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The Death of Aibo, the Birth of Softbank's Child-Robot

Posted by timothy on from the product-obsolescence-as-murder dept.

New submitter pubwvj writes: Sony is killing off their robot Aibo, stranding the 150,000 or so owners with no support, repairs or parts other than cannibalism. Now we have another Japanese company, SoftBank, releasing a robotic 'child.' Eventually, they too will discontinue the production of parts and support, beginning the process of killing off all those 'children' that are spawned. As robotics become (far) more advanced at what point will it be murder for a company to discontinue a product line?

5 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. it's murder, already by turkeydance · · Score: 5, Insightful

    reading this stuff.

  2. Never ? by PIBM · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's not even murder to kill a cow to eat it. It's not murder to euthanize your old and sick cat. It is not murder for a woman not to have childrens. Why could it be murder to NOT PRODUCE a robot, which is a even barely an assembly of plastic and metal pieces ?

  3. Seriously? by Gibgezr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That is one of the stupidest things I have ever heard. WTF is going on at Dice?

  4. The real question is... by biedenbach · · Score: 5, Informative

    Who murdered Slashdot? Between this and the divide by zero question, I weep for the death of intelligent discussion.

  5. Never by hduff · · Score: 5, Funny

    But I feel like I died a little reading crap like this on Slashdot.

    --
    "I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert