Mosquitoes are also excellent pollinators!

what does it take to put someone out of business? Isn't there a legal responsibility (in Australia and Canada at least) to shut this business down until they can prove they're no longer being criminally negligent and deceptive?

We're talking about "Autonomous" as in they're told to kill an enemy if found in a certain region, and then can be left to do that without further direction or oversight. What are you talking about?

Robots also do not feel mercy, and they never question orders - no matter how deranged.

Trees will grow canopy to cover your solar panel with shade though.

Also, have you seen the stats on spousal abuse and violent abuse between men and women? It's not the majority of the population but it's a very large percentage. I absolutely do believe it is normalised behaviour, and I don't see why you would have a problem with Microsoft doing their small part to counter the problem as it develops. Is it so important to you to be able to be rude and obnoxious to your feminine-voiced phone that you'd deny the opportunity in mitigating violent and anti-social behaviour in others? Are you really that selfish? Or do you need your phone as a verbal punching bag against all those women who upset you so much?

I'd say yours is the bugaboo with sexuality. It's the abuse part of sexual abuse that's the issue, and it starts with verbal abuse. And yeah, sounds like you do have anger problems, and you should find a way to cope with them nonviolently. What if you're, say, on a weeks camping and have no access to an avatar punchbag? You'll be screaming at everyone to "hold me back, I can't be held responsible!"

Obviously this has nothing to do with climate change science - it's an excuse for the government to justify the massive budget cuts they've forced on the CSIRO, an excuse the CSIRO are happily repeating as they know everyone will be outraged.

I'm shocked to see everyone so far who has posted has completely missed the point. This isn't about infringing your imaginary rights to be rude and abusive to inanimate objects. It's about discouraging abusive behaviour towards a simulacrum female in the hope that it will in turn discourage similar behaviour towards real women. This AI has no fear of being physically harmed, so can put abusive assholes in their place and teach them how to be decent people - unlike the real women in these peoples lives, who out of fear of being hurt or from being psychology "put in their place" by their abusive men may never speak out, reinforcing such appallingly behaviour. This AI has no such fears or ability to be browbeaten. Slashdot community, you greatly disappoint me.

You know how the UK PM was in thw press for making sweet love to a dead pig? Well...

Fat people in Australia don't go to the supermarket - they'll deliver for $8

All poisons are made of chemicals, as is your entire damn body. Whining about "chemicals" is just a way for blah blah blah blah blah.

When you've finished tearing your meat to shreds, why not add it to a chemical bath to leech out the nutrients while turning the remainder into shit? Smart people can just suck the juice of life up a straw from around the turds, while the morons out there can pretend they're enjoying their 'meals'.

5 crews of 7 astronauts have gone into space on repair missions, including the first mission to repair Hubble's faulty lenses that would have rendered it useless. Add to that the 5 astronauts that took Hubble into space in the first place and you have a total of 40 people in space. Some of those 40 may possibly be the same across 6 missions, I'll let you research that yourself.

Yeah imagine that: they'd have to actually ask the people who voted for them what they should do rather than just read a memo from Big Business Inc.