arromdee@inetnow.net wrote:

Considering they can pretend to be humans and get away with it, > they've got to be sentient.  (And I can't imagine a nonsentient
acting like Droid Avocador in the supermarket episode,
for instance.)

  Well, it's *possible* that you could create a machine capable of
emulating a human.  Human beings, after all, are machines themselves. 
Organic ones.
  Every time I see a case where a "human acting robot" is "destroyed," I
chalk it up as political correctness and assume that the original form
*was* alive to begin with.
  Besides which, if a mechanical based creature could think and act on
its own, doesn't that qualify it as being alive?  (I grew up on
Transformers, yes. :-P )