tax paid and other personal information of Italian citizens in 2005, including those of politicians, soccer players and TV personalities. The move was to an attempt to expose tax evasion by Premier Romano Prodi's outgoing government. According to an Italian government report from 2007, the amount of unpaid tax in the country is equivalent to 7% of gross domestic product.

Within hours, Italy's Privacy Authority ordered the tax agency to suspend the posting, saying it presented "clear and serious problems" under the country's privacy rules. However, before the information was removed from the web, much of the information had already been captured and circulated via peer-to-peer file sharing websites.

The Italian tax payers' association is advising people to download forms from its website to help them claim 500 euros in damages each from the tax authority.

Think of the firestorm if something like that happened in the US.

There was an interesting little Associated Press story over the weekend about researchers at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts using a robot squirrel named appropriately "Rocky" to help "decode squirrels' communication techniques, social cues and survival instincts."

The researchers use a computer and a set of binoculars to control the home-made robotic squirrel as it infiltrates the local gray squirrel population. The squirrel is equipped with appropriate squirrel sound recordings to "speak" to the other squirrels in attempts to get their attention.

The researchers are trying to figure out whether squirrels "react more strongly to Rocky's noises or movements or a combination."

The story also mentions the use of fake lizards and sage grouse by researchers to gain more insights into animal behaviors.

What I would really like is a robo-hawk or owl to help keep the hyper-active squirrels around my house who think it is their house away.

It isn't an IT story, but I came across this article in the LA Times today about a light bulb in a Livermore, California firehouse station that is still working after 107 years. According to the story the light bulb has been on for almost 1 million hours, and the firemen dare not turn it off because they are afraid it won't come back on.

You can see the light bulb for yourself at www.centennialbulb.org.

I do wonder, though, how many software programs will still be running after a hundred years. Maybe some of the COBOL programs at the Social Security Administration?

Last week, it was reported that London Heathrow's Terminal 5 problems have greatly abated, but they haven't gone away, and may flare up again. British Airways (BA) Chief Executive Willie Walsh admitted at a conference at London's Institute of Directors that the baggage system was still not working properly.

BA ended the first quarter of 2008 with the most lost bags of any European airline (270,106 bags). BA lost 28.9 bags per 1,000 passengers, up from 22.4 bags per 1,000 passengers in the last quarter of 2007. The odds given for losing a bag on BA was said to be 1 in 34.

Walsh blamed the problems on Terminal 5's disastrous opening and the crash of its Boeing 777 at Heathrow in January. He also said another reason was because BA took baggage handlers from its other Heathrow Terminals (1, 3 and 4) over to Terminal 5 to train on the new baggage system there: "Staffing levels were lower than usual in Terminals 1, 3 and 4 because we were running test and training operations in Terminal 5."

In that case, the total number of lost bags attributed to Terminal 5 should be both the ones lost both during the chaotic opening, and those lost due to staff training. It's also too bad Walsh didn't tell all BA passengers that their bags were at higher risk of being lost during that training period, which started the previous September.

The problems of lost baggage has gotten so acute not only for BA but for other European airlines as well that the Association of European Airlines announced that it would be providing lost baggage statistics only on a half-yearly basis, not quarterly as it has always done before. It claims that this isn't to hide embarrassing bad news, but that people (i.e., the press) were giving too much significance to the numbers.

Right.

There is a report in the London Times that says UK banks are likely to start getting tough on customers who fall for phishing attacks. New rules to the Banking Code (these cover how banks must treat their customers) that came into effect last month state that “victims of online fraud must have up-to-date antivirus and antispyware software installed, plus a personal firewall, to claim redress from their banks,” the Times story says.

If a person fails to have the required safeguards in place, the banks can refuse any claim for a refund.

The onus is on the individual to prove that they have these safeguards in place at the time of the hack. I see a small boon to an enterprising company that develops a software program to keep a log of the total state of the security profile of a person's computer. The company could even suggest, for a small additional fee, to keep the log on its central system to prove to the banks that the profile wasn't tampered with in any way.

There is a problem, of course, in that a person's personal information may have been hacked months before it was used in an attack, but that is another story.

At least one of my banks has a similar "redress" policy. This bank makes it very clear every time you sign on that protection of the information that allows access to my accounts through its website is my responsibility, and that the bank will not be liable in any way if that information is used by an unauthorized third party due to my negligence.

How I can prove that some future unauthorized access wasn’t due to my negligence is not spelled out in any way (What, do I have to get the hackers to tell the bank where and how they got my information?), so I have started to stay away accessing my bank account information through this bank’s website. I suspect some bank customers in the UK faced with a similar dilemma may decide to do the same.

UK banks, like those in the US, want their customers to do more on-line banking to reduce their personnel and other overhead costs - I am going to be interested in seeing what happens if the banks start refusing to pay refund claims from hacked (off) customers.

The Washington Post ran a story over the weekend about Virginia's pilot program to teach students about safe Internet practices. Beginning this September, students in all grades will be taught about Internet safety. Virginia's program is the first in the nation that is mandated by law.

While I was aware of the program when it got signed into law in 2006, I kind of lost track of its status until the Post article. With two young children in Virginia public schools this fall, I will be interested in what they are taught and how much it sinks in. My older child has an occasional computer class, but she hasn't said anything about the program to me. Nor do I recall seeing any announcements from her school. When I quizzed her about whether her teachers had taught her about safe Internet practices, she didn't seem aware of any instruction being given in relation to the program itself.

This has made me curious about how effective the program will be, since the according to the Post story, "The state initiative calls for including parents. One chapter in a state resource book covers 'What Parents, Grandparents, and Caregivers Need to Know.' " The story does say that in some jurisdictions, there has been a move to get parents involved - I just don't know how widespread it is. It hasn't reached me yet.

I'll let you all know what transpires when the Fall school session starts. I think it is a good idea - the ultimate value, however, will be in its implementation.

Airbus is preparing its customers about a further delay to the Airbus 380 the London Times reports. The Times reports that Airbus is still having trouble with fitting the aircraft with the 311 miles of cabling it requires. For the last two years, Airbus has been rewiring 26 A380s that had cables installed incorrectly.

Boeing, which has seen its share of troubles lately on its 787 Dreamliner, announced this week that it should be able to hold to its revised April schedule.

The only possible monkey wrench is that Boeing's two largest unions, the International Association of Machinists' Seattle-based District 751 and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace are threatening to strike in September and December respectively. According to one report, the unions see that they have leverage over Boeing given the 787 delays, as well as the major future revenue the 787 promises.

Should be an interesting autumn for both Airbus and Boeing.

Last December, I wrote about the 219 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees disciplined for snooping into taxpayer records last year.

This week, the UK's HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) which suffered a major data breach last year, announced this week that it had disciplined 600 of its staff over the past three years for inappropriately accessing customer records. There were 238 people disciplined in 2005, 180 in 2006, and 192 in 2007.

I guess the temptation to peek is just too great for many people in these organizations.

Foxtel, a cable company in Australia made its customers very unhappy last week when it decided to send a software update to its cable boxes during prime time. Viewers claim they lost cable from 15 minutes to a half-hour, while Foxtel claimed that the outage only lasted five to eight minutes.

“Due to a system issue last night subscribers' service was temporarily affected by a software update," a Foxtel spokeswoman said.

“This meant subscribers may have needed to come out of standby mode on their set-top unit once the update finished to restore service. We apologise for any inconvenience.”

Of course, I suppose that every Foxtel subscriber should be able to recognize instantly that their cable went out due to a software update, and once the update was complete, that they needed to get their cable box out of standby mode to get their television back.

It would have been obvious to me.

Yeah, right.

Or should I say crikey?

I get bombarded with press releases, most of which don't interest me much, but I did receive an interesting one concerning new PC log on software from XID Technologies. According to the release, “Face LogOn Xpress uses a simple web camera to ensure the identity of the user by providing biometric verification in an automatic, continuous process, based on XID’s award winning face recognition technology. The new software uses XID’s Face Recognition artificial intelligence technology and learns each time a user enrolls his or her face, enabling Face LogOn Xpress to develop high accuracy in varied conditions.”

“Targeted to computer users seeking to control access to their machines by verifying identity while logging on in a simple and convenient way, Face LogOn Xpress can be customized to allow users to control the application’s sensitivity levels. This control ensures accurate face recognition to address different lighting conditions. Additionally, Face LogOn Xpress compensates for extreme conditions such as complete darkness by allowing users to access the PC through the use of a default password instead of the camera.”

There is a video of its use here, and there is a free 30-day trial of the software available.

I like the idea of having my face be my password. I don’t think too many people look like me (although I have been told I have a passing semblance to Richard Dreyfuss) and I generally remember what I look like each day. My only concern is that I look a lot different after a couple cups of coffee in the morning.

There is a story in ComputerWorld that according to posts to a Microsoft support forum Windows XP Service Pack 3 has been sending some PCs into an endless series of reboots. According to the story, the problem has been tentatively identified as being a problem involving only machines using processors from Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

As the story notes, "This isn't the first endless reboot problem Microsoft's faced in relation to a service pack recently. In February, the company pulled a Windows Vista SP1 prerequisite update from automatic delivery because it was crippling some machines."

I haven't had the reboot problem. Instead, I have had to try multiple times on my Intel-based machines to get SP3 loaded properly. One machine took three attempts, another five, and the third is at seven and still counting. I won't bore you with the details, but needless to say, it has been a barrel of fun trying to determine where the conflicts reside.

My admiration for Microsoft just continues to grows whenever I have to update its software - it really does.

It now appears that the baggage problems at London Heathrow’s Terminal 5 were caused in part to a bit of test software that wasn’t removed properly.

According to a story in ComputerWeekly, British Airways (BA) Chief Executive Willie Walsh claims that "the main IT problem with the baggage system was a software filter that was mistakenly left in place after the system - designed by BAA (the airport operator) - went live. Walsh said the filter was used during the testing period to ensure the messages generated were restricted to the BAA operation, and were not sent out further than that. But because it remained in place after the terminal opened, it interfered with the messages coming into the system, meaning the system could not recognise a number of bags.”

“One other IT problem at the terminal concerned server capacity. Walsh said the servers had not been able to cope with the ‘significant increases’ in the volume of bags going through. The amount of messages the servers were coping with was significantly more than the amount run on them during modelling, and more server capacity is still required.”

Willie Walsh also admitted in testimony reported in the London Guardian before the Commons Transport Committee that he had considered delaying the move to Terminal 5 right up until a few weeks before the opening because he knew things were very dicey, but decided to go ahead anyway.

In fact, Walsh said that he knew as far back as last September that “the building programme was not 100 percent complete” and would likely not be by the opening on 27 March.

But, given the costs of delaying for six months (the minimum time Walsh said was required), he decided to take a “calculated risk” to open anyway.

As a London Telegraph story put it, “The upshot was that a planned six-month testing period to familiarise 15,800 BA staff with the new terminal and iron out glitches in baggage and other systems, could not be completed as intended.”

Only 80% of the BA staff actually had the required training.

“‘My regret is we did compromise on our testing programme. But we did this with our eyes open. It was a calculated risk,’ Walsh said.”

Walsh also said, “If we did it again, we would do things differently.”

Well, he will get another chance soon when BA plans to complete its move to Terminal 5 later this year.

Walsh also tried to play the same "forgive me for my relative bad behavior" game my children play with me. Walsh referred to other baggage system problems at Denver, Hong Kong and Barcelona as excuses for why BA's problems should not be seen in a bad light. Of course, he didn’t mentioned that other airports, like Singapore's and Beijing’s were able to open their new terminals without problems.

Finally, there are now rumors that BA is looking to replace Walsh, especially now that the Terminal 5 fiasco has caused tens of thousands of passengers to avoid flying BA. Better late than never.

Yesterday, the UK Air Accident Investigations Branch (AAIB) released an interim report on the British Airways Boeing 777 that crashed at London Heathrow last January. The report indicates that the AAIB suspects that the plane's fuel flow became restricted somewhere between the engines and the fuel tanks, causing the plane's engines to become starved of fuel.

The report says, "The evidence to date indicates that both engines had low fuel pressure at the inlet to the HP pump. Restrictions in the fuel system between the aircraft fuel tanks and each of the engine HP pumps, resulting in reduced fuel flows, is suspected."

The report also says that the focus of the investigation "continues to be the fuel system of both the aircraft and the engines, in order to understand why neither engine responded to the demanded increase in power when all of the engine control functions operated normally."

One area of investigation is whether an area of very cold air through which the aircraft flew was a culprit, although the indications are that it should not have been a concern.

"During the flight there was a region of particularly cold air, with ambient temperatures as low as -76ºC, in the area between the Urals and Eastern Scandinavia. The Met Office described the temperature conditions during the flight as ‘unusually low compared to the average, but not exceptional’. The lowest total air temperature recorded during the flight was ‑45ºC, and the minimum recorded fuel temperature was -34ºC. The specified fuel freezing temperature for Jet A-1 is not above ‑47ºC; analysis of fuel samples taken after the accident showed the fuel onboard the aircraft complied with the Jet A-1 specification and had a measured fuel freezing temperature of -57ºC. The aircraft was operated within its certified flight envelope throughout the flight."

Discovering the reason(s) for the crash has proven much harder than anyone expected, given that the plane was much more intact than in most crash investigations. As one expert was quoted in a story in the Washington Post:

" 'This is a great mystery, and I never expected this accident to be this difficult to solve, given the state-of-art tools on the plane and the fact that the aircraft was largely intact,' said Bill Voss, president of the Flight Safety Foundation, an organization that advocates for improving aviation safety. 'This has potentially broad implications that go beyond this one airplane, depending on what they find.' "

I'll let you know what the final report says.

It is being reported that Chysler is expanding the recall of its Jeep Commander SUVs to repair engine stalling caused by a flaw in the automatic transmission software that could, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) "could cause a crash without warning."

In March, Chrysler recalled 1,338 of the 2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Commander SUVs to repair a stalling problem in the vehicles. The NHTSA reported at the time that the “the front control module may have been incorrectly manufactured. This could cause the engine to stall while driving or nor to start.”

This month, Chrysler expanded the recall to include 24,461 Jeep Commanders equipped with the 4.7 liter engine and built before 11 January 2006.

As a point of reference, GM expects its cars to have about 100 million lines of software in them by around 2010. Software reliability issues will undoubtedly increase in cars from sheer numbers if nothing else.

Having bought a new car in the past month, I sometimes feel that it is more computer network on wheels than anything else. I am still climbing the learning curve on how to operate all the gadgets in the car.

Car manufacturers, unfortunately, seem to have taken on the same attitude of many manufacturers in the computer and electronics space - make the operating instructions to their tech toys as confusing and contradictory as possible. Car manufacturers may claim in their automobile commercials that they are spending a lot on the human factors engineering side, but from a software systems perspective, I don't see much value being created for all the money being spent.

Kaiser Permanente announced Monday that all of its 8.7 million enrollees in nine states, including Hawaii, and the District of Columbia have access to HealthConnect, an outpatient electronic health record (EHR).

Kaiser said that its 13,000 physicians nationwide now have electronic access to patients' medical records across its 421 medical offices and clinics.

According to reports, the EHR system's deployment cost so far has been are now approximately $4 billion, including $1 billion for maintenance. Kaiser claims that HealthConnect is the world's largest private EHR system.

Kaiser still needs to finish up the inpatient (i.e., hospitalized patients) side of its EHR system, however. Kaiser said that 13 of its 36 hospitals (34 of them in California) have installed the EHR software, giving 3.2 million enrollees the advantages of an inpatient EHR system. Some 14 hospitals are scheduled to do so this year, including 13 in California and one in the Portland, Ore., metropolitan area.

The remaining nine hospitals, including the Moanalua clinic on Oahu, will follow in 2009 and early 2010.

According to Kaiser, "Physicians reported that, in many cases, electronic health records enabled them to identify and resolve patients' health issues in the first contact. One survey showed that, with the use of electronic health records, medication administration times and doses were more legible and correct (85 percent), and clinicians believed the electronic medication administration system provided a safer and more reliable communication tool (75 percent)."

It will be interesting to see if the Kaiser news will make it into the Presidential campaign, given that the candidates are touting health IT as a means to improve health care as well as reduce its costs.

You ever take a "sick day" when you weren't particularly sick, other than being sick of work?

Well, it might be harder in the future.

A story in the London Daily Mail tells of software beginning to be used in the UK to not only help uncover benefits fraud but now to detect those who are calling in sick but really aren't.

Using a technique called Voice Risk Analysis, the software "makes thousands of checks during a call and if it picks up changes in a caller's voice that suggest they are under pressure - as is likely if they are lying - it gives prompts to whoever is taking the call," according to the article.

"The technology means someone phoning in for a sickie will speak not to a sympathetic secretary but to a computer set up to check whether their voice is steady and reliable."

The technology created by Capita and Digilog UK, was piloted last year in Harrow, North-West London. The borough claimed it saved £420,000 in false benefit claims.

There is some (considerable) doubt about that claim and about whether voice risk analysis really works, but if employers perceive that it works to reduce absenteeism, expect the technology to spread.

Airbus announced as expected that it would be delaying delivery of some Airbus 380s. The company intends now to deliver 12 planes in 2008 instead of 13, and 21 planes in 2009 instead of 25. The company also said that it was planning to talk with customers about deliveries for 2010 — originally foreseen at 45 — in the next few weeks.

Airbus CEO Tom Enders said the switch from individual production of the planes to serial production caused two to three months delayed.

As explained in more detail in a story in today's ATW (Air Transport World), "The principal reason for this fourth program delay is that the company was unable to transition key personnel and resources quickly from the 'Wave 1' aircraft (those assembled during 'low rate individual production' following the wiring redesign) to those constructed in the 'full serial design and manufacturing process' or Wave 2."

" 'To build one aircraft in two years is one thing, but to double that, then double it again [proved problematic],' Enders said, explaining that expert engineers and 'certain processes' were required longer than anticipated in Wave 1, resulting in a 'knock-on effect' that slowed Wave 2."

"The dearth of qualified technical staff was a critical factor. 'We had to learn it the hard way,' Enders said. 'There was no way we could recruit skilled resources in the quantity we needed' to ramp up production as planned. There was 'a lack of qualified people for very demanding jobs,' he noted."

Enders declined to say when Airbus will meet its plan of delivering four A380s per month, a goal the plane maker had hoped to meet in 2010. However, he did say that he is confident that the company will be able to deliver between 30 and 40 A380 aircraft in 2010.

Some airlines, like the Emirates (which is the biggest customer and has ordered 58 A380s) has said that it will be severely hurt by the delays. How much it will ask for in compensation is undetermined at this time.

There are various news reports this week concerning a tiny reddish-brown ant by the name of paratrenicha species near pubens (or more commonly crazy rasberry ants) that has infested five counties of Houston. It turns out these ants like to eat electronic equipment.

As noted in a story in the London Times,

"Computers, burglar alarm systems, gas and electricity meters, iPods, telephone exchanges – all are considered food by the flea-sized ants, for reasons that have left scientists baffled."

They are now on the march towards Houston's Hobby Airport and NASA's Johnson Space Center.

The ants are so well-established now, they are likely impossible to fully eradicate. Worse, they are resistant to over-the-counter poisons. Furthermore, colonies apparently have multiple queens, so killing one doesn't do the job.

The ants apparently got to Houston via a cargo ship from the Caribbean about six years ago. Their only redeeming value is that they eat fire-ants.

There is a story here from ComputerWorld that talks about some of the damage to electronics they have caused.

I have written a few times about the declining enrollment computer science and engineering students in the US and Canada. Looks like Japan is having similar problems.

A story in the New York Times over the weekend about Japan running out of engineers. The article says:

"After years of fretting over coming shortages, the country is actually facing a dwindling number of young people entering engineering and technology-related fields. Universities call it 'rikei banare,' or 'flight from science.' The decline is growing so drastic that industry has begun advertising campaigns intended to make engineering look sexy and cool, and companies are slowly starting to import foreign workers, or sending jobs to where the engineers are, in Vietnam and India."

The story goes on, "But according to educators, executives and young Japanese themselves, the young here are behaving more like Americans: choosing better-paying fields like finance and medicine, or more purely creative careers, like the arts, rather than following their salaryman fathers into the unglamorous world of manufacturing."

Estimates are that Japan is short 500K engineers in its digital technology industries.

It is may be very hard for Japan to reverse the decline from just demographics factors alone.

A story in April appearing in the Japan Times says that Japan is facing a "labor shortage of 4.27 million people in 2025 on the back of the declining birthrate and mass retirement of baby boomers."

The story goes on, however, to say that the work of 3.5 million Japanese workers could be covered if advanced robots become popular. One estimate, for instance, is that robots "could take over about 970,000 jobs in medical and nursing care services."

That is assuming, of course, there are enough Japanese computer scientists and engineers still around to build and program the robots required.

Robotics is looking more and more like a good career field.

There was an AP story last week on the Army's "exoskeleton" robotic suit being developed by Sarcos Inc (now owned by Raytheon) that potentially will "multiply a person's strength and endurance as many as 20 times."

"Jack Obusek, a former colonel now with the Army’s Soldier Research Development and Engineering Center in the Boston suburb of Natick, foresees robot-suited soldiers unloading heavy ammunition boxes from helicopters, lugging hundreds of pounds of gear over rough terrain or even relying on the suit to make repairs to tanks that break down in inconvenient locations," according to the story.

The suit is still not practical: it is very expensive, and the suit’s battery life currently lasts only 30 minutes.

I got a little more insight into some of the military mission drivers behind this suit last week when I was at the third annual iRobot payload conference. Ellen Purdy, Director - Joint Ground Robotics Enterprise, US Department of Defense, gave the keynote address describing some of the robotic efforts the DoD is supporting.

In one example, Mrs. Purdy spoke about the problems involved in developing "robotic convoy" capabilities. It's one thing to say I want an autonomous convoy capability, it is quite another to implement it, she said. On top of the detailed technical issues of actually developing an autonomous vehicle, there are a number of mission issues that immediately arise as well.

For instance, how many vehicles does one designate autonomous versus being manned to ensure there is adequate security for the convoy? How far should each vehicle be separated from one another to maintain safety margins, especially if it is at night or in bad weather? Does every vehicle also need to be able to be driven manually if the convoy is attacked or if a vehicle breaks down?

The robotic suit comes into play in that, say you have an autonomous convoy showing up that has few if any soldiers accompanying it, who is going to unload it? A small number of soldiers, each wearing a suit, will be able to do the work of many more than otherwise would be needed for that task, Mrs. Purdy said.

What Mrs. Purdy pointed out was that each decision to use robots has other implications that are not always obvious and need to be thought through. As she remarked, "The Army doesn't know what it doesn't know about robots."

Over the week, I'll write up a bit more about what I heard at the conference, which for me not being a "robot guy," I found pretty interesting.