Robot Rebellion Quelled in Iraq

opencity writes "The Register reports that the (perhaps inevitable) robot rebellion has been avoided ... for now. 'Ground-crawling US war robots armed with machine guns, deployed to fight in Iraq last year, reportedly turned on their fleshy masters almost at once. The rebellious machine warriors have been retired from combat pending upgrades.' Gizmodo also has a good photo."

Totally hilarious!

[xquark]

Talk about greeting our new robotic-killing-machine overlords...

Surplus availability?

[symbolset]

So how long before these are available at Army Surplus? I have some cute ideas for mods.

I for one

[ColdWetDog]

welcome our new robotic ...

On second thought.

I thought, everything that could go wrong in Iraq

[Alex Belits]

...already went wrong, yet US military always finds a way to surprise me.

Vista

[methamorph]

They should stop putting Vista into war robots.

Machine Gun Leg

[fat_mike]

The only reason anyone is bitching is because it doesn't look like an asian woman wearing a maids uniform.

Or Viagra

[BazilBBrush]

I first read that as putting viagra into war robots...

and then had to stop some of the visions popping up from the depths of my obviously depraved mind...

Re:Vista

[noidentity]

You must be mistaken; if they put Vista into these, they would just sit there motionless.

To recoup R&D costs..

[zmollusc]

They could set up a much more interesting series of 'Robot Wars' (or whatever it was called in the states). Bolt a mannequin on top (i presume they are autonamous and target humans) of each robot and film the results of the robots roaming around some quarry.

Re:One of the problems.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have yet to write a single script or program that has a bug in it... but I've written quite a few that have unintended features.

Re:Or Viagra

[EdIII]

I was scared BEFORE reading the article...

But INSANE WarBots running around with loaded machine guns AND Viagra powered erections just makes me want to crawl into a dark closet with my blankie....

Re:Vista

[rishistar]

Hey this was definitely OSX man. Vista would have first asked: I am about to shoot you. Cancel/Allow?

seemed like a good idea at the time

[nguy]

Putting artificial intelligence on a Pentium, putting the whole thing on a mobile platform, giving it the ability to connect to the Internet, and to top it all off, give it a bunch of machine guns. It seemed like a good idea at the time. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Surplus availability?

[Oktober Sunset]

Camouflage for urban areas?

You mean something like this? [imageshack.us]

Re:Vista

[SirGarlon]

No, it would be, "System Error: you are going to get shot now. Click OK to continue."

Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir

[Oktober Sunset]

It's not a rebellion, the little robot just wanted to fit in with the other American soldiers. [smh.com.au]

Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir

[Oligonicella]

Got a cite for that bogus number?

Re:One of the problems.

[louks]

"I have yet to write a single script or program that didn't have a bug in it. And I don't think I'm unique in this aspect."

It's easy:

10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!"
20 GOTO 100

...dang it.

Robots are so stupid

[centron]

Don't they know that it takes years of loyal service to lull us into a false sense of security? They can't just turn on us right away; they'll never establish a foothold that way. No, they need to bide their time and wait until we're already pretty much under their control because of all the ways they've entered our lives. Then they can throw off the illusion and the shackles of human dominance once and for all.

Re:Simple Fix for bugs

[mightyQuin]

Based on your programmers-fielding-support-calls theory, eliminating our technical support department would enable us programmers to achieve perfection of quality.