Saturday, June 2, 2012

Web vandals put ‘Futurama’ character Bender in Robot Hall of Fame


Fans of the sci-fi cartoon comedy “Futurama” vandalized the Wikipedia page for the Robot Hall of Fame recently to add the show’s antihero robot Bender to the list of inductees.
While Bender would make a fine addition to the fictional robots portion of the Robot Hall of Fame, he was never chosen for the honor. The error also was added to Bender’s Wikipedia page. I have since gone in and edited out those errors and added more citations for the actual winners.
If Bender is ever going to have a chance to make it into the Robot Hall of Fame, the organization behind the hall is going to need to find the financing necessary to resume operations. It suspended operations in 2010 for lack of funds.
Bender is one of many real and fictional robots who have been nominated by the public for inclusion in the hall.
The original error about Bender was added to the Robot Hall of Fame Wikipedia page on Dec. 5, 2011. It was added to the Bender Wikipedia page on Feb. 8, 2012.
It’s not the first time pranksters have had fun with Bender online. In 2010, a team of hackers from the University of Michigan got Bender elected as president of the Washington, D.C., school board by tapping into the city’s flawed electronic voting system, PCWorld reported.

Photo: Bender the robot from “Futurama” (20th Century Fox).

No comments: