Would you buy a robot dog?

There are several styles on the internet for phrasing the matter:

No, your next dog will not be a robot. This is the exasperated style of a smart person who spends his days on the Internet stepping on the hands of stupid people. Or:

I for one welcome our new robot dog overlordsPlayed out. Or:

This man kicked a robot dog and the results were amazing (1:23 will blow your mind) Writers of these headlines should cut up some habaneros then rub their eyes before washing their hands. How about:

Would you buy an eternal dog? That's the commercial application for this, a few decades down the line. Life-like creatures as smart as dogs, programmed to behave like dogs but also smarter. Imagine you come home, and Dogbot trots over and sits still so you can plug it in and download all the video it took. I know, I know, that's silly; by then it would wirelessly transfer the data.

Wouldn't be the same, though. There are times you wish you could shut your dog off, but you can't, because it's a living thing. The better Dogbots get, though, the more some people will want one that's more manageable. Something you can set on a timer.

Anyway, here's the Spot, the Dogbot.

Well, it's that. It would disagree about fond memories of VHS tapes, though. Whatever nostalgia I have for the format - the sound of the tape clunking into the machine, the whirr and whine of the motors - dissipates the instant I really think about it. Reminds you, though, that people will be nostalgic for DVDs in a few years, yet wonder how they dealt with them. Remember skipping previews? Cleaning disks with a soft cloth? Man.

Also creepy, or just sad, or just cold: photos of an abandoned shopping mall interior covered with snow. Says the photographer: