"Allen Steele - Agape Among The Robots" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

of chips, watching with interest while the two team leaders ripped into each other.

"I wish these guys would hurry up and admit theyтАЩre in love," he muttered.


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Meanwhile Samson and Delilah patiently waited nearby, ignored yet omnipresent, as stoical as
only robots can be.

Okay. Time to backtrack a bit.

You know about LEC, of course . . . or at least you should, if you pay attention to TV
commercials, browse the web, or visit shopping malls. Lang Electronics Corporation is one of
the three major U.S. manufacturers of consumer robots; it started out as a maker of IBM-clones
in the early тАЩ80s, then diversified into robotics shortly after the turn of the century, introducing its
first-generation robot vacuum cleaners and home sentries about the same time that its closest
competitors, CybeServe and Cranberry, entered the market with their own household тАЩbots.
CybeServe was the leading company, and solidified that position after it was bought out by
Mitsubishi; Cranberry, on other hand, was hurt by poor sales and a reputation for making second-
rate тАЩbots that tended to forget instructions, burn actuators, and taser the mailman. By the time
CybeServe and Mitsubishi merged, Cranberry had laid off one-third of its employees and was on
the verge of declaring bankruptcy.

This left LEC in somewhere in the middle. It remained strong enough to fight off hostile takeover
attempts by larger electronics companies in both America and Japan, and its Valet and
Guardian series of home тАЩbots held their own in the marketplace, not only selling as many units
as CybeServe but even surpassing their sales in Europe. The success of its first-generation
robots prompted LEC to invest considerable capital in developing a second-generation series of
universal robots. Biocybe Resources in Worcester, Massachusetts, had recently introduced its
Oz 100 biochips, pseudo-organic microprocessors capable of handling 100,000 MIPSтАУMillions
of Instructions Per Second, the robotic equivalent of megabytesтАУand LEC had built them into its
Gourmand, Guardian III, and Companion тАЩbots, successfully bringing them to market nearly two
months before CybeServe brought out their rival systems. It also helped that CybeServeтАЩs тАЩbots
were more expensive and that their CybeServe Butler had an embarrassing tendency to
misunderstand questions or commands given in less than perfect English (e.g., "Is the
dishwasher running?" No, itтАЩs still in the kitchen. "Answer the door, please." But it hasnтАЩt asked
me anything. And so forth.).

(If all this is beginning to make your eyes glaze over, please be patient. Home тАЩbots may be
rather commonplace these daysтАУif you donтАЩt already own one, chances are one of your
neighbors does, and your kids may be dropping hints about how nice it would be to find a
CybeServe Silver Retriever or a LEC Prince barking and wagging its tail beneath the Christmas
treeтАУbut IтАЩm relating events which occurred about ten years ago. It may seem like business talk,
but it has quite a bit to do with the story at hand, so bear with me, okay?)

CybeServe wasnтАЩt about to let itself get stampeded the way Cranberry was several years earlier,