Robot Eats Flies to Generate Power 410
ms47 writes "Interesting little story over at MSNBC today about 'robots that can be sent into dangerous or inhospitable areas to carry our remote industrial or military monitoring of, say, temperature or toxic gas concentrations.' The neat part is it's powered by 'catching flies and digesting them in special fuel cells.'"
It's not possible. (Score:1, Insightful)
Killing Robots (Score:5, Insightful)
But seriously, I don't like this. Just because some animals are too weak to defend themselves, doesn't give us the right to kill them. Nor does it give us the right to build a robot that kills them. It's not like that robot couldn't be powered by other means.
I wonder if it could eat other bugs.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Killing Robots (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't have the rights to kill animals...
We don't have the rights to kill plants...
Oops, I just killed some tiny single-celled organism by breathing!
Oh no; I'm no longer sick. I must have killed the virus/bacteria trying to kill me!
I should just kill myself and get it over with.
.
.
.
Do I have the rights to do that?
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Please realize that rights are the sole domain of humans.
Re:They're called, "Flowers" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Killing Robots (Score:3, Insightful)
Humans are just very intelligent animals, and the fly-eating robot is just a (very abstracted) result of our drive to stay alive.
Re:Wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything has its place in the chain
Re:seems like... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:They're called, "Flowers" (Score:3, Insightful)
Wait a minute here... (Score:5, Insightful)
If there is a major chemical weapons attack on a major population center there will be a lot of dead people. Where there are lots of dead people there are flies. Hence, the need for a robot that can sustain it's power needs with a fuel source available both day and night...Nothing to see here. Move along.
Re:Killing Robots (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree that just living will cause all sort of small organisms to die without us ever intentially causing this, but I do believe it is justified. However killing these flies is both intential and seemingly without a well justified reason.
If any of you people are really thinkers I would urge you consider why you don't torture dogs or other small mammals. If it is to do with empathy and the fact that these small mammals are seemingly capable of experiencing severe suffering and pain, consider that even flies may be capable of not too dissimilar sensations.
Sue, sue, sue (Score:2, Insightful)
After all, it's not mandatory to eat fast food, and if these people have stuffed themselves silly on a diet of mostly fast food, their lack of a sound diet has maintained/increased their girth, not Ronald McDonald.
Either that or the fat people suing them should be sued for ignorance. I mean, if you digest fat, what do you think happens to it? Does the fat fairy come along and take it away? Maybe the education system should be reviewed. Maybe the US Government should sue these people for giving the US a bad image, making people think that Americans are simpletons.
It's funny how Americans can successfully sue anybody for just about anything, yet Microsoft always gets away unscathed.
Maybe somebody will announce that the use of Microsoft software has made them obese? That would probably have more success.
Re:Sue, sue, sue (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not exactly unreasonable to assume that a place which sells food would have caloric content decent enough that one could reasonably eat said food and hope to either maintain a weight or gain very slowly.
Instead, Mcdonalds' portions have absolutely UNREASONABLE amounts of calories for the amount of food given, ie. I could make a standard hamburger at home which would have larger, more filling portions, for fewer calories. In fact, for a hamburger and fries made at home, served with some sort of drink, the difference is night and day.
A supersized "big hamburger meal"(whatever the biggest one is these days) contains enough calories for an entire day, with negligible nutritional value, and they try to fill you up on soda water to mask the fact that the food just isn't very filling. A plate of french fries and a reasonably sized hamburger cooked up using pre-made stuff from the local supermarket has far fewer calories, far more nutritional value, will fill you up more, and won't leave you hungry an hour later.
To be honest though, even though Mcdonalds food has way too many calories and it's portions are absolutely too large for any human to reasonably need to consume, I'd say the makers of "low carb ice cream" and such are in for a far greater fall. IIRC, the atkins diet requires carb levels of fewer than 20 grams each day, and much of this "low carb" junk food exceeds that with only one or two servings. All things considered, they are false advertising more, where McDonalds never explicitly implies that their food is actually supposed to be consumed.
But in a toxic cloud... (Score:1, Insightful)
I, for one, welcome our new carnivorous aluminum-clad overlords.
Dieselsweeties.com has the advanced version (Score:2, Insightful)
Weird, huh.