Maybe It had Windows Vista on it...

The irony of this was our (South African) national public broadcaster aired ED-209 in action the same day...

Life's tough in Africa as we say - but not as tough as running Vista.

... and still everybody wants to automate the army... can't wait... sheesh...

Let's see....
Good ole ED-209 from OCP corporation ?


Ed-209 anyone?

Aren't people learning something good from the SF movies??? What is going to happend to the world??? Terminator 4, 5??? With real, live targets?? 
Come on, ditch those crap robots, software is made by people, like Gates (Me II rings any bells? ). Like someday a hacker will control those weapons, and then Armageddon will be a walk in the park !!!

I bet the cannon was running Windows Millenium :p

I see no problem with automation in the army. As all things humans create to automate...it simply speeds up human error.

But what automation could have done here was replace the soldiers as well. In that case the headlines would be much different. Something like: "Automated robot cannon malfunctions and turns 11 other robots into swiss cheese"

But who would want to read that?

http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn12812-robotic-rampage-unlikely-reason-for-deaths.html

rumour isn't good as fact, eh?

Apparently the thing is made to fire big-enough shells very rapidly, and it jammed, and a soldier set about unjamming it, accidentally slammed some cordite ( with a round in the pipe ), the cordite detonated, taking with it the cordite for the next few rounds, which blew the nose of the gun 'round, while it blew-up or continued-firing, or both, or something.

Mechanical Accident, nae Robots,
Read it yerselfs, peoples. . .

Cheers,

-me