Headscratchers / Atomic Robo

New entries on the bottom.

Stylus

• I read the example for Operator Incompatibility and wondered why Robo didn't just use the tip from a commercially available iPad stylus.
  • Or better yet, incorporate their materials into the tips of his fingers using something like Nano Nails.
  • Considering that Robo has had to be rebuilt almost from scratch at least once his failure not to do this is bordering on Too Dumb to Live status. Or he just likes complaining.
  • Has it ever been said whether or not Robo can feel pain? If he can, then he's basically got to cut the ends of his fingers off just to use a single piece of technology.
  • "It's not like that doesn't hurt, y'know."
  • Think of it more like surgery than just cutting off his fingers. Robo most likely would not be conscious for the upgrade.
  • Throughout the 'modern' parts of the series, Robo's been consistently depicted as at least a little stuck in the past. He's probably just a bit too stubborn and set in his ways to think of it or do it.
  • The entire point of that throwaway conversation is that Robo doesn't think he should have to implement extreme body modification in order to use a piece of widely-available commercial technology and he's haranguing Steve Jobs about it. It's a reasonable point in that if the touchscreen interface won't respond to Robo's metal fingertips, then it won't respond readily to humans with prosthetics.
    • Basically? He's ribbing Steve for not thinking things through. It also happened before Styluses were popular. And it's a chekov's gag. There's also an implication someone gifted him one...and he only realized that was an issue when he tried to press it, and nothing happened.
  • Robo has now been fully rebuilt twice. The second time involved a major redesign of his external chassis which does not include fingertips compatible with touchscreens. It's his own damn fault.
  • Or, to put it another way? Robo...is kinda an idiot sometimes. That is half his charm.
  • In fairness, both of those times his body was rebuilt involved his body being (almost) completely destroyed in the first place and have taken place under circumstances where he had bigger fish to fry than whether or not he'd be able to use an iPad afterwards. While it was clearly a bit of an oversight, the point is still reasonably valid that Robo shouldn't have to specially alter his body any more than anyone else should have to just to use a personal computing device.
    • He doesn't even have to undergo "surgery" to make said modification though, simple glue will suffice and it would probably improve his overall grip significantly. Robo is just a stubborn old man like his father.
    • Just to quibble, I didn't say 'surgery' there specifically (although someone else in this thread did, granted), I said 'alter'. Gluing stuff to your fingers arguably counts as altering your body in this case, and if you were told that in order to use the latest iPad you had to glue special things to the ends of your fingers and were unable to use it without doing so, you might also wonder whether that was entirely reasonable on the part of the manufacturer. Besides, glue can weaken, meaning they might eventual fall off, meaning he'd have to keep sticking them on, which just means yet more hassle just to use a computing device that, theoretically, could (and/or should) be able to used without such hassle. Stubborn old man he may indeed be, his point isn't entirely invalid.
    • Robo's "point" really isn't the point though. Robo and Tesladyne are more than capable of solving the problem themselves (including developing better prosthesis for the people Robo tried to guilt Jobs with). That's the joke the problem is too mundane for Robo to bother doing it himself. This is deconstructed with the "new kids" in the current arc. They have Robo's old thinking and are incapable of solving simple problems because they're too busy trying to defy current scientific processes in the name of "innovation."
    • On the flipside, though, it's not really their job to solve Steve Jobs' oversights for him when he can solve them himself, to be totally fair.

Martin and Louis Try Again

• Okay, so in this comic: http://www.atomic-robo.com/atomicrobo/fcbd-2016-cover ...What exactly happened? Did they open a hole in the messhall in THIS world? Or, did they open the hole to the parallel dimension in an alternate world? OR...what?
  • Basically, they opened the hole to the vampire dimension in a parallel world. Nobody in OUR dimension was hurt...but this meant that real people were hurt, in said dimension.