US 'robot surge' deal re-inked after droid piracy fracas

So ...

They're really going to clean up Afghanistan?

Millions....

of the roombas falling from the sky. Tiny vacuum motors sucking up all the top soil and generally annoying the populous.

I for one welcome our robotic overlords.

*UNF*

And the war machine continues to rumble. I have always had issue with the homeland, bunkered generals sending the grunts into foreign lands/conflicts who, apart from the odd gun-licking freak, simply want to defend their -own- country's future (true enough of my brother at least, works on JC-130's and PC-3's in the RAAF, will protect our (Australia's) borders vehemently but is rightly scared shitless of being shipped off to Iraq or Afghanistan).

The exception is, and has always been in recent history, the US, who go in to protect their countries economic interests, and maybe quell the odd dissenter while they are at it so it looks all "Shock and Awe".

Seriously though.. "Shock and Awe".. How many cocks can one guy gargle at once I ask you..

Now we are going to be sending in robots. FFS people, we may as well drop the heads of the conflicting sides up in a booth at [insert gaming convention here], set them up on a death match of Quake and decide it that way. At least a world full of sprites can't be polluted by industry gearing up to build this tech, and the possibility of soil contamination when these things get the gubbins blown out of them and leak potentially hazardous hydraulic or battery fluids into the ground. A world full of sprites does not contain war orphans, blue flags, red flags (ok, capture the flag games aside..), displaced civilians and destroyed infrastructure, making the climb back to normality even harder for the country that just got its teeth kicked in.

And you can't tell me iRobot or any of the other startups have a room full of highly trained commando's (ala Ed's Donut Stop in Wayne's World) there simply to fire rounds off at their prototypes to see whats gunna happen. Already I'm seeing casualties at the clamps of poorly coded, untested in the environment machines going haywire. You can soak test as much as you want, but if the right gate in the right chip fails (redundancy aside) its gunna be skynet all over again.

And I'm not one of these luddite "droids = satan" types either, I'm an amateur mechanist (who has his own homebuilt roomba ^_^) who believes firmly in the positive role droids will play in our future, and hopes to be able to contribute once im trained enough. Droids of war though is a totally different thing. May as well send the meat in I say, at least they have the option of employing some humanity as the situation calls for it (and I say option, not obligation to their fellow man as it should be, see 6 unarmed, injured Iraqi men shot dead by the US in a mosque earlier in the year)

Pointless Robot Annihilation; It's what's for breakfast.

(No Lester reference today, I'm too disappointed. Comfort me Lester, comfort me all the way home)

Taliban reaction.

If you're a Taliban jihadi and the US drops several hundred heavily armed, search 'n destroy vacuum cleaners on your location what do you say?

"Oooh, that sucks".

Keep the coat, the speed I'll be running at I'll be warm enough thanks.

sounds like a hoax to me...

...but if it isn't, our boys on the Malabar Front will be facing IEDs (Improvised Enemy Droids) cobbled together from expensive hardware we have improvidently provided to the enemies we have improvidently provided to ourselves. 'Nuff said.