Is inappropriate. Don't be evil Google.

No. If you sold them for less than the cost of manufacture you would be a horizontally integrated Japanese manufacturer.

Key light?

Um, was anyone terrified that the fiber had been cut?

In order to presume that robotics will advance sufficiently in 11 years to support remote science labs - well he should at least have to take a control systems course.

Couldn't agree more.
Most electrical engineers won't hand etch antennas in their jobs - but it was useful for me to learn. And without a Prof right there to tell me how not to horribly burn myself with acid, well, lets just say it probably would not have been a pleasant learning experience.
And what exactly is his plan to replace this experience? Remote science labs? Is he (a psychology major) really making the prediction that robotics will be sufficiently advanced in 11 years that it will be possible for you to weld, and for me to etch an antenna? Then to get feedback from a Prof on how the final product functions in test?
I sort of hope he is right, but I seriously doubt it.

What did you study? CS? There are subjects for which lots and lots of very expensive equipment is necessary for experimentation. While the toolset for a CS major can be replicated at home, or provided through SSH at the very least - I don't see how I possibly could have gotten access to the equipment I needed in my undergraduate studies at home. Expensive lasers - tons of data acquisition hardware - Logic analyzers - a sweet Faraday cage, with even more data acquisition hardware to measure the output of antennas. To summarize: Lab Classes don't work over the internet. And Labs are a necessary - and very useful learning tool. To neglect the obvious necessity of Labs is simply dumb.

How can they call this thing a robot, if it has no power source or controller? It would appear to me to be a magnet, with some grippers applied.

I know I stay in shape by doing plenty of 12 ounce curls. - To Alcohol, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.

Net productivity gain was 9% for those who surf less than 20% of the time. So, still an improvement even if they surf > 8% and 20%.

Net Pain vs. Pleasure. Consider, the dairy cow felt really good while being milked to make the delicious butter I'm gonna slather over the crab. So overall it all works out.

Its about convenience not price. Yea, some folks are just thieves but there is still a market out there for a convenient app like this. At least for some of us it isn't so much the "i don't want to pay for a movie I may not like" as it is "I have no need for another DVD laying around, I have no need for previews of other movies, the FBI warning, and DRM. So I'll rationalize my theft by saying its about convenience." As for the 2.99, a one time fee conveniently offered over the app store might be worth the cost.

You must be new here. You see, we have actual problems but they might be hard to solve, so instead of considering real problems and solving them rationally we distract ourselves. And if absurd things like this aren't a good enough distraction I don't know what is.

Perhaps a bit off topic, but my sig:

Do you ever suspect that stories like this are out there - this, the whole adult swim guerrilla marketing fiasco, and so on- to get us to stop pandering to public idiocy and paranoia then when nobody is paranoid anymore they come for us?
Also, I need a new tinfoil hat, this one has lost its pizazz.