Seriously, what is the point in developing a robot that looks like a human?
Most everything in the real world is made for ease-of-use by bipedal humans. By building a robot which is bipedal and about the same size as a human (all right, a large human), the robot can without modification use most tools or devices intended for humans.
Yeah, there are better ways of (for example) interfacing with a computer than by building a machine which can sit in my office chair and type like hell! But imagine a robot which can operate earth-moving machinery (a bulldozer, not a shovel) or drive a delivery van or stack crates or park cars... And now imagine having one machine which can switch between these various tasks as the need arises.
To me, this first humanoid robot is like the first general-purpose electronic computer. It's an evolutionary step.
"It's been a long time,
getting from there to here..."
I fear that you may be judging Microsoft a little harshly (and on/. too!).
Bill Gates'/Microsoft's early vision statement was along the lines of "A Computer on every desk...", albeit his vision was of every computer running Microsoft software. I do think that Microsoft and Intel and IBM did drive the world to the point where almost everyone has a (mostly identical) computer. And not everyone felt that way back then; I'm an ex-DECcie (well, isn't everyone) and DEC totally missed the impact of the commodity computer.
So now there are a lot more people out there who have the means and motivation to work on open source. Did Microsoft invent open source? No, of course not, but they sure made it easier.
Bzzt!
Battle Beyond The Stars was a science-fiction version of Magnificent Seven which was a Western version of Seven Samurai. Galaxy Quest was a humorous look at the Star Trek Religion; I'm not sure I buy your assertion that it was based on Samurai, especially as there were six principlal characters!
On the other hand, I have to admire your taste in movies...
Avid (the video editing and storage folk) make a neat storage array, which can hold up to 8TB in one 39U rack (I know, that's only about a day/day and a half, but you can have a room full of these racks).
Avid MediaArray
That's more or less what we do here. Each of our developers has admin rights on their own machine (not including OS upgrades), with the "you screw it up, you fix it" support agreement. Our source control system, critical apps, intellectual property, bug-tracking system and stuff like that are kept on servers to which the average developer has no admin rights. And only IT can add new machines to the domain/change domain properties for machines.
It works quite well. There's a good mix of tools (shareware, freeware, commercial) and we can usually try things which might make our lives more useful.
The only things IT mandate are that we keep the Virus Protection up to date, and lock the screen/log off when we go home at night.
Propose this model to your IT folk -- it works, it's less trouble for most people, and you can weed out the troublesome alleged l33t developers who can't keep a system running without help!
Slashdot Mirror
Most everything in the real world is made for ease-of-use by bipedal humans. By building a robot which is bipedal and about the same size as a human (all right, a large human), the robot can without modification use most tools or devices intended for humans.
Yeah, there are better ways of (for example) interfacing with a computer than by building a machine which can sit in my office chair and type like hell! But imagine a robot which can operate earth-moving machinery (a bulldozer, not a shovel) or drive a delivery van or stack crates or park cars... And now imagine having one machine which can switch between these various tasks as the need arises.
To me, this first humanoid robot is like the first general-purpose electronic computer. It's an evolutionary step.
"It's been a long time,
getting from there to here..."
Bill Gates'/Microsoft's early vision statement was along the lines of "A Computer on every desk...", albeit his vision was of every computer running Microsoft software. I do think that Microsoft and Intel and IBM did drive the world to the point where almost everyone has a (mostly identical) computer. And not everyone felt that way back then; I'm an ex-DECcie (well, isn't everyone) and DEC totally missed the impact of the commodity computer.
So now there are a lot more people out there who have the means and motivation to work on open source. Did Microsoft invent open source? No, of course not, but they sure made it easier.
A "ute" is a utility vehicle, which is the UV part of SUV. So a "farm ute" is the sort of utility vehicle (4x4) that one would find a farmer driving.
A "dunny" is a toilet.
Battle Beyond The Stars was a science-fiction version of Magnificent Seven which was a Western version of Seven Samurai. Galaxy Quest was a humorous look at the Star Trek Religion; I'm not sure I buy your assertion that it was based on Samurai, especially as there were six principlal characters!
On the other hand, I have to admire your taste in movies...
Avid (the video editing and storage folk) make a neat storage array, which can hold up to 8TB in one 39U rack (I know, that's only about a day/day and a half, but you can have a room full of these racks).
Avid MediaArray
Our source control system, critical apps, intellectual property, bug-tracking system and stuff like that are kept on servers to which the average developer has no admin rights. And only IT can add new machines to the domain/change domain properties for machines.
It works quite well. There's a good mix of tools (shareware, freeware, commercial) and we can usually try things which might make our lives more useful.
The only things IT mandate are that we keep the Virus Protection up to date, and lock the screen/log off when we go home at night.
Propose this model to your IT folk -- it works, it's less trouble for most people, and you can weed out the troublesome alleged l33t developers who can't keep a system running without help!