Blog Heap of Links for the day 2 April 2009

The government of South Korea is drawing up a code of ethics to prevent human abuse of robots—and vice versa.

When the main body of protesters arrived on Wednesday from four different directions at their planned destination of the Bank of England, they soon found themselves hemmed in from all sides by ranks of police. Requests to leave the area were refused. This is, in police terms, the "kettle".... There were certainly people anxious to smash windows and cause some mayhem in the City on Wednesday. But they were far outnumbered by a playful, peaceful, harmless group of protesters, including rappers, sax-players, jugglers, spliff-rollers, students, CND campaigners, passers-by, and men dressed as police officers and wearing blue lipstick. For many of them the intention had been to come and make a lunchtime April Fool's Day protest against the City and the banking world's self-indulgence, as well as to air concerns about everything from climate change to homelessness. But when many wanted to leave the area, hardly any were allowed to....

Riot police broke down the doors of two squats in East London yesterday as they hunted for those involved in the violence outside the Bank of England during Wednesday's protests. Police said that they had made 111 arrests so far... It emerged that the man who collapsed and died during the protest on Wednesday evening had been returning from work. Ian Tomlinson, 47, was not involved in the march.

Now comes news of a bot that doesn't need to bother with any human thought at all, thank you very much. It's a "robot scientist" that researchers believe to be the first machine to independently come up with new scientific findings

Now ADAM is the first robot—but maybe not the last—to have independently discovered new scientific information, according to scientists who recently built themselves the mechanical colleague. ... The robot eventually identified the genes that code for enzymes involved in yeast metabolism—a scientific first for a robot.

A full-length version of the movie "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," starring Hugh Jackman, appeared online Wednesday, a month before it is due in theaters. ... "I just am so disappointed with this movie," blog co-founder Chris Lemke wrote. "They seemed to have all the tools to make this work and instead decided to dumb it down and essentially make a cartoon. … After this one, I don't have much hope for the rest of the franchise. If you are set on watching this, good luck."

The FBI are investigating the online leak of an almost finished copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a month before the film's cinema release.