NEWSPAPER ARTICLES : ASSORTMENT OF ROBOT RELATED TOPICS

[MAGNUS]

This is an article that appeared in my local newspaper.

Electronic servants will be everywhere soon : inventor

The chief executive of a Toronto-area company says it is only a matter of time before we see a robot revolution that could rival the automotive or personal computer industries.

"Our vision is to create a robot that serves human beings," Haipeng Xie, CEO of Markham-based Dr. Robot Inc. told Metro.

Xie foresees robots like some depicted in the Hollywood film I, Robot, which could conduct basic taskssuch as functioning as a personal assistant, entertaining people, acting as a personal companion for the elderly and doing simple household chores such as vacuuming.

Xie's company makes a walking, humanoid robot that he says can perform many of the tasks he describes, and a model that resembles a stripped down version of R2-D2 from the Star Wars movies.

He says his creations are just part of a coming consumer boom that will eventually make the machines as commonplace as a household computer, says Xie. He's not alone in his belief.

An October 2004 report by the United Nations Economic Commission in Europe shows that by the end of 2003, some 1.3 million personal and domestic robots worth $1.35 billion US were in use around the world. The UNECE projects that by the end of 2007, over 6.6 million more of the robots will be sold to a $6.8 billion market.

U.K. market research firm Future Horizons went even further in its June 2004 report, projecting that by 2010, some 55.5 million robots will form the basis of a worldwide $59.3 billion market.

But we need not worry about the popular science fiction scenario of robots becoming smarter than humans and taking over the world says Parham Aarabi, director of the Artificial Perception Laboratory at the University of Toronto.

"Intelligent robots whose intelligence as well as ambitions could pose a danger require a level of programming sophistication ... we are definitely not close to," he says, adding that even the physical abilities of robots depicted in films is " substantially beyond anything we will have in the near future."

MAGNUS

[MAGNUS]

Here is a magazine article from Loaded : Big Book of Girls from 2002

Factory Recall Notice : Woman

The Human Evolutionary Company(R) would like to issue the following Recall Notice for all models of their famous Woman(TM) product for those units manufactured between 1965 and 1985.

Purchasers should return their Woman(TM) to its point of origin where it can be exchanged for a cash refund or, if obtained on licensed premises, an alcoholic equivalent.

Customers in possession of a faulty Woman(TM) should look for the following signs of malfunction :

1. After about 25 years of use, the outer casing of the Woman(TM) will start to become stretched and saggy while the bulk of the Woman(TM) will have noticeably increased in size.

2. After 30 years of use, the Woman(TM)'s Information Processing Unit will start to malfunction, leading to erratic behaviour, poor decision-making and dangerous overheating. This is liable to worsen dramatically over time.

3. After about 3 years of ownership, the Visual Data Units of the Woman(TM) will almost certainly start to malfunction. An easy indicator of this is that the Woman(TM) begins to perceive signs and images that are not actually present. This dysfunction is liable to spread to the Sound Processors, which will begin to pick up vocal data that you haven't even said. A particularly badly misinterpreted command can again lead the Woman(TM) to overheat and, in the most serious of cases, even explode.

4. A particularly badly attended unit that has been ill-maintained and not lubricated on a regular basis may, after a long peroid of neglect, automatically start performing its duties elsewhere. This, however, can be averted with periodic hard disk updates, and occasional applications of programmes such as MacBouquet, Microhard Cash and Parent Visit Plus.

Warning!

You should not, under any circumstances, attempt to replace your old model Woman(TM) with a new model before the old one has been recalled.

No two models are compatible within the same domicile(*) and they will both crash repeatedly until you disconnect one of them.

(*) Apart from the very limited edition Bi Woman 2.0(TM)

MAGNUS