Microsoft Robots

I read in the paper yesterday that Microsoft is teaming with Carnegie Mellon University to make robots more available to people and businesses. They want to create robots that can be controlled by various types of software and the internet.

These are the people who brought us Windows Me.

Speaking under conditions of anonymity, somebody told me that "these are basically sophisticated domestic appliances. But, like the rest of the computerized world -- they don't do Windows."

"We plan for them to be able to carry out a broad range of servile functions. They will have an Hispanic operating system and will understand very few English commands. Our biggest fear is unlicensed copies of the software installed in cheap clones. We don't think America is ready for that many unregistered workers."

"It is our hope that they will be able to cook, do the laundry, shop, drive, do the yard work, and change diapers and condoms with equal facility. Some people have claimed a racist agenda in this project but I assure you the Democrats will never be able to get the vote for these devices."

"We are also aware that other vendors will become interested in marketing their own robots, so we are cleverly loading these babies with unnecessary and gratuitous functions in order to cover all the bases. Our copyrights will require that these other vendors pay us licensing fees and to make them load our operating system on their robots."

"Additionally, we have decided to pre-load a complete suite of spyware and, since these robots will operate in domestic settings, we should have a lot of personal information to sell to the highest bidder. We will also pre-program sluggish behavior and random shut downs, making virus attackers feel redundant and silly. We've thought of everything."

"But just in case the robots stop responding altogether, we've installed a set of ctrl-alt-del buttons on their foreheads. We think it is funnier to make people press three buttons simultaneously when any moron could have installed one reset button."

I asked him about some science fiction books I read years ago about robots going berserk and did they have a contingency plan for that.

"Of course," he replied. "If you ever need to shut the robot off, all you have to do is hit the START button."