News Don’t Expect Any Mercy During the Great Robot Wars
posted by on March 20 at 15:46 PM
An elderly man has killed himself by programming a robot to shoot him in the head after building the machine from plans downloaded from the internet.Francis Tovey, 81, who lived alone in Burleigh Heads on the Australian Gold Coast, was found dead in his driveway.
Notes left by Mr Tovey — who was born in England — revealed that he had scoured the internet for plans before constructing his complex machine, which involved a jigsaw power tool and was connected to a .22 semi-automatic pistol loaded with four bullets. It could fire multiple shots once triggered remotely.
At 7am on Tuesday he set the robot up in the driveway of his £450,000 house and activated it.
His notes suggested that Mr Tovey chose to kill himself in the driveway because he knew there were workmen building a new house next door who would find his body.
Is duct-taping a bunch of shit together really the same as building a robot?
Hey. it got the job done, didn't it?
huevos= do it yourself.
and no, its not a robot in the traditional sense, by any means.
I thought killing its creator is what makes it a robot. Isn't that what a robot is or am I thinking of an android?
Rise of the suicide machines.
That violates the first of the Three laws of robotics
I was expecting this to be another Big Dog story.
I've been hoping all day that someone would post the story about the handyman (from Arkansas?) who had "GIT R DONE" tattooed on his forehead. His wife thinks he's crazy - go figure. (And no, I don't have a link for you; sorry.)
no, but KILLER ROBOTS makes better headlines than : Suicidal Man duct-tapes a gun to a bunch of other metal shit
@7 um they fucking posted that yesterday. http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/03/remember_this_guy
If he'd "scoured the internet" a little harder, he would have had the balls to go with the Cadbury Surprise:
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=manly_suicide
How on earth does an 81 year old man know how to use the internet?
You gotta admit, the dude had style.
Sorry, @9, even I don't read EVERYTHING here.
@3, it's android that you're thinking of.
I'm totally offended that people would call that a robot. It belittles my entire, still-almost-completely-useless field of study!
@10: I felt like the author started off strong, but then couldn't maintain the zany energy. Though the Cadbury Surprise was good.
Rube Goldberg would be proud.
Oh great, now that they've got a taste for blood, we might as well just hand things over to them as of today.
Come to think of it, they probably couldn't do a WORSE job of mucking things up than some of the humans currently in charge.
@5 - yeah, but since Arthur C. Clarke died, the robot decided what the heck ...
Hal?
Shout out to Sealab 2021 from the headline!
My favorite episode, too!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealab_2021
"Is duct-taping a bunch of shit together really the same as building a robot?"
No.
This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.
(Even funnier though, they said he programmed it).
.
bring on the robot hoard.
fucking html if you didn't pay my bills i would hate you.
i'm prepared.
Not as funny as the 14 year old boy who built a blowjob robot out of a circular saw and a bench grinder.
@21 - I'm right there with you. Best episode by far (although I do like the one with Bucket Head Wendy).
I have the strength of a bear that has the strength of two bears.
It's not a killer robot if it can't hunt you down....
Whomever predicted the robots would enslave us all was clearly being far too optimistic.
Also, I for one welcome our killer robot overlords. Or else.
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