Friday 14 November 2014

Feeble Signals Heard from the Milae Robot

Milae, the robot launched several years ago on a five-year mission through hostile media to land at 10/DowningStreet, is stuck in an unexpectedly low position and desperately trying to send signals to reassure its project team.  But only a garbled message has been received, with a meaningless phrase "zero - zero" being repeated continually.   Although early reports said Milae had its feet squarely on the ground, this is now severely in doubt.

Conditions seemed perfect for a successful result, but after an apparently satisfactory launch in 2010 and climbing to a high altitude, it set off on a course into the void and then crashed heavily.  Although it may have bounced a couple of times, photos from several angles indicate it is positioned very awkwardly.  There are concerns it is fast running out of time to communicate its message to the outside world and complete its historic mission. 

Awkwardly positioned
The RedRosetta project is trying to devise a strategy for relaunching the robot, but speaking on conditions of anonymity one of the team said: "Milae is in a bad place and not performing as we hoped.  It seems to be stuck, unable to make contact or communicate properly.  Everything we have tried has gone wrong.  The public is quickly losing interest.  We are going to give it one more go in the next few days but several of us are starting to think we should abandon it."

Milae is part of a European project to control as much territory as possible with robots operated remotely from a centre in Brussels.  

13:00 UPDATE:  the BBC reports that the project is "trying to move Milae forward using its own little legs.  But its policies are fast running out." 

17 comments:

Bill Quango MP said...

".......Islington......we have a problem.."

Maurice Moss said...

Have you tried turning him off and then turning him on again?

Anonymous said...

Very good.

CityUnslicker said...

Maurice, we are on V1.8 and with every patch and upgrade to the system the software seems to become slower and operate even less well.

When something is this buggy, probably worth trying a new product.

Scan said...

He looks more and more like the great Sir Les Patterson every day.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9gn6KLa5xtY/R_j-U0latII/AAAAAAAABf8/xnDsbFiHg_A/s400/LesPatterson.jpg

Demetrius said...

Perhaps he is really a Transformer, perhaps of the Trans Siberian species.

Bill Quango MP said...

Optimus Plum

He turns from a robot into a lemon.

andrew said...

as an avid comic fan,
the closest fit that comes to mind is

sorry the nearly man

Malcolm Tucker said...

Latest news is the Milibot has powered down and gone to sleep.

Ahhh..

Timbo614 said...

We have to make allowances for the fact that although the Milae has only just arrived at its planned destination it was launched on it's mission in different days. It's programming is now considered "legacy code*" having been written by its parent programmers many years ago.
Many question whether it programming is now up to the job or stuck in a previous era. It's worth noting that in this era batteries went flat very quickly too!


* The community has developed other interpretations for the term legacy code.
Among the most prevalent are source code inherited from someone else and source code inherited from an older version.

Elby the Beserk said...

Bless him. He's a total ****ing idiot. Currently he's laying into zero hour contracts. Looks like his research team forgot to tell him that Doncaster council, where he is MP, use them. As do the Labour councils of Bridgend, Swansea, Newham, Tower Hamlets, Brent, Ealing, Merton, Hounslow and Liverpool.

Way to go, Ed!

Ravenscar. said...

What he deems it is to be English...

‘And let’s be proud of our Englishness, too. No political party owns our English national identity. So it is time we fought, this party fought, for the traditions of England and did not cede them to others.

‘Englishness: a history of solidarity. From the Battle of Cable Street to the spirit of the Blitz. Englishness: traditions of fairness. From the Dagenham workers who fought for equal pay to today’s campaigners for a living wage. Englishness: a spirit of internationalism. From those who fought in the Spanish Civil War to our generosity to those overseas.’

link.



I think it is time to phone home Ed, ET is missing you.

Ravenscar. said...

Oh, I forgot...............

I meant to add, FOR F***S SAKE!

Electro-Kevin said...

When the Labour wonks said they wanted to enter a new political continuum someone misheard.

They got a cunt in 'em instead.

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