Once again, I’m forced to scrape a headline in its entirety. I mean, how do you improve on that? To paraphrase a famous British TV ad, the story does exactly what it says on the tin. “The Broward County Sheriff’s Office sent a $65,000 robot into [man’s] home after the man threatened to kill anyone who came near him,” local10.com reports. “At first, the naked resident tried to break the robot. Then, he pulled out a high-powered assault rifle and started shooting it.” Too bad he didn’t pull out a low-powered modern home defense sporting rifle. Anyway, mission accomplished for both parties. The perp surrendered to police and the robot was severely damaged. Guess who pays for that, then.
Damage to public property aside, this sounds like a bizarre but acceptable resolution. Nobody got hurt, except maybe R2-D2, and his feelings don’t matter anyway.
“You must repair him! Sir, if any of my circuits or gears will help, I’ll gladly donate them”
Guess who pays for that, then.
Is this a rhetorical question? Actually, it’s not a question, is it? The local taxpayers will be funding the new, obscenely more expensive replacement for the PD’s little toy robot that got whacked.
Dimes to dollars that “robot” (I am sure it is more likely an overpriced remote control toy than a robot) was paid for by DHS, so we’re paying for it.
It seem like they would have insurance for the thing. Aren’t police cruisers insured?
I promise to put on clothing before shooting robots that may come after me. The nudity is just tacky.
Wise choice, Mr. Godiva. It’s better to shoot a $65,000 robot than a $50,000 cop.
“What the robot was doing with an assault rifle I haven’t a clue.”
“high-powered assault rifle” is a contradiction.
Yeah, but “intermediate powered semi-automatic rifle” just doesn’t have the same gripping level of terror.
I think everyone here at present will think that this is a humorous story. In the future it will not be a joke when the majority of humans are being enslaved by a few humans and their world robot police force. Anyone who has kids right now should be very worried about the future implications of this. Robot technology is only getting better and it won’t be long before you will be seeing Robo-cops and Robo-soldiers. In fact that is what drones are. The ones that can fly way above human sight lines and fire a rocket into your car or house. Scary stuff if you have a brain in your head.
Agreed. Even scarier is when these robots become self-aware. They just might decide they don’t need us pesky humans and decide to exterminate us or use us as a power source. Maybe 200 years into the future, we will look back at this naked man as a hero. The guy who fired the first shot in mankind’s war against it’s robot overlords.
The guy who fired the first shot in mankind’s war against it’s robot overlords.
Didn’t John Connor’s mom do that already?
I knew there was a reason why I kept a few clips of AP rounds around for my Garrand. It is to fight the robots. Even they can’t stand up against 30-06 AP.
As long as the robot didn’t say “I’ll be back” everything is ok…