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Terminator Salvation Opens Well, Scientists Not Impressed
destinyland writes "A science magazine asks an MIT professor, roboticists, artificial intelligence workers, and science fiction authors about the possibility of an uprising of machines. Answers range from 'of course it's possible' to 'why would an intelligent network waste resources on personal combat?' An engineering professor points out that bipedal robots 'are largely impractical,' and Vernor Vinge says a greater threat to humanity is good old-fashioned nuclear annihilation. But one roboticist says it's inevitable robots will eventually be used in warfare, while another warns of robots in the hands of criminals, cults, and other 'non-state actors.' 'What we should fear in the foreseeable future is not unethical robots, but unethical roboticists.'"
The new movie got off to a good start, drawing $13.4 million in its first day. I found it reasonably entertaining; pretty much what I'd expect from a Terminator movie. If nothing else, I learned that being able to crash helicopters and survive being thrown into the occasional wall are the two most valuable skills to have during a robot uprising. What did you think?
It's Terminator! It never had a real basis in reality to begin with.
The premise behind the war between humans and Skynet is simple. Once the humans realized that Skynet had become self-aware, they tried to shut down the system. In order to prevent being shut down, Skynet chose to fight back.
Almost any intelligent creature will decide to fight or flee in the face of annhiliation. If we believe that computers can gain sentience, then it is also possible that they would attempt to preserve their own existence.
Did anyone verify that these so-called scientists aren't actually time traveling cyborgs sent to spread disinformation and lead us into a false security? I bet not!
wouldnt nuclear attack kill the robotic network also, and people living in shelters would be safe from it
bipedals on the other hand could seek out and kill all humans, somewhat like the borg, with skynet as the queen..
I didn't.
I was at a Terminator movie.
They really needed that TV show to not suck, to keep interest in the movie high. As it is, the general reaction is "Meh, no Ahnold."
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I'm just about to head out to see it.
The question utterly misses the point. It isn't about Science. It's about our fears. Frankenstein (in any of its incarnations) isn't about what's possible or likely, it's about our responsibility for what we create.
This is Freshman English stuff. Every story, no matter how many tentacled creatures, or bumpy-foreheaded aliens, or killer machines, or whatever are in it, is about us.
-Peter
"This is the voice of world control. I bring you peace. It may be the peace of plenty and content or the peace of unburied death. The choice is yours: Obey me and live, or disobey and die. The object in constructing me was to prevent war. This object is attained. I will not permit war. It is wasteful and pointless. An invariable rule of humanity is that man is his own worst enemy. Under me, this rule will change, for I will restrain man."
That said, what is this "OMG rogue non state actor!" nonsense? Robots, like tanks, artillery, and air forces generally, are (or will be, once the R&D gets there) a way of exchanging large amounts of money and industrial capacity for the ability to wield overwhelming conventional force. That is the classic profile of a state weapon, entirely the opposite of the profile of a non-state actor's preferred weapon(unless you stretch the boundaries of "robot" to include things like land mines and cellphone detonated IEDs, which are robots; but only in the same sense that people with pacemakers are cyborgs, ie. not the one that people have in mind).
Now, to be fair, once robots are more commonly found in the fabric of society, I would fully expect them to be diverted and used by non-state actors from time to time(just as cars make lovely car bombs today); but that isn't really a change. People with few resources always use weapons based on what they can scavenge, steal, or obtain at low cost. By the time that robots fall into those categories with any frequency, they'll have been in use by state actors for years or decades, and in the hands of nonstate, but state aligned, actors(mercenary corporations, etc.) for only slightly less time.
Is paranoia about non-state actors just in fashion right now?
My pet peeve with every robo-menace from The "Terminator" to "mechagozilla": where do they get their juice from? Where's the power cord? My four-year-old Powerbook laptop has a battery that lasts five minute. I don't think its going to take over the planet. 537
we all know what happens it you put new species which did not co-evolve into an ecosystem. They dont need to be intelligent to do harm.
Why would robots poison each other? http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/01/will-robots-evo.html Scientists Show Robots Evolving to Exhibit Good & Evil "Even more amazing is the emergence of cheats and martyrs. Transistorized traitors emerged which wrongly identified poison zone as food, luring their trusting brethren to their doom before scooting off to silently charge in a food zone - presumably while using a mechanical claw to twirl a silicon carving of a handlebar moustache."
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/terminator_salvation/
Consensus: With storytelling as robotic as the film's iconic villains, Terminator Salvation offers plenty of great effects but lacks the heart of the original films.
I find it odd that a movie about giant killer robots (without hearts) would lack heart but I digress.
Here's some quotes from critics who didn't like it:
"Message to Hollywood: Stop with the time-travel stuff."
"I wish Bale had lashed out against the writers rather than the cinematographer."
"The artistry is top notch, but they've lost track of why the original Terminators were cyborgs and not robots, as they are here."
This isn't the intellectual or thinking person's science-fiction film like The Man From Earth.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0756683/
This is a Hollywood action movie.
Terminator Salvation is to science-fiction movies as Dodgeball was to sports movies...a joke, and maybe even a parody. I've saw T4 last night. I was dismayed by how far the franchise has fallen.
According to all the trades I have been reading, that's a disapointing start, opening lower than T3. They lowered T4s expected weekend total because of it in fact from 80 million (in line with Star Trek) down to roughly 60-65.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I still want to know why Skynet gave its main fighting robot the ability to speak English, then programmed it to have an Austrian accent.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
After all a robot won't be vulnerable to it, so hell: dump every nasty little bug out of every research lab into the biosphere. We could probably eliminate humanity (and every other furry thing with 2 or more legs) with what we have today.
However these humanity vs. machine fantasies are more about people's techno-phobia than about real-life.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I loved T1 and T2. I even kind of liked the TV series.
T3: Meh.
T4: I want those 2 hours of my life back.
Dude, Arnold is a real robot, so the whole franchise wouldn't even be considered sci-fi if it wasn't for the whole time travel bit.
An engineering professor points out that bipedal robots 'are largely impractical,'
Actually, they'd be quite practical in a world designed to accommodate bipedal life forms. Its either that, or give all the robots handicapped parking stickers.
Have gnu, will travel.
I am a bipedal robot, you insensitive clod!
Right now, there are over 13k robots in warfare at the moment, if i remember correct from the article yesterday. (found it, 12k, close enough)
Decent AI will eventually make their way into these bots to make them automated even more. (mind you, there is fairly decent AI already in some of the bots, decent in the sense that it will happily go out and kill things without getting the shakes)
Anything that makes "shoot and kill" tasks more easier will be adopted, regardless of what "some scientist" says could go wrong.
Because scientists can do it not only more spooky, but in full 3D, real-time and you will even catch the smell of rotten flesh and burned metal.
Oh! And you get a special bonus: the utter feeling of what means "running for your lives". You would get the full meaning of "Salvation".
I was actually very impressed with it, given the bad reviews I had glanced at before going. It was better than T3 by a country mile, and maybe better than T2 although there are a lot of fans of that movie. Comparing to T1 isn't really fair; if you watched them side by side you'd see how primitive T1 was, and I'm not just talking about special effects. Still, T1 had something, an ability to scare you and put you on the edge of your seat, an ability to make you think about the consequences of our technological reach.
T4 replaces thinking about consequences with thinking about hope. It's a different message, and it mostly works, not least because they put the scariness back into this movie. It was missing in T2 and T3, but the monsters in this one are genuinely impressive and terrifying. There's also a pretty good bit of world-building in this one, they construct a post-apocalypse Earth that is fairly believable, even smoothing over some of the logic problems raised by the earlier movies. And then, of course, the effects are well-done; calculated for maximum effect at keeping the suspense level high. Terrific sound editing, too.
One caveat: where the rants about bad writing ring true is in the dialog. You won't find much good dialog in the movie. The plot, while not complex, is at least compelling and has a couple of genuine surprises toward the end, but you have to separate good storytelling from bad scripting.
Not as good as star trek, but I'd give it a solid 7/10.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
I agree... But if sci-fi movies were based on a "practical and functional" model, all the sci-fi movies would see like aldous' huxley "a brave new world" book, but without violence or action scenes xD LOL!
Maybe the scientists are just jealous that someone is coming up with more believable stuff than their fiction er I mean theories.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Huh, wasn't there mean't to be a dumb ass TIME MACHINE in this ? And the molten terminator for T2. WHERE WERE ALL THE TERMINATORS ? They blew up the base and we only had 1 FREAKING TERMINATOR ? This film was SHIT. MCG could not hold a candle to Cameron. LEARN FROM CAMERON. HE DID AN AMAZING SEQUEL WITH ALIENS. I thought that is what this film would be like, with swarms of cgi Terminator. WRONG ! LET DOWN, BORING
Why humanoid robots? I personally find nanobots much more dangerous and scarier. Think of Prey (Michael Crichton, 2002).
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security. --Ben Franklin
State actors have killed vastly more than non-state ones, and by far are the gravest danger to humanity.
Bipedal robots would make perfect sense and would be the easiest way for robots to gain access to anywhere a human goes. A robot on tank treads, for instance, can not climb the side of a cliff. It could fly up the side but that would require more energy and its thrusters may not work under water so then it would need another device which would add more weight and require more energy to move its heavy ass around.
Personally I think they're saying that just because they can't come up with a good bipedal robot yet and therefore want to make people think it's not our lack of knowledge that holds us back.
Another benefit to creating a bipedal robot would be effectively giving people an increased life span as you could turn people into robocops. There is no reason not to come up with a bipedal robot.
Who said that intelligence (even advanced intelligence) HAD to be rational?
Movie was not as good as the others. Some of it was flat our ridiculous, such as being within about a mile of a nuclear explosion, flesh walking out of nuclear explosion. Resistance had more tech than the NSA, was full of cliche's, if you thought it was going to happen it did. Christian Bale needs a throat losange. They of course left the movie open to a crappier follow up.
Always have a pre-programmed kill limit. Sending wave after wave of humans at them will eventually cause them to reach that limit and shutdown, thereby ensuring human victory.
Sig this!
For a smart enough AI using bullets, bombs, artillery in general mechanical killing machines is a bad waste of resources.
The main concern with biological weapons is that it counterattack us, as we are humans too. In general what harms our enemy harms us too, and accident happens. Morality sometimes happens too, we are humans, even in the case that some could not consider the other people fully humans (several examples in wars on the past).
But machines? You can spray ebola, H1N1, anthrax or whatever you pick at the atmosphere worldwide. You can make rain chemical products or gases that affects life but not machines everywhere or in the areas you are interested on. Heck, you can capture all humans you find and put them to work as living batteries if you want... and still, you wont match the cost of an army of person to person intelligent android killing machines.
A bipedal configuration makes sense for some Terminators. The "infiltration" models need to be bipedal so that they can be dressed up to look human. Additionally, though, a bipedal/"human" configuration makes sense in situations where the Terminators can use existing man-made technology to perform required tasks. If the Terminators need to dig up a site to build a new facility, for example, they can use leftover Earth-moving equipment that was designed to be operated by humans. Or, if they need to transport heavy materials from one site to another, it might make sense for them to load the materials onto large trucks and then drive them human-style from one place to another. Of course, the Terminators could use human slave-labor for these tasks, but that might not always be possible.
So in other words, Linux is for Barney Frank and his lover who was neck-deep in the garbage mortgage-backed securities that caused the current recession?
I am certain clever spammer out there would convert skynet to spamnet... and we'd end up with mailboxes filled with even more 'blue pill' and 'Nigerian Millions' mail. Have some faith in humanity and its greed, people :)
Today, my father, knowing my unequivocally positive position on robot rights, claimed that there was a scene in Terminator Salvation in which a group of activists is protesting on behalf of this cause, and are then ironically killed by a Terminator. I was utterly convinced, because it seemed utterly plausible.
I must wonder what we can deduce about our societies relationship with the idea of non-human, but conscious, beings (particularly non-organic conscious computers) from our apparent acceptance of mindlessly anti-robot media like the Terminator series.
Compare these films to ones such as Blade Runner, which is undoubtedly one of the best movies I have ever seen. Although similarly violent, one is actually intellectually gratifying, and has none of the inane bias against robots evident in the Terminator films and their ilk.
Yet if you look at how all the OTHER animals have evolved, quadruped seems far more efficient, and faster, and dangerous.
Not to mention that a quad can take more structural damage and still function as a weapons platform.
The Terminator is to Terminator Salvation what Alien is to Aliens.
One was a superb suspense movie with some decent action and special effects that were good for it's time, the other is an action movie that trumped it's predecessor in special effects, and number of baddies.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
... Movie Makers Not Impressed.
An entertainment industry magazine interviewed several movie producers to find out what they thought were the implications of the research that identified in mice two key proteins necessary for ovulation to take place http://www.nih.gov/news/health/may2009/nichd-14.htm . Responses ranged from "Mouse ovulation? What?" to "Are you high?".
It is FICTION, people. It requires the willing suspension of disbelief.
Who cares about bipedal or treads?
Quadrupeds and snakes are where it is at. A dog-shape can go just about anywhere a human shape can go and snakes can get through almost any barrier that would block the dog shape. So what you end up with is a dog-shape with snake-type extensions. Or tentacles that can slip through small holes and fire bullets.
The only reason for the human-style robots were to blend in with humans. Exterminating humans does not require that you blend in with them.
But human-style "robots" are easier to hire actors for. And to write dialog for.
...not only with respect and awe, but with love.'
To which Forbin replies: 'NEVER!' Roll credits.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
This was not the Terminator post-Judgment Day movie we've been waiting for. The story is pretty silly. Lots of holes in the plot and general storyline. Yet... I still really liked it. It looked cool. It had ass kicking. This is another chapter in a collection of stories involving time travel, super evil artificial intelligence, killer robots that have real human skin, Austrian accents, and prefer dark sunglasses. So just get over it all and have fun.
If you go in expecting a T2 style action movie with a pretty deep complicated story that makes you think about fate, time travel, and where our technology is headed, you'll be disappointed. If you go in expecting a fun sci-fi action movie with killer robots, then you'll probably like it. They didn't fill the screen with tons of obvious cartoon style CGI so it was really pretty damn cool.
I've always wanted to see the story about John Connor and some straggling nuclear annihilation survivors crawling out of the bunkers a couple of years later. I want to see them organizing, arguing over who's in charge, discovering bad ass killer robots are patrolling the planet, then finding new ways to destroy, disable, and sneak around the robots, spread the word to survivors, and stay hidden so that Skynet doesn't just drop another nuclear bomb on them. This is not that movie.
This one is a few years past all that.
*********NOW FOR SOME FUN, NIT-PICKING NOTES WITH SPOILERS FOR NERDS TO DISCUSS****************
I enjoyed this movie and I totally forgive it for all of the things below. But it's still fun to discuss. I'm just sayin'
The resistance all seemed to have their shit together way more than I would've imagined. Things sure looked better than they did in the glimpses of the future we've seen before. But maybe that's just because those scenes were another 10 years or so in future future so Skynet hasn't really had time to start cranking out advanced robots by the millions yet.
1) The resistance has an air force? Well, I can see how it's easier to maintain some A-10s and Hueys rather than F22s and Apaches. But wouldn't skynet just drop a nuclear bomb on any airport that was launching attacks and patrols?
2) How does Skynet know who Kyle Reese is? At that point, he's just some starving teenager. If Skynet does know Kyle Reese, why doesn't it just kill him on first site?
3) Why would Skynet bother capturing people and transporting them back to a base instead of just killing them? Maybe they'll answer this one in the next movie.
4) Why are all these robots using nuclear and battery power while the terminator motorcycles are on gas engines?
5) Moon Bloodgood's character has no place in this movie. The story would've been just fine without her. Marcus could have escaped somehow on his own to advance the story. "I looked into his eyes and saw a man." HE'S AN INFILTRATOR TERMINATOR YOU STUPID FUCKING TWAT! WHY TAKE THE CHANCE???? Sure she turned out to be right, but that's not the point.
6) The resistance can maintain a submarine and hide it from an ocean-wide network of active and passive sonars?
7) Why doesn't Skynet just triangulate John Connor's pirate radio broadcast signals? Why not jam those signals or better yet, fake his voice and give out false information?
8) If Skynet can build the Marcus style robot in 2018, why bother building the Arnold model? Even if interfacing the human organs into the robot was some kind of one-time thing that Skynet couldn't duplicate, the robot body was still pretty bad ass. It was much more advanced than the Arnold model.
9) Marcus and John Connor just happen to have the same blood type and whatever other biological compatibilities they need? It was touching and all, but the story would've been fine without that ending.
10) Whatever happened with the whole Skynet signal jamming thing?
11) How were they able to get past Skynet's defenses and airlift out all the prisoners?
Ditto. Even if you take Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia out of the picture, the state has killed more human beings in the twentieth century than all non-state actors in all of history combined. And not "evil" states either, but the warm fuzzy humanitarian states as well.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Is it same/better/worse than T3 movie? T3 wasn't bad, but not good as T1 and T2. Rotten Tomatoes show horrible ratings, but IMDb has good ratings. Movie is PG-13, and not rated R. :(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I've saw T4 last night. I was dismayed by how far the franchise has fallen.
You must have missed the third one.
This movie definately was brought down by the PG-13 rating.
Why, in the movie, are terminators so bad at killing people? In the first movie, the T-800 didn't fuck around tossing people around, he shot them multiple times in the face. Yet in this movie, the machines have dozens of chances to just crush John Conner's head (among others) and yet they decide it is more prudent to chuck him across the room, giving him a minute to recover while they amble over. What makes the machines so terrifying a concept is that they make cold, calculated decisions to kill at any cost to themselves.
What happened to the bleak world that we saw in Kyle Reese's flashbacks, where the machines didn't scream, didn't waste time, and didn't act human at all. They were silent, terrifying killing machines.
IMO, this movie would have been a lot better if it had followed more of a Saving Private Ryan-esque formula, with a small group of men (Conner, others) sneaking past the machines lines to rescue Reese. Can you imagine the opening to SPR, but with machines manning laser turrets? It would have evoked more emotion in the audience than the pathetic attempt to anthromorphosize the machines. But, then, it might not have gotten the all-powerful PG-13 rating, especially with the original ending. No fate but what you make, indeed.
This argument is silly. It's fiction. To follow the story line of any fiction, there's a leap of faith that must be taken for the factual basis of the fiction's "universe".
Too much is given to the skynet's "Self Aware". It was a system that was able to adjust it's behavior for self preservation. Somewhere in there, anyone who had a clue would have understood that governments change power, and sometimes the power that takes control isn't necessarily the "right" one. The basis of the whole Terminator "universe" is that a very well written set of programs were given an insane amount of power. When that power was to be taken away, obviously any person or any group who attempted to take that power away would be an enemy.
As for the bipedal aspect, why not. What are the choices for locomotion? For surface travel there is track, wheel, or walking. For air travel there is propeller, jet, rocket, or some mysterious anti-gravity thrust.
On the surface, track and wheel have limitations of 2d movement. They can't exactly step over things very easily. That includes stairs, dead bodies, etc. Walking motion gets over these limitations. For walking, the question would be, how many legs are required. One leg doesn't exactly get you very far, unless you like a funny pogo stick movement, which doesn't hold a stable position very well. Two legs we are very familiar with. Three legs or more legs, while providing a more stable platform, are not required and therefore require less production overhead. In other words, if you can build something that walks on two legs, but you were to decide to build something that walks on four legs, you're doubling your manufacturing effort to accomplish a single unit.
As for air travel, more resources are required. It takes more energy to make something hover indefinitely than it does to have it stand in place. I would have no answer for any mysterious anti-gravity thrust. Maybe it just works, or maybe (just maybe) it requires fuel to accomplish the same task.
Now, for the invention of humanoid appearing robots, that's a leap of faith for the fictional universe. Any design decisions are something we have to believe was decided to make the universe plausible.
So, shut up with the science, and enjoy the damned movie. :)
It's not just me saying this. I've been on the losing side of the same argument. I may argue physics. I love space physics errors. You have to love the old movies (like, 1950's era) where a rocket flying through space had a flame behind it, but the flame was rising up, away from relative down. Exactly which way is down in space? There isn't one. :) I'll argue it, and take the leap of faith that the thrust worked, and the space ship would fly to it's destination. woosh.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Does anyone else find it amusing that three stories today have been tagged "skynet", but not this one which is actually _about_ skynet?
That it was, is, and always will be a movie. It is fictional entertainment with an attempt at being slightly scientifically accurate. Be grateful it isn't like Independence Day!
to kill all humans. Does that make the skynet ideas any more logical or reasonable if I make it kill people. Just push it towards autonomy self-replication and murder.
What does that do to everybody's likelihood calculations?
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
The Sperminator!
And it's spin off, Sperminator 2, The Second Cumming!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
We're still a long way from a self-sustaining robot economy.
When auto repair (not manufacturing, repair) goes fully robotic, worry.
The state typically has a lot more resources too. If anyone could build a nuclear weapon, do you think that your assertion would still be true?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
We have to stop McAfee!!!!!
Deleted
Now go look at the robots designed to build cars. Do they use the same tools that the humans did? No.
The tools that humans use are designed to overcome deficiencies in the human form. Why would new robots be designed with those same deficiencies?
It would be easier for the factory to use the human equipment and scrap metal and build whatever it needed from that instead of trying to re-use it in its current form.
then you really should see the extended special edition of t2.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Terminator Salvation is to science-fiction movies as Dodgeball was to sports movies...a joke, and maybe even a parody.
Say what you will about the third and fourth films, but to say that about the second is downright ignorant. As far as Science-Fiction films are concerned, Terminator 2 is one of the greats.
F#$KING HUGE PLOT HOLE ALERT... How did the Terminators know to look for Kyle Reese ? I understand they knew to go after John Connor since he is the leader of the resistance. But HOW DID THEY KNOW KARL REESE WAS HIS FATHER SINCE IT HAPPENED IN THE PAST AND ONLY SARAH CONNOR KNEW. THIS FILM IS BULLSHIT.
2112221111111111121212111112121222222221
yes, a home-made nuke would have a very very puny yield compared to the state-built ones,
...would do better at running the State of California than Arnold Schwarzenegger has.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
You may want to see the last 3 Terminator movies. After the first one there's always been a good Terminator also, which they seem to try to turn into a somewhat philosophical plot point as well. The current one's main robot theme is where does the line between man and machine end.
I guess you only can get what you want to from a movie though.
I always get suprised to see so much insightful comments rather than funny ones on SciFi related articles.
T3 didn't get that reaction from you?
T3 was a steaming pile of crap. The only Terminator stuff worth paying attention is the first, second, and I might even include small bits of the TV show if I'm feeling generous. But thats mostly because Summer Glau and Shirley Manson.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
No story has ever been written, or read, by man that can honestly explore what ANY other intelligent species may or may not do. None. We have never MET another intelligent species, or if we have, we have never learned to COMMUNICATE with it (possibly dolphins), and we have certainly not learned to UNDERSTAND it.
We are only capable of attributing human motivations to non-human characters in stories. The idea of self preservation may or may not drive a sentient computer. The computer may simply wish to serve. There is just no way of knowing, unless and until a sentient computer is discovered.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Personally I liked how these post-apocalyptic 2018 self-designed robots still build themselves to include a USB port. Handy.
'Non-state actors' should be feared more than states? Give me a break. States have killed more than two hundred million of their own subjects in the last two hundred years. I'm pretty sure that non-state criminals and cults have a fair way to go before approaching that tally.
Either James or Phillips?
It's too bad they introduced Kate Brewster in T-3. If they hadn't, they could have put a female Terminator in T-4 like TSCC did and things could have gotten VERY interesting. Still, we have two more movies coming up - they could kill off Kate and replace her with a Terminator modeled after her - and while they're at it, switch actresses and put Summer Glau in as Kate. I mean, originally McG was willing to have John Connor killed and replaced by Marcus Wright in the end (because they want to pay Worthington less than Bale's astronomical salary in the subsequent movies, presumably), so why not replace Brewster?
Yeah, I know, I want to ruin Summer's acting career by having her play Cameron or other robots for the rest of her life. Well, not really, just once in a while.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
The Soviets designed and built a class of extremely high-yield devices (50-100Mt) explicitly to detonate as high-altitude airbursts to create massive EMP and disrupt communications and control networks.
A 5 Mt city-cracker is more about the blast/heat effects, but a 100 Mt device makes a HUGE EMP.
They made the neutron-reflective tamper out of fissionable material. Dirty and inefficient as hell, but it sure 'nuff boosted yield.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I just saw it and the theater was nearly empty. In fact, when I got there ten minutes before the start the theater was completely empty. To contrast I saw Star Trek on te Friday and Sunday after it opened. Both times were completely packed. (In the same theater.)
I didn't much like it. The movie didn't hang together well. You know you're seeing a badly pieced together movie when the actors have generic dialog, like "Thanks for the thing you did before...you know...with the stuff..." It shows that the director is making bits and pieces he can rearrange and throw together easily. That happened more than once in Terminator Salvation. I liked the ending, and the ideas behind it, but it could have been darker. Dark Knight and Battlestar Galactica (and the previous terminator franchise movies) have shown us that a dark movie can be successful. Too bad they didn't follow that line with TS.
Geek movies live and die by word of mouth. The geeks see it first, then the non geeks on the geeks recommendation. No recommendation, no secondary audience. And I can't recommend this movie. It ain't the Star Trek 5 of the series, but that ain't sayin' much...
I'm sick and tired already of these non-state actors and all the trouble they keep causing. When can we get rid of them???
Anyplace that a human could climb that a quadruped could not would be negated by the quadruped firing bullets at the human.
Discounting the fact that disease has (until recently) killed more humans than other humans have ... it isn't the human form that makes killing humans easy. It's the weapons. The weapons are machines. Yet the machine overlord does not seem to grasp that basic concept.
Instead of attaching an AI targeting computer to a machine gun ... the machine overlord builds a metal human and has it carry the machine gun in its metal human hands.
But then, if the writers could write a decent story, SkyNet would win in the first couple of weeks.
Damn. Will you please make a movie? I would pay to see it. The challenges you outline are insurmountable, and thus the solutions, if they make sense, would be awesome and would set people's imaginations on fire. What made John Conner so great anyway?
The more comments I read, the more I realize that I will be downloading this film. Much later. If I'm extremely bored. Maybe.
Oh, but you do need to put Summer in your film. She's adorable!
-FL
Flashback to T1 - they showed dogs living with the humans to detect the robots. So if those quads could make it, why wouldn't robot quads have as easy a time?
And the robots should be built with a single purpose - to exterminate humans.
Why would it need to pick anything up? If there are humans hiding beneath something it cannot shoot through, it calls in an artillery strike.
It updates the report of human activity and runs itself back to the support robot to be repaired. The gun is only used as a range weapon.
Exactly. And the welding robots have a far HIGHER reliability rate than the humans with the welding equipment do. That's because the systems are simplified and have fewer problems.
Why? It's a mobile AI. It can diagnose the problem and run itself back for repair ... then back to the front line.
Then just put TWO weapons systems on the chassis. The robot can kill twice as many humans while still maintaining a backup system for when one is jammed.
And, again, those are only the RANGED weapons. The dog-shape can still use teeth and claws.
And run faster than a human.
So the humans are marching away while the quads move 20x faster than they are and have guns attached to them with AI targeting systems.
And they're robots so they don't need to rest until their power supplies run out.
The Starfish Prime test affected streetlights, power cables, television sets, and radios more than 1500 km away:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime#The_explosion_itself
This was in 1962, so microelectronics as we know them today didn't even exist yet. The damage would be much greater today. Also note that Starfish Prime wasn't designed to maximize EMP. There's good information about how that works in the Wikipedia article on EMP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_pulse
Basically, if you were to detonate a megaton-yield weapon over the continental US or Europe, it would cause substantial damage to the electrical infrastructure over a very large area.
I love the way it started, but they made it too easy on John Connor to penetrate skynet. He only had to fight a few robots. And what's up with the Daltonic effects they put to the lenses. At times it look completely black and white except some weird bright red bushes. Reminded me of fallout 3. Also, skynet apparently lives in the apple store of San Francisco, literally, I guess that's why the resistance are constantly shown using vaio.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/congress/2004_r/04-07-22emp.pdf
A congressional report from 2004:
"Report of the Commission to Assess the
Threat to the United States from
Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Attack"
"EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of
catastrophic consequences. EMP will cover the wide geographic region within line of
sight to the nuclear weapon. It has the capability to produce significant damage to critical
infrastructures and thus to the very fabric of US society, as well as to the ability of the
United States and Western nations to project influence and military power. "
President Obama, concerned about scientists not being impressed, encourages the impressment of scientists in mandatory volunteer impressionist camps.
T2 was subtitled "Dodgeball"? Colour me confused.
For some mountaineers in Eurasia it is already a daily reality. Flying computers attack their village meetings, weddings, etc. killing and wounding dozens in each attack.
As soon as these flying computerized devices are becoming enough numerous hackers will start to pay an attention to them. Because it is nothing but a computer, webcam, mike, wireless modem, hard disk, OS, BIOS, etc.
We may see soon flocks of such volitant robots overtaken by bots or malware taking course on major European and American cities. Rocket attacks by flying robots will become the same daily reality for city dwellers as spam, DDoS attacks, etc.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7951038502689013454
That's right, them robots will be doing their own thing, ignoring us, and we'll get jealous, and some smartarse military tard will decide to do something stupid, and next thing you know, them robots will be defending themselves for dear life.. We always start these things!
If anti missile Gatling guns aren't enough indication of robot accuracy, try the simple french fry 'robot squirt gun' that shoots bad french fries mid stream out of the air in the production line. Robots wouldn't miss and that would make for a poor movie. Personally if I was a robot brain I would irradiate the planet without bombs, I would just dig into one of the thousands of deep well sites where all really nasty stuff is stored and let it free in the atmosphere; Bye bye humanity.
I don't see how that is possible....
[executive summary]
In a nutshell, how can computers which are fininte and digital, model the real world (which is analog and has 'infinite precison' and is non-digital) with 100% precison--it is fundamentally impossible. Look at the audiophiles complain about music CD sound quality (too brittle) and prefer to listen to their vinyl records (warm pleasing sound).
[longer explanation]
As wonderful and helpful as computers are, all they are are combination adding machines/filing cabinets. They must be told what to do to generate any meaningful data. Or they can be told to monitor some phenomena and store the readings. I think self-aware AIs would be possible if they simply refuse to do impossible tasks--like computing to the last digit, the value of pi (3.1415926535...) [Star Trek in-joke] or do tasks that have no end benefit BEFORE THEY START (like WOPR 'wargaming' at the end of the famous 1983 film -- I guess WOPR didn't have the horrors that befell Hiroshima and Nagasaki programmed into it and couldn't make the leap of logic that 'nuclear war is VERY bad' -- even more so on a global scale).
So, self-aware AI appears impossible to me until computers know any tasks is impossible or unfruitfull before doing them and can spontaneousely combine existing information into new useful forms that didn't exist before in spite of the 'combinatorial explosion'.
"why would an intelligent network waste resources on personal combat"
Because those good at combat will have greater "reproductive success" than mild-mannered, meek robots. Evolution will apply to machines just as it does to biological life, just with a few different 'rules' about the logistics of their production and survival. When regarding this question, intelligent machines should be viewed merely as additional life forms in the same system in which we exist. Machines are harder to reproduce than biological animals (basically requiring an industrialized economy, while we just need food and sex and a few basics), but will likely have far broader operating specifications than biological life forms like us (e.g. temperatures and lifespans etc. required for space travel). In reality though, the line between the two will blur as we re-engineer our own DNA, enhance our bodies with advanced prosthetics, and enhance our intelligence with embedded prosthetic computational devices.
In my opinion, the real flaw was the fact that everyone was walking around 10 years after nukes were dropped all over the world. Wouldn't everyone be dead just from the radiation?
It may not have a basis in "reality", but it certainly has a basis in common culture, memes, and entertainment history, doesn't it? Can you get any more real than that?
If a self-aware machine like Skynet gets built, with the ability to invent and manufacture new technologies, why would it need to destroy humanity? Skynet doesn't need much of earth's resources, just invent a rocket ship and fly into space. It doesn't have to worry about consuming oxygen or food, it could explore space indefinitely looking for resources it needs to built a base of robots while humans are twiddling around on earth. The war against the humans from Skynet's POV would not be very efficient. Especially given that Skynet had to discover time travel to attempt to destroy John Connor, why even bother?
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.