"If you locked 1,000 code monkeys in a room with Teletypes, could they pump out some Shakespeare?"

So, what you're saying is, I play guitar because all humans have an instinctual impulse to play guitar?

Because that doesn't really make sense.

Which kind of blows a gigantic hole in the "when robots do all the work we'll all just be artists" theory.

Unfortunately, by your definition I don't believe that there *are* any civilized nations. It's not that I disagree with you, exactly. But I believe that your idealized definition of civilized doesn't map to any country in the world either at the present time or at any previous time.

Plenty of excuses, but sorry, if we're using English "kill the messenger" essentially means to act in such a way as to discourage others with the same (or sufficiently similar) message.

You may use the excuses to claim that the intent was other than "killing the messenger", but not to argue that that isn't what they did. To argue that that isn't what they did you would (probably) need to show that their action did not serve to discourage others with similar communications.

OTOH, perhaps in Spanish the phrase would be taken literally, as it once was in English. But in modern English "kill" has many figurative uses, such as "kill the spotlight" (though I think that's now more commonly "strike the spot", which also doesn't involve hitting the light).

Realistically, yes, I'd call the cops quickly if someone was buzzing the crowd unsafely with a quadcopter. And cops are not totally incompetent - it's usually not that hard to spot an R/C operator (presuming the operator is flying within line-of-sight.)

But if the opportunity presented itself, I'd probably throw a jacket or other object at the stupid thing, and if by some random chance it actually came down, I'd probably stomp the shit out of it. I have no tolerance or respect for people threatening my safety with their stupidity.

Apparently you've never been to the Uptown Art Fair. A fishing net and a long pole would barely make the top third of the "weird shit you'll see in Uptown" list. :-)

No, I don't have to learn any of the skills, at all, and I don't want to. I don't want to spend days or hours or even minutes learning the finer points of pit BBQ, and that's the entire point of buying this robot. I don't have to learn when to turn up the heat or turn it down, I don't have to know how much wood to put in or when. I don't have to check on the condition of the product. I simply give my charge card to Williams-Sonoma, haul the BBQbot home and plug it in, add meat and wood, and get delicious brisket out the other end. Every. Single. Time. I wasted zero of my time learning how to barbeque brisket - I just enjoy the results of other people's learnings. If the robot fails, I drag it back to Williams-Sonoma and ask them to service it. It would be no different than any other tool that I own that I don't fix myself.

I don't understand your preoccupation with fear of breakdowns of systems. I know that some days, despite scheduled maintenance, my truck will breakdown in some way I can't fix and that I'll have to have to deal with a problem. Fear of the inevitable breakdown doesn't mean I sell my truck today and walk to work. It means that I understand the truck can break, and that some days I'll have to call for a tow. Similarly if the BBQbot fails in my restaurant, I tell the servers to 86 the brisket, and we sell grilled chicken until the replacement robot arrives.

As a business owner, why would I buy a BBQbot instead of hiring a pit master? Because the robot costs me $20,000, and it stays in the kitchen 24x7x365. A pit master has weekends, takes vacations, calls in sick (or doesn't call in at all), and costs me $60,000 every year. I'd be far more worried about hiring a temperamental person that could quit and cripple the menu on a busy night. And if I discovered I was that utterly dependent on the robot, I'd simply buy two of them.

Every business risks breakdowns of all kinds of complex systems every day: plumbing, fires, melted freezers, employees quitting, roof collapses, electrical problems, labor problems, yet most manage to stay in business even through disasters. Why? Because they know how to adapt to problems, and because taking the risks yields far more reward than doing nothing; instead of sitting there paralyzed by the fear that something might go wrong.

Through lifelong dedication, a craftsman can align a car with a string, or smoke BBQ in a trash can, or whatever it is he or she does. But their activity doesn't scale beyond what they can personally produce. And if they end up smoking 100 pounds of meat per day to run their restaurant, that's it. There's little time left in the day to innovate. Craftsmen don't scale well, unless they industrialize their processes, (and then you risk ending up with a product with all the qualities of Budweiser.).

The rest of us are dedicated to other things: jobs, families, other hobbies. Does our inexperience mean we can't enjoy products of similar quality as the craftsmen produce? What's wrong with distilling the essence of their wisdom into a PID controller and an Atmel chip? If my BBQ-bot fails, I'm certainly not going to fix it with string - but that's not the point. The point is I could occasionally enjoy a high quality smoked brisket, thanks to a machine that knows more than I do about the process.

It was obvious. I appologize for being nitpicky.

The posting specifically mentions a 4kg model flying 15 feet over a crowd. That's not a "toy" sized device, that's an untethered Cuisinart.

How about handing a friend a video camera, and you with a fishing net on a long pole. Show it flying unsafely, take it down on video, and hand the footage to the cops telling them you feared for your family's safety.

I don't think Prenda Law holds any copyrights. The interesting question is whether they had permission to publish the things they published.

Why not? Suing them seems totally appropriate unless they are making adequate pre-purchase disclosure, and ensuring that the prospective purchaser is aware of the characteristics of the thing they are purchasing.

Disagree? Re-read Adam Smith.

Yes, but remember, in those days "Cookie Monster" was a typical virus. And internet communities were relatively homogenous.

There are, there must be, limits to free speech. Shouting down someone else doesn't count as free speech. At most it's a reasonable reaction to their stifling of your own speech.

In this case it appears (as an outside observer) that this is the silencing of an honest, truthful, and respected voice. If she is an employee of Rededit, then I suppose that is their right, but the proper response is to refuse to deal with or support Rededit in any way. Which is what this protest appears to be doing.