So when will we be able to swap out the ink cartridges in our home printers and print out our own robot? How close are we to being able to print out a robot on a flat sheet of paper, fold along the dotted lines and have it move under its own power?

"Such a capability is somewhat years away and it is difficult to predict how soon. Someone is going to be the first to make such robots and I am not sure if it is not already being investigated," Dr. Bar-Cohen said.

If under development, it is certainly being done behind closed doors and under a tight veil of secrecy to gain an edge on the competition.

And when printable robots do become available there will likely be an open source community to help you design and program your origami robot. Creating the design for the robot requires not only some knowledge of paper folding techniques but also the ability to engineer paper forms capable of locomotion once the power, control and drive elements are printed onto it. If the creation just lies on its back and moves its legs in the air, it is not much of a robot.

According to a statement today, Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie will immediately take the title chief software architect, working side by side with Gates. Chief Technical Officer Craig Mundie will immediately take the new title of chief research and strategy officer

Ballmer on whether he feels pressure to step down, based on shareholder discontent: "No, not at all. You've got the two biggest shareholders -- we don't own 50 percent of the company -- but you've got the two biggest shareholders in the room. And with everything we know about the company, two things are true. No. 1, we're steering the investments that the company is making, that people maybe were reacting to. And No. 2, we've been part of a board of directors that has put the company on a path to buy back stock. ... We bought stock at 25, 26, so obviously the board and Bill and I think it's a good price. So is the company in good shape and doing the right things? I think we'd say the answer to that question is yes."

From what we gather from a trail of liberally translated links is that this radio-controlled bot, which is being developed at Japan's Chuo University, uses 6 legs to propel itself across the water like the ones MIT and Carnegie Mellon have been developing for a while. The outer legs are made of buoyant resin to keep it afloat, while the middle legs provide the driving force. Eventually the developers are hoping it will be able to move flawlessly from the water onto land, making it a valuable tool for aquatic rescues, especially when equipped with a camera. Even if it never gets that far, the videos on the source link suggest it would make a pretty killer pool toy.

One year ago, Hank Gerbus had his hard drive replaced at a Best Buy store in Cincinnati. Six months ago, he received one of the most disturbing phone calls of his life.

"Mr. Gerbus," Gerbus recalls a stranger named Ed telling him. "I just bought your hard drive in Chicago."

Gerbus, a 77-year-old retiree, was alarmed. He knew the old hard drive was loaded with his personal information -- his Social Security number, account numbers and details of his retirement investments. But that's not all. The computer also included data on his wife, Roma, and their children and grandchildren, including some of their Social Security numbers.

In June 2005, when Gerbus took his computer to Best Buy for repairs after a hard drive crash, he knew the drive was a potential hot potato. So when a clerk there told him it had to be replaced, he asked for the damaged hardware back.

Picking our list wasn't exactly rocket science; it was more like group therapy. PC World staffers and contributors nominated their candidates and then gave each one the sniff test. We sought the worst of the worst--operating systems that operated badly, hardware that never should have left the factory, applications that spied on us and fed our data to shifty marketers, and products that left a legacy of poor performance and bad behavior.