In the movie "I, Robot", protagonist Detective Del Spooner (played ably by Will Smith) expends considerable effort try to shut off robots. Most of them fictional robots were servants of humans, performing drudgery and routine tasks for them. But when they got out of control and turned against there masters...the image to the right displays how Det. Spooner decommissioned them.

Though it's not exactly a case of life imitating art, I was reminded of Detective Spooner's fictional efforts when I heard about the dramatic drop in stock price experienced by the real life iRobot Corporation yesterday. Turns out that all it took was not getting a key government contract to supply military robots to the US military.

iRobot Corp missed out in an effort to win a U.S. military contract to provide robots for use in the Middle East, a company spokeswoman said on Monday. Shares in the maker of robots for military use and home cleaning fell $5.48, or 23.2 percent, to $18.14 in morning Nasdaq trade. The U.S. government announced the contract award late Friday, the spokeswoman said.

Definitely not the stuff of which interesting plot devices are made.