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Vincent Padois, head tutor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University who teaches robotics and is babysitting the Paris ICub, makes a demonstration with ICub robot, a ?hybrid embodied cognitive system for a humanoid robot" about 1 metre (3.2 feet) high, at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris September 4, 2009. Six versions of ICub exist in laboratories across Europe, where scientists are painstakingly tweaking its electronic brain to make it capable of learning, just like a human child and hoping it will learn how to adapt its behaviour to changing circumstances, offering new insights into the development of human consciousness.   REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

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    Microsoft blames leap year for Zune glitch

    NEW YORK
    Thu Jan 1, 2009 11:51am EST
    Microsoft's Zune media player is shown in Redmond, Washington September 14, 2006. REUTERS/Robert Sorbo

    NEW YORK (Reuters) - A malfunction of some Microsoft Corp Zune music players was caused by an error in the way the device accounts for leap years, Microsoft said.

    Technology

    In a statement on the Zune website posted late on Wednesday, the company blamed "a bug in the internal clock driver related to the way the device handles a leap year," adding: "The issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009."

    The year 2008 had 366 days instead of the usual 365.

    Early on Wednesday, thousands of users found they could not use the 30-gigabyte Zune model, made in 2006. Microsoft called the issue "widespread," but said users could reconnect their players after 7 a.m. EST on Thursday.

    (Reporting by Nick Zieminski; Editing by James Dalgleish)



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