Yesterday a reporter for Channel 1 Russian TV News came to my workplace and interviewed us about the robot. The resulting article and video from the news broadcast were on their site today.

Here's the article in Russian

Here's a direct link to the video (Windows Media)

And here's the article text in English, as interpreted by Babel Fish:

In the hospitals of New York the nurse- robots appear

Southern Bronks - not most suitable to the form place for the laboratory of high technologies. Doctor trit, who arrives here each day on his motorcycle, also is not plotted in the stereotype of the professor of researcher. Meanwhile precisely it, precisely, here devised Penelopu.

This nurse- robot knows how to give and to assume surgical tools. Penelopa must replace in the operating room one of the nurses, whose responsibility - to issue to surgeon clamps, scalpels and tongs in the course of operation.

Doctor trit as the practicing surgeon is well familiar with the problem of the shortage of nurses. In THE USA because of this planned operations now and then even abolish.

Maykl trit, surgeon, the doctor of the medical and physical sciences: "we do not attempt to replace man, this is impossible. We want so that the robot would fulfill for the sister simple monotonic functions. But nurse with its long-standing period and formation can at this time pay attention to patient or render more complex and aid to surgeon ".

Doctor trit says that automatic hand - to surgeon, this as dishwasher machine - to cook. Penelopu developed three years. Now robot knows how to distinguish 12 tools, their number can be increased to 20- TI. Penelopa will recognize the commands, which the surgeon will give by voice, and the operating table and the tray of tools it follows with the aid of the electronic camera.

Mayk of Brady, the engineer-programmer: "the uniqueness Of penelopy in the fact that it - the first robot, capable of following the fact, as its environment changes and directly contacts with the people, but not with other machines".

For this very reason Penelopu they learned even and to the rules of a good tone.

- Thanks, Penelopa.

- if you please, doctor.

For control Of penelopoy it is sufficient processor as in the computer of noutbuk, and the average power of storage battery. For the first time robot they test on the man under the comfortable conditions of New York clinic already in the middle of March.

A minor gripe about the otherwise fine service Netflix provides. At some point a few months ago, I started noticing a new type of message in the web interface. If I look at my queue at a time when a movie has been received but the next one to be shipped has not yet been determined, one of my disc slots is empty, and in it is the message:

"We expect to ship your next available movie today." or
"We expect to ship your next available movie by [dayoftheweek]day." where dayoftheweek is always the current day.

It's a little strange to have those two different messages that are identical in meaning, but that I probably wouldn't notice on any site not as tightly implemented as Netflix's. The bigger problem by far is that every single time I've seen this message, probably 25 times at least, the movie has ended up shipping the next day instead. The message is always wrong, or rather its expectation is always let down. When I don't see this message (the next movie is already in the slot the first time I check), I get about 35% same-day shipping, 65% next-day lately.

There are two possible explanations for this. One is that they do have some algorithm generating expectations, and it just happens that it has always come up expecting the same thing for me, and always been wrong. The other (more likely) is that the expectation is always the same for everyone, and is based on the company's general policy of 'trying' to ship out the next movie the same day they receive the previous one. Either way, it's a terrible interface decision; I've become almost superstitious about seeing the message, since it seems to guarantee its own contradiction. It supports my strengthening belief that cute interface messages just don't get you very far, because even a naive user realizes when the machine says the same thing every time and learns to ignore what it says, and react to what actually happens when that message appears.

***

A feature suggestion for Netflix. I've heard at places like the Hacking Netflix blog that when they don't ship your next movie the same day they receive, it's because that disc is not at your closest shipping center. Although they could ship it from another location where it is available, they know that could easily take more than an extra day to get to you, and there's a chance (calculated by some algorithm) that the disc will appear at your local shipping center by the next day. So they make a bet and wait until the next day. If it comes into your local shipping center, they ship it from there, otherwise they give up and ship it from the further location.

Netflix also says they 'try' to ship the top available movie in your queue, but they may choose another one if their algorithms tell them to.

Personally I don't care that much about getting the top movie in my queue. I'll get them all sooner or later and pretty much any one would be fine with me (except in the case of series discs of linear tv shows, which they have a special algorithm to detect and not ruin). But it seems that Netflix is doing much better at shipping the top movie than shipping the same day they receive. Getting a movie other than my top one (except when the top one has a wait on it) has only happened to me once or twice in a little over a year. My user experience would be much improved if I could switch off, or even fuzzily adjust, the importance of having my top movie shipped, and thereby improve my chances of getting a movie shipped the same day.

And yes, I'm aware that this post is going to sound like so much gibberish to about a third of my already infinitesimal audience. Just be glad that I don't try to blog about programming.

I'm curious to know if anyone has some different experiences to add to this account, or can correct any misconceptions that I might have acquired about NF's internal workings.